When do we win?

From my recent escapades at The Commando Temple competition I wanted to reflect on my journey and for those like me, often crippled with indecision or at times self belief, this might inspire you to do something or to think about what stops you and the steps you can take to rectify this. Its also a moment to say a big thanks to all those involved at the Temple.

Its a long one again, so make a nice cuppa and settle in with me for a tale of high sea adventure and daring do!;-)

Are you sitting comfortably? Lets begin…..

“Why do you want to be a Champion? Why are you training?
If your answer has a word like MAYBE in there, ‘MAYBE if I do weight training then, MAYBE I could enter a body-building competition’, then sit down. Because if you think this way you will always be a loser. You are never going to make it, because there can be NO MAYBES!
You have to get up and say, I WANT TO BE A CHAMPION, and I will do whatever it takes – WHATEVER IT TAKES! I will do it.
That’s the answer I want to hear from you. You have to be hungry, and then develop that hunger. You have to create a goal for yourself, whatever that maybe.
If you cannot see it and feel it, and if you do not believe it, who else will?”

Arnold Schwarzeneggar

Wise words and I love this quote. I used to have it on front of my training journal to inspire me.

It’s said that success leaves clues. It’s easy to look at the champions and to ask their opinions to get an insight into the winners mind set.

However when we go away and try to replicate their face value enthusiasm and formulas for victory, we often find we start sabotaging our efforts from the offset.

We all know to win competitions we need to set goals, train hard, eat right, and get rest in order to be bigger, faster, and stronger.

We can be given what seems like the perfect formula for winning. The right diet, the right regime, the high fives and encouragement and yet the handbrake can still seem on or the steering wheel tide to take us of course? Why is this?

Winning is the way to be a champion. But what is winning?

Externally it’s obvious. And for the lucky ones who are predisposed to have a positively wired brain, winning is a matter of entering events…and then training hard and eating to win. Simple.

But here’s the problem.

For a lot of people who are predisposed to negative thinking, either through nature or nurture, me included, that before even entertaining and winning anything there is a massive fucking obstacle…it’s called entering a competition! (And the audacity to even think you can!)

Because inside of competition or any challenge for those with High fear of failure (HFF) there lies the real problem. Fear.

Now we all have fear, but studies have shown that people who are prone to pessimism, neurosis and anxiety tend to have greater activity on the right side of their frontal cortex than their left.

This is known as Cerebral Asymmetry.

We know it happens as a default setting, but we still do not know why.

But what is evident is that we do not think the same way if we are wired to think positively or negatively. We have a different starting point.

And it’s more than just a state of mind. It’s also powerfully connected to how your body responds.

If a mind is conditioned to believe it cannot win or has been effected by the overwhelming sense of loss or a traumatic event, it will often move away from pain by avoiding areas where lose is possible in the future.

Attempting to win at anything contains the over bearing polar opposite of lose.

When the fear of lose is greater than the elation of winning our brains will do everything to avoid those areas, or sabotage our efforts. If a competition (or any other challenge) is inevitable, we will at least have excuses at the ready to protect the ego. (“ye could have won but my didn’t stick to my diet”)

But it’s more than just fear of loss. It’s what we believe that lose will say about us.

We all live lives that in part have been created by other people’s opinions of us. Some good, some Bad.

Oscar Wilde even went as far to say “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”

However we all want to feel significant and if we have, or believe we have built a positive persona over the years, the last thing we want to do is expose the truth, to appear weak when others believe us to be strong. (I wrote poisoner instead of persona initially, which is interesting because having a persona can be exactly that)

Olympia Lepoint in her recent TED talk on reprogramming your brain to overcome fear, mentioned a very practical way to expose what is really stopping us, which allows us to stop being overwhelmed by fear.

She simply says we should name our fear. Get clear what the real fear is that’s stopping you. A competition is just the vehicle. As I have written about before in my blog ‘Weather warnings’ (http://younglobal.wordpress.com/), it’s our light house. It’s the light that exposes the truth for us.

For me competition firstly runs the risk of failing. This then exposes me, in my mind to the threat of appearing weak and with weakness in the survival brain means being vulnerable to attack.

Madness?

Yes but in states of high emotion, forget logic! We are back to our primary, mammal and reptile brain thinking. Survival of the organism!

But when we expose these truths, these fears, something special happens. We stop talking bullshit to ourselves about why we can’t do something and we focus on what’s really stopping us and how we are going to get over these fears.

