Fit Focus: Keep looking at the negatives and that's all you will see

HOW much are you holding yourself back in your life? Your mind is an amazingly powerful thing that we do not give enough credit to.

To show you how powerful it is I want you to do a simple exercise. Stand up and give yourself an arm’s length of space either side. Now raise your right hand up to parallel to the floor and rotate your body around to the right as far as you can. In your mind mark the spot that you reach and then turn back.

Now I want you to close your eyes and visualise in your mind you lifting your arm and doing the same exercise.

This time you reach the spot you reached the first time but do not stop there you continue around another 45 degrees, then you turn another 90 degrees and finally you end up like one of the cartoon figures with your body twisted around and you are back looking straight ahead again so you have turned 360 degrees.

Now open your eyes again and physically repeat the same exercise and I can guarantee you that you will have rotated around further than you had done the first time you did it.

This is because when you were visualising that you were doing it you were telling your brain that you wanted to go further and further and your brain allowed you to go those extra degrees.

Top athletes use visualisation all the time and it is an amazingly powerful tool but we put limitations on ourselves all the time and sometimes we do it without realising it. The end result though is that it has a huge impact on our health, our fitness levels and our strength.

If you are stressed running around try to do this and that for everyone and don’t take time out to look after yourself then you will never be in a position to care for yourself because your brain will not give you the permission to do so for yourself.

Even if you try to change and learn a new skill or go to the gym where you have to do new and challenging exercises your brain will not allow you because it is too busy trying to survive and cope with all the stress and negative messages it is receiving with the majority coming from you.

Let’s try another simple exercise, you need another person to help you with this. Hold your hand up straight out to the side. Get the other person to push your arm down to the floor and you have to try to hold and resist as best you possible can. I bet you can hold pretty well.

Now I want you to repeat the same exercise but I want you to visualise something that is really stressful to you. When you were visualising the really stressful event I have no doubt that your arm dropped much quicker and you couldn’t resist.

This same principle applies to when you are exercising. If you are stressed and have negative thoughts it is going to manifest itself in your body because what is in your mind is in your body and vice versa.

With this mindset you have already put limitations on yourself before you have ever started. You have already set yourself up for failure as you are more likely to injure yourself or talk yourself out of being able to do the task.

This follows through to every aspect of your life and is not isolated to the gym or exercise. It carries into work, business and relationships. Nothing is really positive or negative it is how we respond to the situation that makes it positive or negative.

If you keep looking at the negative then eventually that is all you will be able to see no matter what happens. Try to take a step back and look at things through different perspective. Do not put limitations on yourself, with consistency and perseverance anything is possible and you owe it to yourself to be the best you can be.