5 Secret Mind Tricks to Avoid Giving Up

/ Weekly Motivation / By

5 Secret Mind Tricks to Avoid Giving Up

Stefan Pinto’s Lists

Our mind is capa­ble of inc­re­di­ble awa­re­ness, thought and expe­rien­ces. But, in an attempt to pro­tect us, a spurt of base­less rumi­na­tions can easily and quickly deceive. Our brain will try and shut down our wor­kouts by con­vin­cing us that we must “stop” or “quit” as it thinks you will get hurt and or fail–regardless of what we want. Avoid “thin­king” too much when wor­king out and make the choice to engage your­self in the moment.

  1. Stay in the pre­sent: to stay focu­sed on our goal, you must be in the now–the pre­sent. In order for your inten­tion to be rea­li­zed you must pay atten­tion and become aware of where you are. “When action is per­for­med in the pre­sent moment of awa­re­ness, it is most effec­tive” (Cho­pra). The past and the future are either memory or ima­gi­na­tion res­pec­ti­vely and only the pre­sent is real. The pre­sent simply “is” and it is filled with pos­si­bi­lity. And if you main­tain your atten­tion here, in the pre­sent, without wave­ring into ima­gi­nary “what if” sce­na­rios or worse, with­dra­wing into past reco­llec­tion of fai­lu­res, you can focus on your goal ins­tead of obstacles.
  2. Keep going: your brain is telling you that you can’t run the last lap or one slice won’t do much harm. Trick your­self and con­vince your brain that you will only do half the lap and then go for the whole lap or if die­ting, cut the slice into one bite sized por­tion and leave the rest (war­ning: this only works if you actually use uten­sils. Biting off a piece will be a punishing test of will power).
  3. Stand tall: don’t look down, hold your head up. By lite­rally kee­ping your head up, you will become more aware of your surroun­dings, your pre­sence, the­reby sen­ding strong sig­nals to the brain, rein­for­cing your inten­tion. Ima­gine you are being “pulled” up by a strong mag­net (towards your goal, if you wish). Science aside, mom is always right, “hold your head up.”
  4. Breathe. Relax: Don’t hold onto ten­sion in your jaw and mouth. Other­wise, you are focu­sing on the per­cei­ved pain and com­ple­ting the task. Breathing and rela­xing keeps you in “the zone.” When your jaw is rela­xed, your lips will be sligh­ted par­ted, and the ten­sion will be trans­fe­rred to where you need it the most.
  5. Have fun: we pre­fer to surround our­sel­ves with peo­ple that are fun. But often, we for­get about our­sel­ves. We spend most of our times with our­sel­ves, our minds. We should be fun, too. If you enjoy the cha­llenge, it will help you to per­form. There is oppor­tu­nity in adver­sity and if you learn to make lemo­nade from lemons, your challenges–and life–will become that much more enjoyable.

If you want to be suc­cess­ful, you need to change the way you think and simply let go. “Relin­quish your attach­ment to the out­come. This means giving up your rigid attach­ment to a spe­ci­fic result and living in the wis­dom of uncer­tainty. It means enjo­ying every moment in the jour­ney of your life, even if you don’t know the out­come” (more Chopra).