Because until we take this brave step, and are willing to be vulnerable, to see what we know – but hate about ourselves, our minds are in turmoil with an abstract picture of what we believe is the reason why we are emotionally reacting.

When we name our fears they almost become tangible and contained.

When we know this we can decide a course of action.

I am not promoting a complete banishment of fears, nor do I promise happiness or spiritual enlightenment by this understanding. But by understanding the reasons for the often-paralysing fear of failure, we can short-circuit it and channel our energy towards effective goal-setting, after which we can make incremental – and measurable – progress towards these goals.

For me building up to the competition worked in several ways. And my understanding and ability to strip down how we think is only part of the equation.

What do we do then?

We need other people to help.

In the case of my recent competition, I would never have achieved what I did without the help and trust and support of the Commando Temple Community.

First there was the ‘suggestors’.

Those who can see our potential. (This alone is not enough because we also may know our potential but our fear of lose outweighs the possibility of our potential.)

But it’s the start, the ‘what if that was possible?’ is activated.

Then there’s those who either by fluke, or by knowing us, appeal to our values. They challenge or provoke us.

Lulu Weasle was certainly the seed planter, the good cop, gently, gently suggesting the idea of competition, and then dismissing it to subtly to let it germinate in my over active mind.

And then there was Rob Blair the challenger. Black and white no nonsense coaching which I need – such as “You’ll be doing the competition.”

My initial response was “no are you mental”.

And Robs response was not – ‘why would I compete? but more, ‘Why wouldn’t I?’ (With that smirk he does after a mad comment that is really a facial gauntlet thrown down to be picked up!)

In these times we have little flashes of who we are deep down. The little jolt of excitement before it’s extinguished by self-doubt. That moment of “I’ll pick that bloody gauntlet up!”

We allow ourselves in those moments of madness to recognise, that we do want to play in the sand box with the other kids, but have just convinced ourselves we don’t because of the mental bullies that play there.

The truth is I wanted to play!

And what’s interesting in these interactions, is that it exposes these positive truths.

People have mentioned my fighting spirit and never say die attitude and that’s what competition allows to surface. You can’t not have it when you are trying to run around with 150 kg on a Conan wheel at 64kg!

But unfortunately it takes a lot to pull us to the surface from underneath all the years of bullshit beliefs that have been piled over us. This is why appealing to our values and being challenged is often the way to distact us and allow us to smash through the crust that has formed over the layer of shit we live under and breath again.

In the last week coming up to the competition I felt I still wasn’t ready to compete, and Lulu Weasel made a remark, – “you won’t be competing, your just there for experience” and although true, I noticed it instantly got my heckles up. It shouted in my mind – “don’t fucking tell me I can’t compete! I want to compete, even to win!”

It’s the people that we trust and know, have our best interests at heart that we all need, to enable us to shine a light on what’s possible, even if we can’t see it ourselves sometimes.

Does it mean because I know this I wasn’t a little concerned about my impending doom?

Of course not, but what it allowed me to do was be proactive. I didn’t even concern myself about the competition. All I did was get the facts of what was required, and then train diligently to get to that point.

The training was my focus, not the competition. I could not control what happened on the day but I could control my training and my eating.

I could also use everything in my mental arsenal to bring me away from my imagined fears to my real ones and question them. I could use mindful meditation and other body works to change the default setting of a negative brain towards a more positive one.
(Are our personalities fixed part 1 http://younglobal.wordpress.com/)

Aside from Lu and Rob, there’s the guys who are high on life, the Jason Coultman and Jarek Drzewiecki who love their training and are almost quivering with excitement at the thought of competing and winning that is addictive to be around and that I can draw from their energy and involve myself in their workouts.

It’s the guys who take time out to show us how to do certain lifts. The instructors like David Goodall, and Fitsz Dubova and Mias(Sumayyah Shalchi).

The Big Joseph Dudley’s who give there time freely to help all of us with the big lifts. The Katarina Hell Cmanovska and Alex Kay who give a in depth master class on lifting when all you asked for was a quick pointer.

The Joseph Cohen and Bradley Barnes who show what’s possible for the smaller guys and that its possible to compete and win if that’s what you want and are willing to work hard.

It’s the people who advise us to be sensible and even to pull back from doing too much.

