Are You Limiting Your Success with Your Thoughts?

Dreaming big isn’t the issue when it comes to how to achieve goals.

You’ve visualized yourself crossing that finish line, arms thrown up in the air triumphant smile or looking in the mirror to discover the body you’ve imagined is finally yours.

But SOMETHING always happens just as you’re about to reach that goal, right? Or maybe every time you start working towards the goal, life gets in the way.

No matter what external circumstance you point to – an overdue work project, a last minute dentist appointment, a lingering injury, a draining bank account…

at the end of the day it’s YOU holding you back.

Oh snap, nobody likes being called out on their stuff, but unfortunately it’s true.

How to Achieve Big Running Goals

The things happening in between your two ears {as mama always says} are the only limiters you have. All right fine, no the only one’s I mean I’m unlikely to work for NASA, but in general we’re often able to achieve so much more once we get control of our thoughts while running.

A quick Google will bring you tons of people who have defied external limiters that the world perceives:

• 81-year-old France Cokan finished the Kona Ironman World Championships
• Matt Long overcame being hit by a bus to come back and run the NYC marathon
• Mirna Valerio is an ultra runner and overweight according current BMI standards
• Beethoven couldn’t hear and he was an amazing composer
• Grant Achatz became a better chef during treatment for tongue cancer, without taste

How???

They believed they deserved to achieve their goal and they got the heck out of their own way.

Lesson 1: Don’t feel guilty about your talent

Gabby Reece gave a beautiful example of this on a recent Tim Ferriss episode, in talking about how women sometimes sit on our talents because we don’t want to be singled out. Here is the story she shared:

The Coach of a men’s Olympic volleyball team, singled out Karch Kiraly and said this is up to you to win, you take this hit. They went out and did it.

Later Karch was a Olympic women’s coach and tried the same tactic (with his players), but it failed horribly with the women.

We’ve been taught that good girls put others first, so we shy away from being singled out for our talents.

I love Warren Buffet for speaking out on this issue so heavily! This is about discussions he had with Katherine Graham the CEO of The Washington Post who won a Pulitzer and did a ton for that paper:

And I kept telling her, you know, ‘Quit looking at that fun house mirror. You know, here’s a real mirror. You’re something.’ And as smart as she was, as high grade as she was, you know, as famous as she became, right to her dying day, you know, she had that little voice inside her that kept repeating what her mother had told her a long time ago.

So everybody should get a chance to live up to their potential. And women should not hold themselves back.

Lesson 2: Action + Emotion = Success

Strike a power pose for confidence!! It’s proven to work.

Crazy, but try it before your next run. Maybe not while in a group, but going for a speed workout, then spend 1 minute standing with feet spread and hands on your hips, chest in the air, looking ahead like you’re about to fly off to meet Superman.

The change in physiology changes our psychology.

Thoughts backed by emotion make you an unstoppable force. This is why so many coaches talk about visualization, in fact it’s one  of the keys that was listed in Elite Minds.

Pull out all the little tricks you can to start connecting your goals with an emotion:

• Visualize your race finish during the final mile of a run
• Think about how good you feel post workout to get you out the door
• Connect your body confidence to nailing that workout
• Find your emotional why

You do it because the doing of it is the thing. The doing is the thing. The talking and worrying and thinking is not the thing. – Amy Poehler

Lesson 3: Stop Giving Away Your Power

Are you holding yourself back by giving the power to someone else?

Figure out where your initial limiting beliefs started is a great place to start!! Was it a comment from a middle school bully {been there}. Is it a concern that your parents won’t be proud {worried about that too}.

• Staying in a job because the economy is too bad to find another
• Staying overweight because it runs in the family
• Failing in school because of where you grow up
• Blaming a coach for under performing
• Men don’t cry
• I can’t eat this because…

Letting external factors define you, limits you.

Take those limiting beliefs and start using these 3 POWER phrases every time they show up:

I CAN

I WILL

I AM

Get out of your own way to achieve BIG goals -- Here's how! Share on X

Lesson 4: Find YOUR motivation language

What is it that really drives you to push your limits?

Do you like being challenged or do you need someone really supporting you? The best example ever is people watching the first season of The Biggest Loser who thought they’d do best with Jillian’s take charge attitude or Bob’s cuddling.

• Seeing others in action (hello a marathon finish line)
• Wanting recognition
• Having a friend by your side encouraging you
• An internal drive to see what you’re made of

We cannot achieve more in life than what we believe in our heart of hearts we deserve to have.- James R. Ball

I know today probably left you with more questions than answers, but sometimes that’s how we find the real nuggets of wisdom four ourselves. It forces us to think, instead of blinding following a guide.

Do you hold yourself back?

How are you going to push farther with this new info??

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