Members Only Post #143 – The Truth About Pushing Yourself

We all have limits in our heads that we can’t seem to break. We all have ways in which we limit ourselves and what we’re “allowed” to accomplish. Often times we could have many, sometimes even all of the things we want, but stop ourselves from accomplishing it because we haven’t allowed our minds to believe that we can accomplish those things.

This may seem crazy but its how humans work. And this is not limited to any one field. For example maybe you limit yourself on the type of girl that you could date. You think oh I can only have girls that aren’t that attractive or don’t have too much going on because I don’t feel I’m “worthy” of them yet. Which is nonsense.

Likewise maybe you think oh I could never make six figures, oh I could never get down to my college weight, oh I could never write a novel, oh I could never start a business of my own, oh I could never do X, Y, or Z. And yet until you try these things and keep at it for a good while you really never know.

Yet you rob yourself of the good that you could have.

The Mind, Motivation, & Accomplishing Goals

Often we think if we only had the right motivation we could accomplish our goals. After all that’s how it works in the movies right? Just find the proper motivation and you’ll propel yourself to get what you want. And there is something to that. After all if someone held a gun to your head and said he’d pull the trigger unless you accomplished a certain goal, chances are you’d accomplish that goal no matter how crazy. Granted that you were given enough time.

However when it comes to getting what you want and accomplishing goals motivation is actually pretty weak and doesn’t translate to results. Sure you need a base line level of motivation and its wise to sell yourself on whatever you’re doing, picture the end results, and think about the benefits. But constantly looking for shots of motivation isn’t going to get you very far.

For example if you need a workout motivation video to get you pumped up to go to the gym it’s going to be hard to accomplish any long term goals with it. What will see you through to the other side, the accomplishment of your goals, is discipline. Discipline mixed with consistency. Motivation is good and all but it’s not what gets you through to the other side. The hard grunt work that is required.

Pushing Yourself & The Mind

Part of discipline is doing the same thing day in and day out and “just doing it” but the other part is pushing yourself and what you can accomplish. Going back to mental limits you’re “end point” is always way further than you think. Let me explain using a variety of examples. Say you think you can bench press 225 or write 3,000 words a day. And you think for whatever reason that right there is you’re limit. Simply by the fact that you think its your limit I can almost guarantee you that its not.

Your mind almost always limits itself more than you think. If you think you can get 225 you can probably get 245 or 235. Using the writing as an example I thought I could never get more than 5,000 words a day. Try as I might I seemed to just be stuck there. Day after day, shooting for more. However now I write up to 10,000 words a day. So what changed?

Well part of it was process, taking more breaks expands my limit. But also telling myself I could hit 10,000 and hit it easy. Instead of going in thinking “Alright I’ll be lucky to hit 5,000” I go in thinking hitting 10,000 is normal. Do I always hit it? No, not even close but I get closer and closer on a consistent basis. I’m not saying thinking is the only thing that matters but its the start.

You can always do more than you think you can. You can always push yourself more than you think you can. Its about mental strength. This is the big breakthrough most hit in boot camp, that they have mental strength capacities that they never knew they did because they doubted themselves their whole lives. You don’t need to go to boot camp to figure it out for yourself.

Pick a goal and try it out and surprise yourself.