This morning as soon as I woke up, I posted up onto Twitter, “most of the greatest achievements in the world were declared impossible by someone, before they were accomplished by someone else”.
That was over 12 hours ago…but I’m a very (very) strong believer in this approach to anything that life throws at us.
I’ll admit, I am an optimist. I don’t believe that anything is “impossible”. Any problem that I am faced with I will see as a challenge, rather than a reason to give up. And I am a strong believer that this is the mindset that you must have if you are to be successful with any endeavour, be it accademic, business, financial, health, fitness or weight loss.
The reasons why I have such a strong opinion on this matter is because of three very distinct experiences during my life.
1. The chronic fatigue bout that I experienced back in 1998. That was 8 months of feeling sorry for myself until I eventually came to the realisation that I had the power to change my life for the better. I wrote about this in an article, “My Transformation – Exercise And Diet Just Isnt Enough”
2. Achieving my HSC result in 2002. I wasn’t happy with my results in year 11 and I knew that I under-achieved. So I set myself the goal to obtain a UAI of 99 in year 12. I told some friends and family…and yes, as you can imagine, I had a few people laugh at me and even tell me that it couldn’t be done. But low and behold, I did it and actually surprised myself with a UAI of 99.55.
3. Winning the BodyBlitz 2005 Competition. I again set myself the target to win the Australian BodyBlitz competition run by Australian Ironman Magazine. When I told people how seriously I was taking it, I again had people laugh, tell me that I wouldn’t win (to my face!) and even try to sabotage my efforts by attempting to force me to eat junk.
What got me through was believing in myself and ignoring the negative influences of others. No matter what you do, you will be discouraged by others for whatever reason (often because of their own low self-esteem!). But you know what – stay positive. Set realistic yet challenging goals and work toward them. Anything is possible, but only if you believe that it is.
Share on Facebook
