Part 2 of Charles Staley’s lecture on why most peoples’ workouts suck.
Also, before I get to today’s post, I wanted to post this link to a story showing that food can actually be used to treat disease. Unfortunately, I don’t think enough people realize the power that our diet has on our health and well-being. As it states in the article, it’s interesting that people think of diet as a way to maintain health, but never consider it as an option for treating disease.
We’ve all been told that practice makes perfect, and with good reason. The more we repeat something, the better we get at it. Of course, this works both ways. Those things that we repeatedly do, we get really good at, and those things aren’t always good. By repeatedly doing something, it becomes ingrained in our subconscious, to the point that we don’t even have to think when we do it. I heard Buddy Morris state something like 500 hours it takes to ingrain something into our subconscious. This becomes important when we’re talking about habits and things we do every single day. It’s also why bad habits are so hard to break. They become engrained and we don’t even have to think about doing them. We often do them without thinking. As Bear Bryant once stated, “The first time you quit, it’s hard. The 2nd time, it gets easier. The 3rd time, you don’t even have to think about it.” Basically, by repeatedly quitting (in whatever form that may be), we are ingraining that habit in ourselves. Over time, we don’t even have to tell ourselves to quit, it becomes our instinct.
I believe it was Aristotle who said “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.” In the book Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill talks about repeatedly telling yourself that which you want to achieve, as though you already have it. He contends that repeatedly telling your subconscious this will lead it to believe it has already happened, essentially. This basically makes it a forgone conclusion that you will eventually achieve it. This type of mental repetition has some merit, as mental imagery has been shown to improve performance (obviously this isn’t a substitute for actual practice). My basic point is to not be afraid of mental positive affirmation on a daily basis. Tell yourself what you are going to achieve, not what you want. Then, set out and do it. This daily repetition will pay big dividends going forward.