And those who are always there for advice and support even if its just a pace setter to chase round the Conan’s wheel and wanting to quit! Thanks Peter Marsden

Those who point out our strengths and where we can improve technique to utilise our strength.

Its stepping back and saying to ourselves, ‘I have to be worth something, to be more capable than even I believe, if these people are taking this time out to bother explaining this to me.’

And then lastly, and most importantly, there is ourselves. We have to know how we operate. When to do more and when to pull back. To know when others are right despite our fears, and when they are wrong because of what we need in that moment in time.

A competition can be won simply by being willing to walk through the gates despite all your fears waiting for you inside the walls of the arena. After all, as Maximus says in Gladiator – “Death smiles at us all. All a man can do is smile back.”

And we must cling to this memory, because it is easily forgotten to the words of ‘I could have done better’ that rattles through the negative mind after the realisation that its safe. It never takes a moment to say ‘fucking well done you brave bastard, you’ve single handedly killed 3 of your mental titans out there today and you have lived to tell the tale!’

And learning to understand these negative thought patterns, and were possible eradicating them is my passion, because there are so many people living half-lives, that with the right support and understanding both physically, mentally and dare I say it, spiritually, that could be achieving so much more and living fuller and more contented lives.

I do not believe we can be anyone we want to be. I think there are limits, but we can be the best of who we can be, and we must endeavour to do so if we are to live a happy and fulfilled lives

Introduction: Here is a very interesting passage from a book by a very interesting woman
named Helen Keller.

She was born perfectly healthy in 1880, but became very ill at the age of 19 months.

Although she survived, Helen Keller was left totally blind and deaf.

In this book, she writes of her life and the path out of the isolation which she experienced when she could no longer hear or see.

Luckily, most of us will never have to experience this, so it is interesting to read what it would be like.

We can read about Helen Keller’s experiences and know that on a spiritual level we will all have this wonderful experience of beginning to know things that are not apparent to our natural senses.

Helen Keller writes: For nearly six years I had no concepts whatever of nature or mind or death or God. I literally thought with my body. Without a single exception my memories of that time are tactile.

I know I was impelled like an animal to seek food and warmth. I remember crying, but not the grief that caused the tears; I kicked, and because I recall it physically, I know I was angry. I imitated those about me when I made signs for things I wanted to eat, or helped to find eggs in my mother’s farmyard. But there is not one spark of emotion or rational thought in these distinct yet corporeal memories.

I was like an unconscious clod of earth. There was nothing in me except the instinct to eat and drink and sleep. My days were a blank without past, present, or future, without hope or

anticipation, without interest or joy.
It was not night—it was not day
But vacancy absorbing space,
And fixedness, without a place:
There were no stars—no earth—no time—
No check—no change—no good—no crime.
Then suddenly, I knew not how or where or when, my brain felt the impact of another mind, and I awoke to language, to knowledge, to love, to the usual concepts of nature, good, and evil. I was actually lifted from nothingness to human life.
My teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, had been with me nearly a month, and she had taught me the names of a number of objects. She put them into my hand, spelled their names on her fingers and helped me to form the letters; but I had not the faintest idea what I was doing. I do not know what I thought. I have only a tactile memory of my fingers going through those motions and changing from one position to another.

One day she handed me a cup and spelled the word. Then she poured some liquid into the cup and formed the letters w-a-t-e-r She says I looked puzzled and persisted in confusing the two words, spelling cup for water and water for cup. Finally I became angry because Miss Sullivan kept repeating the words over and over again.

In despair she led me out to the ivy-covered pump house and made me hold the cup under the spout while she pumped. With her other hand she spelled w-a-t-e-r emphatically. I stood still, my whole body’s attention fixed on the motions of her fingers as the cool stream flowed over my hand. All at once there was a strange stir within me — a misty consciousness, a sense of something remembered. It was as if I had come back to life after being dead!

I understood that what my teacher was doing with her fingers meant that the cold something that was rushing over my hand was water, and that it was possible for me to communicate with other people by these hand signs.

It was a wonderful day, never to be forgotten. Thoughts that ran forward and backward came to me quickly— thoughts that seemed to start in my brain and spread all over me. Now I see it was my mental awakening. I think it was an experience somewhat in the nature of a revelation.

I showed immediately in many ways that a great change had taken place in me. I wanted to learn the name of every object I touched, and before night I had mastered thirty words. Nothingness was blotted out! I felt joyous, strong, equal to my limitations! Delicious sensations rippled through me, and sweet, strange things that were locked up in my heart began to sing.

