Almost all of us have experienced having an injury of some sort like a sprained ankle, a bad back or a painful shoulder. Dealing with an injury presents both a physical and a mental challenge, especially if it is a significant injury because we have to know and accept our injury, do the right thing in terms of therapy and medication, and have the patience and perseverance throughout the healing process. Thus, it is not surprising that we need to have both physical and mental strength to overcome our injuries. Conversely, we would also need to examine the issues that can result in our mental and physical weakness so that we can guard against these.
In our interview with mind coach Mike Gillette, former US Army Paratrooper and SWAT Commander and now a record-breaking motivational strongman, we talked about two major mindset issues that weakened us mentally and physically: lack of focus and lack of will.
Lack of Focus
Mike said that nowadays, “It is difficult to be focused in our culture because there’s so much going on.” One of the major sources of our inability to focus is technology. We have become dominated by technology especially through our gadgets, like our smartphones and tablets, in addition to our televisions and PCs. While technology has undoubtedly made our lives easier in many ways, it has also distracted us a lot from some of the essential things that require our attention. It is our responsibility to ourselves to decide whether our gadgets are “the greatest thing in the world or the greatest time suck in the world.” We need to use technology to help us, rather than distract us.
Lack of Will
The second mindset issue Mike mentions is our general lack of will. We have not learned how to do the meaningful and gratifying things well because we think they’re too difficult. Unfortunately, we are even passing this mindset on to our children. Mike illustrated this with how we conduct contests for young children. Imagine there is a contest for six-year olds. Today, instead of having just three trophies for the first, second and third placer, we give additional special awards to everyone so as to lessen the disappointment of those unable to win a trophy. But actually, even the kids themselves know that the true winners are those who were able to get the trophies. We need to realize that if we try too hard to keep our kids from getting disappointed, we actually do them a disservice. Mike said that sometimes, disappointment is necessary because “otherwise, you will never develop the desire to get you from point A to point B as you progress through life.”
Mike said that people need to be at what he calls a “threshold” in order to change and take action. Threshold, according to Mike, “is simply a realization that, number one, something needs to change; number two, it must be me; and number three, it must be now.” Change cannot happen if these three realizations aren’t met. A lot of times, people don’t think they have a problem, even if others can see that they do. Alternatively, people may know that something needs to be done and even know how to do it, but they are not aware that they must do it themselves now. “People need to be at threshold in order to change, to make things happen. If you don’t understand who it is in the driver’s seat, which I think a lot of us don’t, then we just don’t make progress. We don’t figure it out. We don’t take the steps.”
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