The Life Changing Magic of Being Consistent: How to Build Capacity & Overcome Limiting Beliefs
When you do more, you can do more.
This concept is two-fold in the sense that…
One: the more you do, the more you increase your capacity for what you can do–physically, mentally, and emotionally.
And two: when you keep going consistently with something, you find your rhythm, and things get easier.
Increasing Your Strength
If you want to be able to do more, you have to do more.
When you push yourself, you increase both your strength (physical and mental), and your endurance.
When I first started swimming, every centimeter felt like a meter, every meter felt like a lap, and every lap felt like a mile.
And it felt to me like I would have to have the skill level of an Olympian and the strength of a professional powerlifter to even get across the pool once.
Your perception of the difficulty of the task in front of you and the length of time you will have to endure it coincides with your aptitude at the time.
When I was terrible at swimming, it felt a lot more difficult, not only physically of course, but also mentally.
I felt so much further away from my goal of being able to swim.
The physical strength needed to swim and the length of the pool were always the same, but my perception of it changed based on my capabilities at the moment.
But the more time I put in, and the better I got, the more that distance from one end of the pool to the other shrank in my mind.
Increasing Your Capacity
This concept doesn’t just apply to our strength for doing the task at hand, but also similarly, for our capacity for doing the task at hand.
This idea applies to the realm of physical tasks, but in other realms as well.
There is such a thing as doing too much (overwork, not good) and such a thing as doing too little (underwork, also not good).
When we do too little, we find it harder to do more.
Ever been tired because you had so much going on?
Makes sense.
There’s a thousand things on your plate, you’re constantly bouncing from place to place, from obligation to obligation, trying to meet the demands of all the people pulling you in a million different directions.
Ever also been tired because you had nothing to do?
Ever found yourself exhausted in the middle of a day…where you had done absolutely nothing?
On the beginning side of effort (before we have done anything), tasks can seem daunting, and it can feel like we can’t do it.
We simply don’t have it in us.
Or so it seems.
But when we push ourselves, we give our energy levels, and our physical and mental capacities the chance to rise to the occasion and meet the challenge, which only happens once we have given ourselves a just-enough-to-feel-a-little-uncomfortable objective to fix on.
When we push ourselves to do even just a little more than we thought we could, we often find ourselves surprised by our increased capacity to do more than we thought possible.
The Benefits of Increased Endurance
The more we do, the less effort is required because we are stronger.
The more we do things, the less of a physical, mental, and emotional burden they require for us to do them. The more we do, the greater quantity we can do because our capacity has increased.
Endurance increases by doing more and more each time over time.
And it will get easier and easier every time.
What seemed difficult yesterday will seem easier tomorrow.
The point you struggled at yesterday, you’ll breeze by tomorrow.
The part that stopped you yesterday, you’ll be able to surpass tomorrow.
When you keep going, today’s challenge is tomorrow’s triumph.
How To Change Your Self Concept
Increasing reps over time gives you new limits that are further and further back from the limits you once had.
This is the easiest way to change your identity.
It can be hard to rewrite old beliefs and reprogram old thoughts by force.
So instead of trying to use your mind to recreate your identity, use your body and then allow your mind to catch up.
One rep at a time.
One tiny push past your current edge at a time.
One little toe dip outside of your comfort zone at a time.
Repeating this over and over, you will one day look up and not recognize the person you have become.
You’ll see that you have become a new person, capable of things the older version of you couldn’t have even imagined.
And while being presented with new evidence of what you can now do, your mind will have no choice but to form a new identity around your undeniable increased display of strength, endurance, and capacity.
You’ll change the way you see yourself, which will give you a tremendous mental head start on your next challenge.
And that’s how to improve self image one little step at a time.
But up until that point, to get there, you have to keep going consistently.
This will allow you to find your rhythm, making this whole process easier.
Keep Going To Reach The Sweet Spot
There’s a point while swimming where my mind relaxes enough, I get into just the right position, my body glides smoothly and effortlessly through the water, and it feels like hydrodynamics finally start working in my favor.
And once I hit that spot, even if I’ve already been swimming for an hour, it feels like I can keep going on forever.
But it doesn’t always (nor hardly ever) start off this way.
When I first get into the water, I usually find myself more easily out of breath and more easily exhaustible.
It’s hard.
It’s more physically draining.
And it doesn’t seem like I’m doing anything quite right.
But when I keep going, I eventually get to this sweet spot where even if I’m tired, once I find my rhythm, I have this renewed calm energy that allows me to keep going seemingly endlessly.
In other words, it’s more difficult closer to the beginning than it is at the end.
At first, things are often a struggle, in the sense that you are challenging yourself to do something you’ve never done before and are subjecting yourself to the mental unpleasantness of not feeling good at something.
But if you endure that, and find your rhythm, it will get a lot easier, and you’ll be able to keep going and going and going…
You can do it and it is possible, but you won’t know that if you don’t keep going.
The reason you think it’s impossible is because you quit too soon.
You can do it…if you keep doing it.
Life changing quotes to keep going, push past your limits, and build mental strength
Your perception of the difficulty of the task in front of you and the length of time you will have to endure it coincides with your aptitude at the time.
When you keep going, today’s challenge is tomorrow’s triumph.
You can do it and it is possible, but you won’t know that if you don’t keep going.
The reason you think it’s impossible is because you quit too soon.
