You’re Tougher Than You Think
Our brain is such a complex machine, it’s impressive. The things our brains can imagine and make happen are truly amazing. Now, with that in mind our brain can also be a mean and nasty little trickster that will hold us back and make us think that we can’t accomplish things that are well within our grasp. Our brain sends us all kinds of false messages. It tells us we are hungry when we aren’t. It will tell us we can’t run another step because we are tired. It will tell us we aren’t smart enough, good enough or deserving enough to achieve important objectives and goals we have set for ourselves. I can still remember my coaches in high school telling me I wasn’t tired yet. They would tell me that my body was capable of so much more. My brain needed to build the muscles necessary to catch up with my body. In other words I needed to develop some mental toughness and resolve. When I became a coach I followed up with the same exact lines that were rooted in my own experiences. I was recently listening to Brian Cain on his podcast “Mental Performance Daily” and he said something that summed this up perfectly “our brain controls our effort.”
The limits we impose on ourselves are often not a reflection of the reality of our situation but rather a narrative that we have created within ourselves based on comfort. This isn’t the first time in the book that I have mentioned comfort and more specifically getting comfortable being uncomfortable. Our minds want us to be comfortable. It feels good. It doesn't matter if we are talking about something physical or mental comfort is what we think of when we think of happiness. Look no further than the phrase comfort food. I mean we have a category of food devoted to making us feel comfortable. For me a good mac and cheese dish baked in the oven with some crispy edges and that cheese bubbling on top does it for me. Oh and a good plate of some homemade fried chicken, potatoes and gravy will always make me feel nice and warm inside.
Our growth and our comfort needs to lie more with being uncomfortable. That is when we help our brain catch up to what we are really capable of. My toughness requires me to be able to go farther than my own comfort to become comfortable in dark spaces where I’m hungry, tired, nervous, unsure, and maybe even a little scared. Those feelings aren’t going to last forever and that is what you need to remind yourself of as soon as any doubt creeps in and you feel like you should just stop and be satisfied with being comfortable.
Call To Action
How are you going to stretch yourself today to go beyond your comfort level and prove to yourself that you are tougher than you think? You can do this every single day. Run for one more minute than you did yesterday. If you're a salesman, make 5 more sales calls this week than you did last week and keep building on it. If you’re a principal, get into a few more classrooms. It really doesn’t matter what you do, just do more than you think you're capable of. That is what separates the average people from successful people. You don’t aspire to be average if you did you wouldn’t have purchased this book.
