I had a breakthrough the other day, and it happened somewhere I never expected. On a run.
Now, let me be clear about something first. I am not scared of the gym. Never have been. I will deadlift with the best of them and I will squat with the best of them. I will count my macros down to the gram. I know Discipline and I've got it. The longest I ever kept it going was about three years straight, and I'm telling you, that was the happiest I have ever been.
But running? I don't like that girl. Give me weights all day, but running always felt like the one thing I had no desire to do.
But I did a run the other day that changed my mind (Literally)
Lately I've been walking. At least an hour a day for the last 30 days, just taking care of myself. And the other day, something in me said, go ahead and run. See what happens.
So I did and I could not believe my body. I just kept going. And going. Every single time I thought I was going to stop, every time a voice said okay, you're done, quit here, I couldn't let myself do it. I ran way past what I thought I had in me.
And that's when I got it... It was never my body holding me back. It was my mind. Or, I should say, it was one of my minds.
Because you've got two of them.
Here's what I've come to believe. You have two minds working inside you at all times.
The first one, I call the physical mind. That's the one that fed me every excuse on that run. You're tired. You can't do this. You hate running, remember? Just stop. The physical mind is loud, it's quick, and it almost always tells you to quit, to back down, to play it safe. It hands you the first thought that pops up, and that thought is usually fear dressed up as logic.
Then there's your spiritual mind. And that's the one that truly wants the best for you. Your spiritual mind is the one that wants to see you do well. It's the one rooting for you, pulling for you, believing in you even when you can't believe in yourself. And here's the beautiful part: your spiritual mind believes everything good you tell it. Whatever you feed it, it takes as truth and builds on it.
On that run, my physical mind was screaming stop. But something deeper, that spiritual mind, kept whispering keep going, you've got this, you're stronger than she's telling you. And I listened to the right one.
You don't have to entertain the first thought that enters your head about your limits.
This is the part I really want you to hear.
That first thought that shows up in your head? You don't have to entertain it. You don't have to grab it, hold it, and build your whole day around it. Thoughts are fleeting. They come and they go. Just because a thought shows up doesn't mean it's true, and it definitely doesn't mean you have to obey it.
The first thought said quit. I let it pass right on by and did what was best for me anyway. And I surprised myself so much that I'm now looking at everything else in my life going, well, what else have I been wrong about? What else can I actually do?
That's the power in this. When you learn to let that first fearful thought float on by, and you feed your spiritual mind good things instead, you stop being a prisoner to a voice that was never looking out for you in the first place.
So here's what I want for you...
Whatever your version of the run is, the thing you've decided you just can't do, I want you to catch that first thought telling you no, and let it pass. Don't entertain it. Do what's best for you anyway.
You are so much stronger than one of your minds is letting you believe. You just have to learn which voice to trust.
Go ahead and run. See what happens. I think you're going to shock yourself.