Self-Defeat: How to Beat the Part of You That’s Failing
By: C.J. Of Metal Motivation
You quit in your mind long before you quit in your body. It’s that crucial moment when your own head betrays you—even lies to you—and says, “You can’t go any further. You don’t have the same power as other people. It’s just the way it is. But maybe it’s not so bad to be this way. Hell, at least you made an effort.”
BULL! You could’ve gone much further. You could’ve easily kept up the disciplines you needed in order to create the lasting changes you’ve always wanted. Nobody forced you to quit. You did it yourself. You gave up because of the lies your lazy little mind tells you.
Win the Battles of the Mind—You’ll Win the Battles in Life
This is self-defeat, and it’s the reason for most of the failures in your life. Sure, you try to blame upbringing, circumstances, or other people, but the cold truth is that YOU were the one who gave up. YOU were the one who gave yourself permission to fail.
Therefore, if you can win the battle in your mind, you will win every battle in life. If you strengthen your mind now—before you meet the challenge—you’ll go a hell of a lot further than you did before. It’s time to break through some ceilings in your life, and the only barrier you have to destroy is the imaginary wall you’ve created for yourself.
How Your Mind Works
Here’s how it all works. Your mind creates elaborate habits of thoughts so that you don’t have to constantly re-learn the same responses, reactions, and interpretations. This is actually a good thing unless those thought habits have been take over by your darker side.
I like to use the example of the treadmill—even though my concern for you is to get the victory over your mind in every area of your life—because it’s a simple way to make the point. Let’s say you’ve only been able to go about 15 minutes running on a treadmill. No matter what, you always seem to give up at that point. Your legs start aching. You start losing your breath, and then your mind starts telling you that you can’t keep this up.
The Appearing of the Evil Life Coach!
Imagine at that very moment that I was to suddenly appear beside you yelling, “Don’t you dare stop! Keep going!” So you do. At first, it’s just another minute that you’re able to go, and then you start all of your fake ass huffing and puffing like you’re about to die, and I move even closer to your ear and say, “Come on you bonehead! You can go further! Stop being so weak!”
You go even further. Now we’re three minutes past your supposed “barrier”, and you’re starting to believe something different, but your body is still screaming, “No more!” Then you say, “C. J., I can’t. I just can’t do this. I’m not like everyone else. Please, let me off this thing!”
That’s when I pull out your five year-old child and place a knife to his throat. I say, “If you even think about stopping, I swear, I’ll slice him from ear to ear. Now keep going!”
The Greater the Value You Create, the Further You’ll Go
Now, we’re at a whole ten minutes past the point where you always quit, and guess what? Your body starts to shut up. It accepts the fact that the pain is part of the process, and it starts to obey this new mastery by your mind. Granted, I had to threaten the very life of your child to get your head to that point, but you did it. You just broke through your imaginary ceiling.
I realize this was an evil way to describe it, but the point is that until you truly value the importance of achieving your goal(s)—with a value like that of your own child—then you’ll never push past your breaking points. And if you don’t push past them, you will not grow.
Achievement and personal change is not mysterious. It’s about putting to death that part of you that’s telling you to quit. That’s all it is. Are you ready to break some barriers now? I hope so. Tell me in the comments below where you think you’re defeating yourself.
C. J. Ortiz is the creator of Metal Motivation (http://metalmotivation.com), a personal development system of "life mastery" that obliterates weakness and strengthens personal resolve. He is the author of "Ten Times More: How to Multiply Your Personal Power for Real Achievement and Lasting Change", which you can download for FREE by clicking here.
