Let me tell you a story quickly. It’s a story of ‘The 4-minute mile’. No one had achieved it. In fact it was believed that it could kill a human being till that day. It was on 6 May 1954, Roger Bannister; a British athlete set a record for the first time ever. He ran a mile race in 3:59.4 and created a HISTORY!
Interestingly, Roger Bannister was only the first person to do it. 2 months later, Australian John Landy could do it alongside with Roger again!!
Within a year about a dozen more people could achieve a sub 4-minute mile. By now 1400 athletes have achieved this feat including high school students and 40+ year old men.
What was missing?
What really changed after Roger Bannister’s first 4-minute mile?
BELIEF.
Till that time, no one believed it could be done. No one really tried to achieve that which was unachievable. Only after Mr. Banister shattered the old belief and replaced with a new belief that it could be done, more and more people started doing it.
The missing piece in the puzzle is our Belief.
Your Beliefs affect your goals
Like the ‘The 4-Minute Mile’ story, we may have many personal stories. There are always things we want to achieve presently or wanted to at some point of time in the past. All those are very well achievable if and only if we believe in ourselves and invest enough time and effort. It may take a lot of time and hard work to achieve. You can push through all of it only if you believe.
It holds good for any type of goal. Be it health and fitness or be it career or finance or the kind of lifestyle we dream about. We can always keep on adding more and more belief to the equation in the pursuit of our goals.
Build your belief
Since, I talk here mostly about fitness, it doesn’t make sense leaving this without some tips to build more belief into your fitness goals.
- Take small easy steps – Let say you want to climb a huge mountain. It will surely be intimidating and difficult to believe you can scale it if you stay at the base and keep staring at the peak. But the only way to reach the peak is to put one step in front of the other. Just do the same with your fitness goals. Just take one small step. Do it again and again. Form one healthy habit. Then the next one. Keep building your lifestyle with more of those habits. It’s all about choosing the habits based upon your goal. Here are a few for starters- drink 4-5liters of water daily, take 10 minute walks 1-3 times daily, stop eating deep fried food, eat more vegetables and at least one fruit daily…
- Keep Learning– Lack of knowledge is one of the major factors limiting our belief. Getting the knowledge which we can help to move towards our goal will help us to build that belief. The internet is overloaded with a lot of information. You have to be careful, because there is a lot of bullshit around. You can find a lot of fad diets and tips and tricks to lose fat fast. A very few of those can get you results, but grantee no long term sustainability. Read some good books and fitness blogs. I will compile a list in short future. Till then you can start with this book and the blog-www.muscleforlife.com.
- Track progress– Reaching your target can be a very long process. It takes several weeks to get visible results. You will most likely lose motivation very quickly. The only way to stay motivated is tracking the progress. Things like taking daily weight and comparing weekly average with previous week can be really motivating. It can also indicate if the progress in not happening. Body measurements and body pictures are also a very powerful ways for tracking.
- Seek help– You can always take help from people who are a little further on the same journey as yours. It may be anyone from friends and family to co-workers to neighbors. Much better if you seek professional help.
- Keep Looking for your Roger Bannister– There are many Roger Banisters around us. We just don’t look for them or we fail to recognize them. They may be regular people around you or present online on social media, YouTube, blogs and websites.