When the sun of consciousness first shone upon me, behold a miracle! The stock of my young life that had perished, now steeped in the waters of knowledge, grew again, budded again, was sweet again with the blossoms of childhood. Down in the depths of my being I cried, “It is good to be alive!” I held out two trembling hands to life, and in vain would silence impose dumbness upon me henceforth.

That first revelation was worth all those years I had spent in dark, soundless imprisonment. That word “water” dropped into my mind like the sun in a frozen winter world.

The world to which I awoke was still mysterious; but there were hope and love and God in it,and nothing else mattered. Is it not possible that our entrance into heaven may be like this experience of mine?

When times become uncomfortable we tend to look for instant relief, but it’s in these moments, when we are in the eye of the storm, that we must give it our full attention. We can be paralysed and stay stuck or we can respond and take action. If we choose to ignore the weather warnings and decide instead to distract ourselves by anaesthetising our emotional responses, we will eventually become despondent, finding ourselves destroyed on the rocks by the full force of the storm, or at best, lost at sea. We need to take action at the moment of discomfort and use our emotions as lighthouses to show us what we really fear and how this knowledge can then be used to navigate us out of mental turmoil and into more tranquil seas…..(ideally on a Sun-Seeker or Princess super yacht with some celebratory Champagne.)

So often the path we choose becomes our identity and in doing so blinkers us from ever seeing another’s perspective.

The sad thing about this is that this identity is caught up in ‘what we do’ and ‘how we do it’ and rarely with ‘WHY we do it’.

Our time can so often spent in defence or in constant justification of the methods we employ whilst dismissing the ideas practised by different fraternities, despite often being in the same discipline.

Our need to be right is often at the expense of never recognising another methodology that could get us closer to the real reason we embarked on a course of action, or a way of life, in the first place.

Our need to belong to something or to form an identity, paradoxically often limits us in those areas.

For example, two areas that I am interested in are Training and Psychology.
When I first started becoming interested in Human Psychology it was purely to find out why I personally did what I did and what, more importantly, I could do to improve my life.

Despite first studying Hypnotherapy and NLP, I refuse to be these things. I am neither a Hypnotherapist nor NLPer. For me they are simply tools to create a bigger picture – not an identity.

Since then I have continued to meet many people, read hundreds of books and go on a multitude of courses and lectures in an attempt to understand how our minds work. But my WHY stays the same. Simply to be ‘the person I could have come to originally, that would have had genuinely helped me change my situation.’

As long as I remember my WHY, I can stop myself wasting time defending ‘what’ or ‘how’ I do something with someone else, who is also attempting to be right.

This doesn’t mean I do not fall prey to needing to be right at times but it at least serves as a beacon when I am becoming lost in the sea of my own opinions and self-importance!

My training is the same. It would be easy to fall prey to the latest discussions regarding the best and worst training principles, whether Crossfit is better than bodybuilding for example (which seems to be something I see most days on the forums) or how bad someone’s technique is, but the argument is futile because it’s not about training, it’s a discussion about identity and about who is right and wrong.

Instead I would invite people to remember WHY they initially embarked on and exercise regime, rather than WHAT they choose.

I love training because of how it makes me feel at the end after a workout. (Often not so much during one!) But as I think back over the people I have trained with it has been irrelevant what we have been doing, as long as it has worked me hard or I have learnt something new that improves me. The only thing that makes me choose what I do today is because it fits with what my training outcomes are and what I want to achieve.

Like the psychology, with training I’m not a bodybuilder or crossfitter or whatever label someone may give me, instead I prefer to say ‘I’m just a bloke who likes training’

Because underneath it all, the WHY of the Crossfitter, the Bodybuilder, the strongman/woman, the long distance runner etc is all based around the same needs and in recognising this we can begin to remove prejudices and instead allow ourselves to recognise our similarities rather than our differences and that in fact we are all part of the same tribe.

Instead of arguing we can begin to spend the time sharing ideas towards creating what we all really want, which is to improve.

This is evident in so many areas where conflict arises and by recognising the similarities or the underlying reasons – our WHY for doing something, allows all of us a better chance of accomplishing our outcomes, rather than spending our energies defending what we think is the right way of accomplishing it.

Do not be constrained by tribal rules of a certain discipline. Instead recognise WHY you want to achieve something and investigate all the disciplines that can move you closer to that goal.