Believe you can - The power of positivity & compound changes

[LoungeLizaard]

Now I sound like some insta-influencer! (I’m not!!)

Happy Monday everyone, as part of an answer within my sub 30 minute post I started writing about this and thought it deserved it's moment in the forum!

I wanted to post about 2 other important lessons that have helped me exponentially. Firstly - The power of positivity or having a positive mind set - The high-level view of this is - Believe you can do it and believe in the process. Whether you are on week 4 looking dauntingly at week 5, or have graduated and you’re now thinking how do I get to 5k (lets face it, most of us couldn’t do 5k in 30 minutes – I still can’t, but that’s what my last post was about). Believe that you / your body can do it. Over half the battle on any of our journey’s is mental, where we tell ourselves we can’t, or we need to stop… and you might do, but only rarely. I learned a staggering statistic a while ago, that under laboratory conditions, when someone thought they were done, they had no more in the tank and couldn’t go on – They were only actually 40% “done”. To put that into some context. People always say “I train better with someone” or “My PT gets so much more out of me” or think of military training (I haven’t been) where people can achieve much more than they thought they were capable of… Whether it was conscious (with PT asking for more) or subconscious (with a crowd / buddy) people can achieve more, even if only a little.

Which is a nice segue into my 2nd lesson – make small sustainable incremental changes. You don’t need to add 10 minutes or 2k to each run. If you try and go to hard or to far it will actually reinforce the mental barrier that you want to break

Make small changes to gently break or push the mental barrier, add 1 minute for the next week. The following week add another minute and keep building. I can absolutely promise you, that if you can run for 30 minutes, you can add some more time, even if it’s only 30 seconds!

This is also true when running a shorter distance. Run 2k/3k instead of 5k and go slightly faster - do that once a week and you’ll find your 5k’s get faster over time.

Those small, incremental changes, over 6 months or a year can and will all add up to huge changes in your mental & physical health. The same process is true for improving your diet! The No.1 reason diets fail is people go “all out” and remove everything they “like” then miss it all, and ultimately give up. Just make small incremental changes and keep building. Which is a nice segue back to the start…..

Believe you can and believe in the process – be positive!

Support yourself by not being too hard on yourself – Just make a small change today, tomorrow (or next week) you’ll wonder why you didn’t do it before, and you can make one more.

That is the power of positivity – and it’s in you!

Enjoy your week guys & girls 😊

(Also posted in C25K forum)

[Grannyhugs Graduate10]

Fantastic post. Having never run due to bad knees from skiing I suddenly decided to give c25k a go. I had 100% faith in the program and in the fact that if I followed it I'd build up support muscles and prevent knee pain. I then used the same belief to reach 10k. Next I used your slow and sure method to gradually include hills. I have total faith in my ability to run but am also realistic in not pushing faster runs or longer distances. Happy running everyone 🤗

[dieOR5k Graduate10]

So many successes I've had during lockdown were due to giving myself permission to just do a little more. In spite of the global anguish, I've been blossoming. Taking time to take care of myself. Slowing down. So many wonderful lessons I would not have learned without lockdown. We need to celebrate what we can and support whoever needs it.

[Buddy34 Graduate10]

Your right, a lot of running is about overcoming the mental barrier. I doubted myself a lot along the way especially when doing c25k. But once you get it into your head I can do this, it helps a lot. I'm now a lot more positive not just about running but just day to day as well.

This forum is full of positivity and really helps 😊😊

[SlowLoris]

Segue.

Unless you’ve been using a Segway. That would also be an effective boost to performance.

[LoungeLizaard Graduate10 in reply to SlowLoris]

Well that my dose of positive for today! Lol, thx & edited!

[Fabulous450 Graduate10]

Wow! What a fantastic post LL!! Such a huge smile on my face reading this!! 😁😁😁!! It is so inspiring and so true! 👌🏽

I use the power of positivity a lot!! I do tend to laugh about what I can and can’t do (yet) and I’m very satisfied just with the fact that I went out. I truly believe that the more we do it, we can only get better by learning a little something from it. That way every run is a win!!

Fantastic LL! Sub 30...watch out!! 👀 🏃🏼‍♂️ ❤️

[LoungeLizaard Graduate10 in reply to Fabulous450]

Thanks Fab - Got a way to go yet! Was meant to go out for a run this evening, got side tracked by cooking dinner! Hey ho! Win some lose some - it was good tho! Lol

[Fabulous450 Graduate10 in reply to LoungeLizaard]

The things we have to do eh LL? 😁

Every day is a new opportunity!! 😁❤️

[Mum22boys Graduate10]

Loved reading this post!! I think I need to save it and re-read it from time to time, really powerful message, thank you! 😊

Ps, hope you enjoyed your dinner 😉

[LoungeLizaard Graduate10 in reply to Mum22boys]

Hey - thanks. I’m just hoping to “pay it forward” and help those who read it and they can learn from my own experiences.

Dinner was cracking! My wife got stuck entertaining a “drop in” visitor, so I just cracked on with cooking, then it was ready, then it was too late to go and I was absolutely starving! Lol.