I am a 19-year-old degree apprentice.
When I started 8 months ago, I was not able to keep up with my gym routine fully.
Why?
A week of inconsistency led me to set an internal barrier for myself: I will never be able to balance the gym with my job.
Switch to now, where I have been able to stay consistent with the gym and my job for a good amount of time.
What happened?
I overcame my internal barriers.
This is the theme of this week’s blog post. I want to provide the formula for overcoming the restriction WE set ourselves when we set a goal.
So, what are internal barriers?
They are self-imposing restrictions that we place, which hinder the chance of success.
The reason we set these internal barriers is that many of our goals have the potential for failure. They also do not provide immediate gratification or happiness.
What does this mean?
It is the pitfalls that we believe will derail our chance of succeeding. But the key thing, is that they come from our beliefs.
For example, when I started my job, I had this pre-conceived notion that it would be hard to balance the gym with working and that I would most likely fail.
Why?
Because I saw so much online about how people entering the corporate world struggle to balance exercise with work.
So what did this do? It led to me having a very negative perception about balancing fitness with working, and so I lacked consistency.
As such, for the first few months, I failed in balancing fitness and work.
I succumbed to my internal barrier.
This is an example of the negativity bias at play.
The negativity bias stems from the fact that humans are more likely to be impacted by negative events and news rather than positive.
In a day full of positives, we are likely to remember one negative thing that happened over all of it.
This was the social media news I was seeing about fitness.
Where does this come from?
It’s an evolutionary concept.
While reading Sapiens, I realised that in the absence of education, humans used potentially harmful stimuli to guide their actions.
As such, they paid more attention to the negative.
What does this do?
Many studies show that the more attention you give to something, the more likely you are to remember it.
So, how does this fit into my example?
Seeing this impossibility of balance every day led to my view that I would fail.
This negative view guided my thoughts and actions, i.e., it guided the notion that I wasn’t going to succeed.
So, we can see that the internal barriers that we set for ourselves are a result of constant consumption of negativity regarding our goal.
How do we overcome this?
Well, firstly, there are a few methods we can use to counteract the negativity bias itself. Here is the ABC method:
- A – Antecedent
- B – Behaviour
- C – Consequence
Start with B. What is your current behaviour, e.g, I feel like I won’t succeed. Go to C. The consequence of this is that you are likely to put in less effort and actually won’t succeed. Finish with A. The cause of this is the fact that I didn’t succeed on the first go.
From this, implement the ‘What If Bias’ Intervention. When looking at this ‘ABC’ tell yourself, ‘I didn’t succeed this time, but I will in the future’.
This flips your perspective from an ‘If I can’t now, I never will’ to a new way of thinking.
Positive affirmations. This helps you feel better in continuing your goal.
After overcoming the negativity bias, it’s now about overcoming that specific internal barrier. The first step is your mindset.
Whether conscious or subconscious, our beliefs strongly impact what we want and whether we succeed in getting it.
Carol Dweck says that your best qualities are those you can develop through your efforts. They’re not determined by how you start. Failure when trying to develop those qualities is only a problem to be faced, dealt with, and learned from.
If you are failing, look at the work ethic behind it.
It’s simple.
If you’re working hard, you’re more likely to succeed. Don’t worry about those specific failures. They aren’t permanent; they’re temporary.
For me, at the start of the apprenticeship, that time of inconsistency led me to believe that this would be a permanent issue. I thought I would not be able to balance it. I could only go to the gym maybe once or twice.
However, what I needed to do and what I ended up doing was understanding that this was my situation now.
Through constant and consistent effort, I would get better. My best qualities now include the ability to go to the gym, balance my job, and maintain a healthy lifestyle.
Once you have developed this ‘Growth’ mindset—an elastic mindset, you can grow. It’s about putting this into practice.
What does this mean?
Steven Pressfield argues in ‘The War of Art’ that the most important thing when starting a venture is to work consistently at it.
The reason these internal barriers succeed is that we procrastinate. We habituate those barriers to delay starting the work to succeed.
From ‘I’ll never succeed’ to ‘I’ll just start it tomorrow – it needs to be perfect’
The way to overcome internal barriers is by doing. It’s to keep going, even when you feel like it’s not worth it.
For example, you might think that you cannot bench press 40kg. Or you might think that the story you want to write will be shit. So you don’t do it.
Abandon this mindset.
Just do it.
It may sound cliché, but it’s true. When it comes to overcoming internal mental barriers, you have to keep going.
You need to get lost in the process and keep showing up because that’s when the rewards will come.
I discovered this idea of getting lost in the process when I was reflecting on my inconsistent behaviour.
I decided, “Okay, I’m going to show up twice.” I showed up twice. Then I thought, “Cool, I’m going to try and show up three times.” I still only managed to show up twice.
Then I said again, “I’m going to show up three times.” I showed up three times. What did that mean? I kept going at it. I kept doing the goal that I wanted to succeed in. That process of continually showing up allowed me to succeed in this goal.
So what does this mean in total?
- We set ourselves an internal barrier. This is natural because we lean towards negativity bias.
- But using the ABC method and the ‘What If Bias’ intervention, we can eliminate that negativity bias.
- We now have our growth mindset. This means we understand that the brain is elastic and that we can develop through effort.
- We practice resilience against these internal barriers by consistently showing up. This is whenever and wherever we can. We begin to trust ourselves more, and we reinforce those positive habits.
Here is your weekly challenge:
- Take one goal and look at the internal barrier that you set for yourself.
- Practice the ABC method and the ‘What-If Bias’ Intervention.
- Write down one way you can change your mindset.
- Set yourself the goal this week of just doing something to succeed in your goal.
- I promise that you will see an improvement.
Have a great week 🙂
Dylan.