“Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you are correct.” – Henry Ford
I am sure you have all heard that quote at one time or another. It is applicable to many things in life, including athletic performance and injury recovery.
Our brains are amazing things and what we tell ourselves when doing a certain activity is what normally will happen. Do you start failing at a lift multiple times and then get into the mindset of “I am not going to get this?” the next time you try? Guess what? You are correct. If you have already gone into that lift with a negative thought process, most likely your body will perform like your brain is thinking, therefore causing you to miss the lift.
Now, change that mindset to what you need to correct on the next lift. If the part that you forgot was to get your elbows up on the high pull, think “shoulders back and elbows up” before going into the lift to remind yourself what to do. If you are focused on what needs to happen to make the lift be successful, you are more likely to succeed.
The same goes in the rehab and injury recovery world. If I have a client that is very negative and does not feel they will get better because they have been living with the pain for months or years, it is going to take a lot longer for that individual to improve…if they actually do improve. Whereas if the client feels that what I can do will help them become pain free, most likely that person will have a faster recovery.
Find yourself falling into a mindset of focusing on your failures and weaknesses and can’t figure out how to overcome it. I have found several good ways recently to shift my mindset from focusing on my failures and weaknesses into focusing on what has improved and what I can do now that I couldn’t do 1-2 months ago with my training.
- TedTalks has some great talks on failures, weakness, and success.
- Put positive comments in places you look frequently. Write with a dry erase marker on your mirror. Change your phone background. Put something on your desk. Basically, anywhere you look frequently, put something positive. I recently put “You Rock” as my phone background so I see that every time I look at my phone.
- Health Ambition Power of Positive Thinking has some great resources with the effects of negative thinking vs positive thinking and tips on how to get in a better mindset.
Have more questions regarding this? Email me at brianne@getyourfixpt.com
