Have you ever heard someone say "I can't do it." before they even try? How do you know you can't do something when you have never even tried? Is it a lack of confidence in yourself that stops you before you even start?
When you hear this saying, "You can do anything you put your mind to." It doesn't mean you will be able to physically lift a boulder that weighs 1000 pounds if you work at it every day. It means if you really want to be an astronaut and you put your mind to learning how to become one and the time it would take to be an astronaut, you will eventually get there.
But first you have to put an effort in, you have to "try." Willing yourself to do anything always takes effort. If you want to go for a run, your mind already knows that it's going to take quite an effort to do so, unless you have been running for a while and your body is conditioned to it. Reading a book, going to the bathroom, watching a movie or walking the dog, everything takes an effort, which is why most of us prefer to watch tv as opposed to walking the dog.
Your mindset is not set in stone, you have trained it to think a certain way and it is used to a pattern that it follows regularly. If have lived a life of laziness, you have lived a life of procrastination, bad eating habits, and probably little to no exercise. You have trained your mind to keep you in that state, and when you do try to do anything productive your mind gives up soon after it starts because it hasn't been trained to keep pushing forward, it has been trained to give up.
An athlete has trained their mind to push forward, strive to get better, nothing is just "Good enough". This mindset has formed a pattern that doesn't allow this person to overeat junk food or lay on the couch all day.
If you want to change your mindset you first have to change your pattern that you are stuck in, and just like being an astronaut, it's going to take time and effort, you can't expect everything to happen all at once. Take some baby steps or one step at a time, have a "vegetable day" once a week, and walking schedule once a week. The mind doesn't follow the body, the body follows the mind.
Once you figure out how to reprogram your mind for one thing, it will be easier to do it again for another. It really is Mind Over Matter.
Scott Goerz
