What if we told you that you can change your life just by simply changing your thoughts?
How you talk to yourself internally matters. It can make or break a new fitness routine, self-confidence, diet, or habit that you set out to achieve. You (for the most part) can’t go more than 3 secs without a thought, creating images and your total world within your head. This makes your self-talk a superpower within you, capable of shaping your universe! Much like all superpowers though they can be used both positively or negatively.
SO - You have a superpower of positive self-talk, now where is your cape and how do you use it!?
In order to better understand your new-found superpower, consider visualization training. What is that? Visualization training is simply the formation of a situation, object, or mental image of something, entirely in one’s mind. If you wake up already visualizing yourself having a bad day… Guess what, you probably will. Does this mean that if you visualize yourself having a stronger booty, that it will actually happen? You might be surprised. Keep reading…
Visualization studies show that training with both physical and visual training (mental imagery), produce the best results in terms of muscle strength, athletic performance, or learning a new skill. Visualization works because the brains neurons (communication cells) signal each other when you visualize something like throwing a ball, just the same way as if you were actually doing it. The muscles just don’t hit a high communication signal to actually move you! (Think whisper vs. yelling) So visualizing those squats and the booty that follows activates the communication between the same ones that actually move said booty. That communication practice creates communication pathways that become more efficient and improve performance.
How does visualization relate to your self-talk? Your talk creates similar pathways, or thought patterns. This means just like mental imagery training, you become more efficient at particular thought patterns. That means that you go through it more often and faster. These two things can be great with good habits, and not so much with bad habits. So, for that new diet you started, if your self-talk goes through a pattern like this:
“I always fail, why do I keep trying diet after diet, I’ll never lose the weight”,
Guess what thought pattern you have already have engrained!? A negative one where you have already failed. What results do you think you’ll have if you are telling yourself that you can’t? Guess how many of us are emotional eaters? All of us to a certain extent. Your negative thought pattern just killed your diet before it even started. Now you’ve engrained a thought pattern more and more, guess what universe you live in? Evil you’s!
But guess what, you can introduce new patterns and new habits. The brain is capable of change. This means YOU are capable of change. You just have to spend more time creating and visualizing the thought patterns that you want to have, and become aware of your negative patterns. Stop judging yourself with those negative ones, when they come around; Give yourself a break and address them with positive self-talk, backed by truth (you can’t lie to YOU for long). Harness that superpower for good, and create new pathways to good habits! It’s time to live in your super world! If you need help on forming new health habits or knowing where to being with nutrition or fitness habits contact us (info@trakathletics.com) or attend a class with us!
