What a Difference a Mindset Makes

I recently started training jiu jitsu and, like any addition to your regular schedule, it took some shimmying to make it possible. My goal was to begin this practice twice a week. I figured I couldn’t recover from much more since I was training at the gym four days a week and I wanted to continue my fitness.

A mistake I made early on was leaving Monday open to attend jiu jitsu. In my mind, I hadn’t committed to going Monday’s but if I could make it I’d try. Mondays are stereotypically long, busy days. You may be able to see where this is going.

Often, Monday’s would end in a whirlwind of work activity with the natural addition of unforeseen projects, tasks, and conversations. Getting to jiu jitsu was few and far between on Mondays and even when I did make it, it was more stressful than productive.

I made a deal. I would decide that I could not go to jiu jitsu on Monday’s even if the stars aligned in my schedule to do so. The result was simply that it freed me from an illusionary failure of not showing up Monday. After all, going twice, say Tuesday and Thursday, is a success based on my goal, so setting myself up for more perceived failure on Monday could only erode my mind state.

Set your schedule up for success. At the end of the week you might have ‘X’ number of tasks accomplished and feel great about one scenario and feel poorly about another identical scenario.

 

Logan Gelbrich

@functionalcoach