Is the juice worth the squeeze?
In just about any situation we come to in life, make sure we don’t set ourself up for failure. In other words, don’t get too anxious before something big. The experience is what we make it at all times, we are in control on how we want to experience just about any situation. By getting overly anxious, the tendency to psyche ourselves out is very prone to happening. Be cool and control the experience.
When we’re doing certain things to get validation from others, we then set ourselves up for serious failure. Saying to ourselves “what are they going to say about me if I do this” or “what are they going to think of me” will never turn out well in the end. I’ve personally set myself up for failure many times through this validation process.
The student athlete
I’ve been blessed to work with many Division 1 and professional athletes during my time working in the professional world of strength and conditioning. The “student athlete” is without a doubt plays one of the most impressive roles of anyone i’ve worked with, especially the ages they are at. With them, the process is deep but the goal is not. Majority of time, these students are loading up their plate and pretty much completing 2 careers within a 4-year span. Not only do they juggle their success on the field, but also in the classroom. Not to mention them having a social life, family time and possible relationships?
The biggest thing I’ve learned from majority of these athletes is their razor sharp mindset. I remember a wrestler at Iowa State told me as an intern to “never go into the future with fear, ever! Whatever it is you are trying to achieve, whether it works out or not, you always have the option to learn from it. Just do it boldly and learn from the process GOOD or BAD”. This type of mindset, I’ve learned can be applied to just about any experience we encounter in life.
Fear of rejection
Nobody likes to be rejected, and that’s straight up. The people who claim to like rejection have tricked their minds into adapting this idea that “there is always the option to learn from any situation”. We always start at “no” if you don’t ask or do anything in the beginning. Before before we psyche ourselves out completely, simply should ask ourself “is it worth it to get this connection with the other party?”. If you feel you could potentially gain ANYTHING from the situation, be bold and spark up a conversation!
“Flip the switch”
Focus on the process more than the goal. As a culture, if we focus on this one thing we will gain so much more. Again, we can always control the experience; we tell our brain the things we want to become real and effort makes it reality. As this is where everything starts. Things such as “We’re going to hit it off “, “I’m about to pass this exam” “We’re winning this track meet”, “We’re about to start a family” and so on. Whatever the outcome we want to happen, it starts in the pre frontal cortex (The “decision making” part of the brain).
Pro tip “Unwanted thoughts”
Step 1
Know that the brain does not have a secret outline thats intended to be out to “get us”. Blocking out thoughts/mindset is always going to be difficult but in reality we have the control of our thoughts, always. Some just know how to control it better than others.
Step 2 (whichever works best for you)
Handling the thoughts when they do come. Having the “If then” plan when unwanted thoughts come into place is a fabulous cure. It can be as simple as “if the thought comes, I will ignore it”, the trick is to prepare ourselves by having a go to plan. Other ways to prevent negative thoughts is to replace is with a positive. For example, “If I doubt myself, I will remember all of the times I’ve won and passed this obstacle”.
Step 3 (Don’t get too familiar)
It’s not entirely healthy to block ALL negative situations that come our way, as this is where growth happens. Make sure we identify when we do need to reflect on the bad things that happen to us in order to understand what lesson it’s trying to teach us. When it gets to a point where a thought simply prolongs pain then it’s time to rid ourself from it and move forward to greatness.
The negative mindset is “played out”
Many of us go in on this negative default stage when we come to adversity (and adversity is inevitable). It’s really become a serious problem with humanity today. We give more energy to the negative than to the positive. Every day, it’s becoming more toxic to others in large part because of how easy it is to default to this way of thinking. Really, its up to us to set the trend and consciously re-program our ways in a positive manor. Other minds will subconsciously pick up on these que’s the more we are exposing it to the world, people will adapt.
We live in the world where negativity has more energy put into it than positive on a daily basis. My favorite example of this is the Report card situation: as a kid, if we did bad on our report card, we would either get grounded for a couple weeks or get punished in some way. On the flipside, if we got “all A’s” we may get a good job or “I’m proud of you” from the parents) Why cant we flip it and treat “All A’s” with as much intensity as we do for bad option on our report cards? Flipping the switch and getting away from this negative standard should be a gaol for all of us.
