Building belief In Your Ability
What do you truly believe about yourself and your future? Deep down inside, do you really believe you can succeed? Or, are your beliefs limiting your performance? There was once a simple Australian farmer, who decided he would compete in a race. In 1983, Cliff Young entered a running race for the first time in his life. He chose not just any race, but the Sydney to Melbourne endurance run, which is 560 miles long. |
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Top athletes run this race in around seven days with the help of a support team, covering almost three marathons a day, sleeping for a maximum of six hours each night. Imagine that for a moment, running three marathons in a day. Then imagine running three marathons the next day and the next, for seven days. The physical and mental demands of completing such a task are so extremely tough, that only a select few dedicated people can achieve such a feat. The support team the athletes bring typically consist of a physio to treat any injuries, a masseur to care for aching muscles, someone to prepare specially designed nutritious meals to fuel the athlete’s body and someone to drive the support vehicle. Such a vehicle often had facilities for the athlete to lie down, sleep, toilet, shower and recover when a break was required over the gruelling demands of this toughest of races. Cliff, had no support team. He hadn’t even run a race before. He didn’t look like your typical runner. He was sixty one years old. The organizers thought he was a joke entry who wouldn’t last a day. When he started running, he didn’t even run like a runner, instead he kind of shuffled. However, in true Forrest Gump fashion, he just kept on running. He cat napped at the side of the road when he needed to, found some place to eat when he felt hungry and kept running when the other athletes were still resting. Astonishingly, to the amazement of all watching, he completed the race in five days, smashing the previous record by two days. He ran the equivalent of four marathons per day, for five days in a row. How was that possible? Well, although he was sixty one years old and hadn’t competed in a race before, he had practiced running on his 2,000 acre farm steering live stock over great distances for most of his life. When asked how he had managed to run the race in five days when the previous best was seven days, he responded by saying, “Nobody told me I couldn’t. I just set out to run the best I could and this was the best I could do.” How did Cliff’s performance impact the beliefs of the other runners? From the next year on, most of the competitors copied Cliff’s style of running, which helped to conserve energy and lessen the impact on the body’s joints. Most of the athletes then pushed themselves harder than before and completed the race in five days, instead of their own previous personal best of seven days.
I can think of no better example to highlight the fact that when you change what you believe, you can change the way you perform. Like these athletes, have you been holding yourself back by believing that you couldn’t do better? Someone showed them that they could do better, their beliefs changed and as a result, their performance improved. I want you to commit right now to pushing out the boundaries of your beliefs in regards to what you think, feel and believe you can realistically achieve. This could be the very step that takes you to where you want to be. This could be the barrier that was stopping you getting there until now. Strip that barrier away and move forward.
I can think of no better example to highlight the fact that when you change what you believe, you can change the way you perform. Like these athletes, have you been holding yourself back by believing that you couldn’t do better? Someone showed them that they could do better, their beliefs changed and as a result, their performance improved. I want you to commit right now to pushing out the boundaries of your beliefs in regards to what you think, feel and believe you can realistically achieve. This could be the very step that takes you to where you want to be. This could be the barrier that was stopping you getting there until now. Strip that barrier away and move forward.