What touching your toes and reaching your goals have in common
I had an interesting experience at my athletic therapist appointment recently. But first a question - can you touch your toes easily while standing and without cheating? I said, without cheating. If you are like me, then you probably struggle with this. Many people do. Or maybe you can touch your toes quite easily but find it extremely difficult to perform more advanced stretches such as a split for example. Just like touching your toes or doing a split, the process of achieving your goals does not lie in your muscles entirely, but in your mind. Specifically, your nervous system.
My New Year Stretch goals
One of my goals for the new year is improving my overall flexibility. I discovered that after many years of doing resistance training coupled with many hours of sitting at a desk, my body had become very inflexible. I used to be really flexible as a child often doing splits and crab walks at will. However, as of a few months ago, I was stiffer than a heavily starched shirt! This had to change as I learned that flexibility both in muscles and joints is an important part of overall health and reduces risks of injury in the gym and the development of mobility disorders especially as one piles on the years.To save myself from this fate, I signed up with an athletic therapist. And it was there that I stumbled upon the connection between physical flexibility and productivity.
Treatment Room Epiphany
During one of my sessions with my athletic therapist, I got an epiphany. We were trying to improve the range of motion in my shoulders. I had been doing some stretches for my shoulders long before I started with her but was not getting results. It was getting frustrating. On this fateful day, we were in the middle of a fairly simple exercise but for some reason, I was having great difficulty performing it. Why was it so hard?She explained to me how the trouble was not in my muscles really. She had done her assessments and already knew that, from all indications, I did not have any tears or physical damage in my shoulder joint.“Then why am I having such a hard time with basic movements?” I cried.“Well,” she replied, “the shoulder joint is one of the most complex joints in the body and also one of the most mobile. It is made up of many small muscles and muscle groups. You are having difficulty because your nervous system has been trained to activate muscles that have no business being activated for certain movements.”I was silent.“This is causing conflict in the joint.” She continuedStill silent. Taking it all in.At last, I said “So it’s like the muscles are working against each other instead of working together”.She smiled and nodded. “Now all we have to do is train your nervous system to fire the muscles in the right sequence and leave out the unnecessary ones and your mobility will be restored in no time” She smiled again.Wow! I felt like the character Neo from the movie The Matrix in his conversation with Morpheus - “The shoulder joint is a system, Neo…”
Turn ‘em off
Over the next hour, she spent time manually isolating and manipulating specific, small muscles in my shoulders and asking me to perform certain movements. It was astounding how much easier the movements were once certain muscles were quietened. Now I know you are curious as to what the epiphany about goal attainment was and you might have already gotten a hint to it. It was in the parallels between the two situations.
Kiddy crab walk
You see, just like me, many of us as children have a lot of flexibility and by this, I mean that we can reach for anything. As babies, we were so physically flexible, we could put our foot in our mouth sitting down. Actually, many adults still do that today but in a different way.However, as we got older and more set in the ways of the world, we lost what I call our faith flexibility. We began to set limits for ourselves based on what others have done or failed to do; based on the opinions of others and the expectations of friends and family and co-workers. We became stiff!And when we finally do decide to set goals to improve our lives, we struggle with following through. The reason? Our nervous system which is made of our brain (and our mind) has been trained to associate negatively with our goals. So that every time we think of our goals, certain “muscles” fire which make it more difficult to accomplish our goals. The most important of these is the amygdala - the fear center of the brain.The brain, now conditioned to certain standards, sees changes as dangerous and so the amygdala fires a surge of fear when we think about our goals and dreams. In other words, we end up working against ourselves just like my shoulder joint was working against itself – due to the bad conditioning of the nervous system – our minds.This produces all kinds of negative self-defeating behaviours like inconsistency, indecision, procrastination and rashness. It’s all in your mind. So how can we correct this? Same way you improve flexibility in your shoulders –retrain your nervous system and stretch.
It is not enough only to stretch
A lot of people get the stretch component in goal setting. We have no problems setting these goals – I will have summited Mt. Everest by December 31st, 2018. But we often overlook the embedded and unconscious mental associations and patterns of thinking that can sabotage all our efforts – I am terrified of heights!This example is extreme for emphasis but it does illustrate the importance of full alignment for success in our pursuits. Full alignment leads to full engagement. And full engagement leads to successful achievement.
Full alignment leads to full engagement. And full engagement leads to full achievement.
For many of us, it is the mental retraining piece that is the trip up. Until that piece is sorted, we will not be able to put forward the necessary force to achieve what we desire, our gears will be out of sync and we will not run quite right.
Stretch, Craft and Engage
By stretching, I mean set goals that stretch you outside of the comfort zone. If a goal doesn’t make you at least a little bit afraid, it is not a worthy goal to my mind. It has to challenge you, it has to make you grow as a result of its attainment.Next, you need to craft a practice, a daily habit of exposing your nervous system to the goal in a way that causes the brain to fire in the right sequence. Essentially, bringing about a harmony in your nervous system with the goal you have in mind. Otherwise, you will be like a musical conductor trying to coordinate a team of instrumentalists – each one reading a different piece of music. First, get them all seeing the same thing and then the concerted effort can begin.
Real stuff or cute fluff?
If all this sounds too fluffy to be effective, then think back to the last time you were ever terrified of something. Maybe a near miss while driving or strange sounds while walking through a dark alley. How did it feel? Could you have solved a math problem in that moment? Could you have written an essay? Or created a business plan? I’ll bet not.The difference between that moment and the moment of fear associated with your goals lies in the degree of intensity only. In other words, it is the same feeling with the same effects. Except that, when it comes to the subtler fear associated with achieving our dreams, the effects are not as acute. Therefore, we tend to ignore them. But the whole time, the fear is stopping you (or driving you away) from achieving those desires, day by passing day. And then days turn into weeks, weeks into months….
See it, say it, or sing it
You can bring about internal harmony and alignment by designing affirmations which you can use to address conflicts that arise in your mind when you think, plan or work towards your goal.You can also create a vision board or a musical playlist which puts you in a harmonious state of mind with your goals and dreams. And although you will find you enjoy one particular technique more than the others, I find a cohesive combination of all three to be most effective.I talk in detail about how to apply visualization in overcoming the fear of public speaking in this article. The goal, presently, may be different from beating stage fright, but the techniques and principles are the same. The key is to train the nervous system to associate your goals with pleasure and profit rather than danger and loss. These visualization techniques are used by successful people from different walks of life. From leaders of organizations to elite athletes to entertainers. You can use it too – its free!
Mine your mind, align your mind
Ultimately, you must learn to sit comfortably with your goals and all that achieving them will mean without fear of loss or danger. In other words, turn the conflicting signals – the noise – off. And replace them with the harmonious music of fulfilment. Only then will your ‘muscles’ fire in sync and you can stretch for what your heart desires.Over the next few days, make out time for yourself to practice the techniques in this article. Mine your mind for feelings you have unknowingly associated with the goals or desires you have. Then take time to resolve those fears – in other words, align your mind positively with your desires. The results of mining might surprise you – and the results of aligning will liberate you. I wish you success – the overcoming of fear and the realization of your dreams. Oh and also more flexibility in your muscles too.Until the next post, be your best and do your best.
