Becoming the best lifter you can be: Developing Self-Awareness

Most readers of this blog have been working hard at one or many fitness activities for a very long time.

Each of us is diligent about performing the best we can and are always on the lookout for a way to improve.

This short article has a few ideas you may find useful in your personal quest.

 

Become aware of how you do things

A good starting point for improving your game is to clearly understand how you are doing things now.

Becoming aware of your current patterns is important because you may unconsciously be subverting a lot of hard work by not being explicit about how you decide what to do and how you do it.

Try this: for a week keep a written journal of all the problem-solving actions you take. These can be problems from your work life, home, or fitness training.

This journal is ONLY for you.

When you encounter a problem, what have you done in the past that is like this? What did you do then? Why?

Do your solutions usually produce good results or not?

What are the costs (time, money, personal issues, trouble) of each solution?

What resources do you rely on to get new information?

Are there other sources of information that could help you that you dont use?

Do you have friends or colleagues who could suggest different ways to solve your problems?

You may find that some of your regular problem-solving practices are not achieving what you want. When your regular methods are explicit you can think about how you might want to change.

 

Self-Talk

One of the biggest things that gets in the way of improving is negative self-talk. The little soundtrack in your head can poison the best of your intentions.

In your journal, make a note of every time during the week when you are criticizing yourself and what the subject is.

The key is to be aware of your internal voice. You can harness this internal dialog to go into problem solving mode rather than simply criticizing yourself.

In other words, if you are criticizing yourself for being a poor squatter, you can quickly turn the internal critic into a problem solver.

Rather than blister yourself over your shortcomings, you can focus your attention on what could I do about this?

Since the dialog is in your head, you are free to take it in any direction you wish. Deciding to do the most brutal routine ever invented is nothing more than an opportunity to analyze the problem in your mind without lifting so much as a small barbell plate.

You can also think about other options or look for other assistance.

In short, you can do a lot of analysis and look at multiple options without committing to any one until you have spent more time thinking it through.

As obvious as this sounds, I gather that few people avail themselves of the opportunity to do complex evaluations of many options.entirely in their own head.

Most of the time our internal narrative is critical and not very kind to us.

Unless we focus attention on carefully evaluating multiple ways to solve our problem, the tendency is for our minds to wander or just be chaotic.

 

Coda

Your mind is one of the most powerful assets you have for building your future performance in weightlifting or anything else.

Focusing on potential solutions to real problems is difficult. It takes effort and energy to stay on track and not get distracted.

However, anyone can improve their mental skills for solving problems in weightliftingand life.

Lift Big!

Richard