Posted by Vector de dilema creado por pikisuperstar – www.freepik.es
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Conquering your mind and leading your inner dialogue will take us to achieve any objective we set for ourselves. Today we would like to share with you some hints about how you can do it.
There is an old Cherokee legend that I’m sure many of you know and I’d like to adapt it for us 😉
The legend speaks of the struggle that takes place within us, in which two wolves confront each other, a black wolf and a white wolf. The black one would represent the negative, in our case laziness, excuses, the taste for easy things, for instant gratification… and the white one would represent the positive, effort, discipline, the long term… Which wolf wins? The one you feed the most will win the fight.
In general, as we saw in a previous post (click here if you missed it), today’s society has us anaesthetised, completely focused on the easy, the immediate, and far removed from the values of hard work, effort and long-term rewards. In other words, the black wolf is the UFC heavyweight champion and the white wolf is like Christian Bale in The Machinist…
But what can we do to even up forces?
It’s really about doing what the picture suggests: training the white wolf to make it stronger. Our black wolf is very well trained, he knows us well, he knows our weak points and he knows when to use them.
“What a day I’ve had, I’m going to relax with a glass of wine” “I’m really sleepy, I’d better not get up to train, it’s not going to be a good training anyway” “It’s about enjoying life, not being bitter; besides, I’m not a model!” “Of course I could do without Instagram, I just don’t want to” “Come on, one more chapter and I’ll turn it off”.
Are you familiar with any of these? They are excuses we give ourselves when we know we are not doing what we should be doing. They make us feel better and take away the feeling of guilt. The problem is that they appear in our moments of maximum weakness: when we are most hungry, when we are most tired, when we are most sleepy… and it is impossible to deal with them without a good plan. And what is that plan? Well, it is very simple (but not easy). It is to identify which of these excuses are the ones that most frequently get in our way, and give them answers that are relevant to us. Once we have identified these answers, we have to write them down on a piece of paper and read them out loud repeatedly, until they are fully internalised.
Examples:
- Excuse: I’m starving, I need to eat something now!
- Answer: I’m a bit hungry, but I can wait until lunchtime, I’m not going to die!
- Excuses: I’m too sleepy, I can’t get up to train.
- Answer: Of course I’m sleepy; as long as I get up early I’ll be sleepy. This should not be a hindrance. If I did nothing when I was sleepy, I would never do anything.
- Excuse: I’ll have another beer. You have to enjoy yourself and have fun, not be a sourpuss.
- Answer: I’ve had one, that’s enough. It shouldn’t be necessary to drink alcohol to have fun and enjoy life.
Our problem is that we usually have the excuses more internalised than the answers; the excuses come to us automatically, unconsciously, and for our answers to work, we have to make them conscious. As Carl Jung said:
Once you succeed turning your excuses from unconscious to conscious, your answers will start making sense. In that very moment, you will have given your white wolf a good chance to win
Maybe you are thinking “what a piece of bullshit”… anyway we strongly encourage you to give it a go; after all, what can you lose?