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5 Ways To Get Stronger, Faster And Motivated By Training Your Mind

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Staying healthy, fit and motivated to achieve goals is every bit as much a mental exercise as it is a physical one. The fortitude it takes to get up with your alarm clock, get yourself to the gym before work, and achieve your set goals can be considered a herculean effort – yet, every day, the same people get up and get it done.

There are those who don’t want to hit the gym before the sun rises, but every evening, after a long day of work, those same people find the energy left in them to push through those reps, run those hills and complete their workout routines. Where do you fall on that range?

Mental fitness can translate to how well you can rely on yourself, and self-efficacy lends strength to physical health. In other words, knowing you have the power of choice is closely tied to your commitment to overall life goals, as well as fitness. Working out your brain is a little more difficult than maxing out on your bench press.  

Here are five ways you can begin to develop your mental fitness and physical fitness at the same time:

1. Practice Goal-Setting

Define a goal. A goal could be getting faster at hill sprints, doing more pushups in sixty seconds or solving critical thinking problems more efficiently. Anything can be a goal, and all goals are personal and specific. Having a mission in mind is the first step.

The next step is setting your expectations and plotting out the steps you’ll take to achieve that goal. Even if it’s a physical challenge, the mental fitness comes with defining the benchmarks toward reaching the finish line and devising the metrics to compare your progress.

Here are some examples:

  • Writing a book.
  • Running a 5k in under 30 minutes.
  • Losing just two pounds of weight.

“A goal properly set is halfway reached.” – Zig Ziglar

2. Practice Goal-Achieving

This might seem like it doesn’t even need to be said, but achieving your goals doesn’t naturally follow setting them. Just like salespeople are trained to ask a few easy ‘softball’ questions to get you saying ‘Yes’ and thinking positively, you should train your brain to get used to success.

Start by setting a few goals that are easy to achieve and with their finish, begin to develop a history of positive reinforcement. This is the easiest way to get your mental and physical health on the same track.

Here are some examples:

  • Spend an hour a week creating an outline for your book.
  • Walk 20 minutes four times in one week.
  • Plan and prep for three healthy dinners in one week.

 

3. Remove Mental Crutches

Developing mental strength means setting aside the crutches that we use without realizing. A snooze button is a prime example. By setting an alarm that you can ‘snooze’, you don’t just disrupt and reset the circadian rhythm; you actively train the brain to be more tired.

Seven minutes of snoozing isn’t as restful as seven minutes of real sleep because of the point in the sleep cycle in which they occur. Besides the sleep cycle issues, you’re also allowing yourself to be lazy. Get up and face the day! Mel Robbins’ TEDx talk about “How to Stop Screwing Yourself Over” mentions this specifically.

Here are some examples:

  • When you notice negative self-talk, make yourself stop.
  • Resist the urge to tell yourself you’re ‘fine’ the way you are.
  • Don’t allow self-pity; instead think of the first step toward success.

 

4. Build Resilience

There will be tough deadlines, personal setbacks, struggles and stress in your life. Being able to not only handle them as they arise, but to also continue life in a positive way afterward is resilience.

Resilience isn’t facing difficult situations or decisions with apathy; rather it’s meeting those same problems without antipathy. Training for resilience consists of building supportive relationships, accepting change without anger, setting realistic goals, developing a positive view and being decisive.

Consider an unpleasant experience:

  • Who is a person to whom you could turn for advice or comfort?
  • What is something you can learn from this situation?
  • Identify a single positive step you can take to move past this experience.

 

“Resilience is all about being able to overcome the unexpected. Sustainability is about survival. The goal of resilience is to thrive.” – Jamais Cascio

5. Develop Mental Dexterity

Careful planning of decision-making, reactions, attention and movements are all parts of mental dexterity. Active meditations like Yoga Nidra (a spoken guided meditation which is sometimes known as the ‘science of psychic sleep’) along with the practices of Tai Chi and Qigong are great for developing dexterity of the mind.

The brain relies on many factors to maintain physical balance, and cognition tends to be one of the last skills developed. Primarily, the inner ear, the body’s somatosensory system and vision contribute to how we move within the world around us. By working on mental dexterity early to become more in tune with our bodies, we condition our mental fitness and train our brain to maintain our balance longer – which is especially important later in life.

Here are some examples:

  • Find a tai chi or qigong center near you and try a class.
  • Download a recording of a Yoga Nidra meditation and listen to it before bed.
  • Practice being mindful of your moments with a simple five-minute exercise where you mentally or vocally say each movement before you perform it.

Taking the time to practice even one of the examples given every week, or possibly even one every day, will start to strengthen and increase your mental fitness.  

What’s one exercise that you could do right now? Please leave your thoughts in the comment section below!

Mike Wines is a strength and conditioning coach and content editor for muscle and strength. He received his Degree in Exercise Science and seeks to combine personal experience with practical application to provide programming and movement based solutions to match each individual's goals.

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Success Advice

How to Alter Your Business Approach With Technological Advancements

Keeping up with technological trends has become a challenge for almost every business owner.

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altering business approach
Image Credit: Midjourney

Technology’s evolution has impacted everything, and business is no exception. Keeping up with technological trends has become a challenge for almost every business owner. Entrepreneurs unable to do so are being wiped out of the market.

There is no doubt that AI (Artificial Intelligence) and ML (Machine Learning) have taken over the business world. These technological advancements are impacting decision-making, success percentages, and other entrepreneurial aspects.

Adapting to these developments is integral to business success. Let’s explore how you can accomplish these milestones.

Embed the strength of AI and ML.

AI has modified business operations in major ways. For instance, companies have employed bots for customer support. These bots go through an effective learning process via Machine Learning before being able to answer like humans.  

Bots can also perform detailed data analytics and make business moves with high success percentages.

ML is used more for the analysis of data chunks and generating successful predictions. This simply means that business owners do not have to worry about large-scale financial losses. 

In terms of deployment and usage, a reputed company like Netflix employs machine learning for decision-making.

Blockchain is increasing the count of business opportunities

Tampering of financial transactions is quite common and causes severe monetary damage to customers. With the rise of digital payments, this risk has increased. 

Blockchain is used to elevate your experience for monetary transfers. It combats penetrating events to extract confidential customer information. 

Most business sectors are using block chain but finance and supply chain management sections have a higher count. These two corporate sections have several monetary deposits and withdrawals taking place. 

In terms of percentage, approximately 72% and 5% of finance and supply chain firms have implemented block chain successfully.

Dedicate Yourself to Continuous Learning and Individual Development

You invest in learning some of the very important skills, including digital marketing, financial management, and how to gain customers as an entrepreneur.

You need to set up your knowledge base about doing business on Coursera and Udemy with the basics that are necessary for the business, building further by networking with experts through webinars.

Besides, Agile methodology will introduce elasticity to your company: this review and feedback system with further correction regularly will allow for enhancing efficiency and promptly reacting to the market.

Developing key skills to achieve goals

Running a business successfully is not only about having niche/domain knowledge. Business owners need to have communication / soft skills as well in addition to niche information.

Here are some key technical/domain-related areas that business owners should have a strong grip on.

Data Storage on Cloud: These days, companies do not store their data on physical servers. Therefore business owners should know how data is stored/edited/removed/updated via AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and other platforms.

Data Analysis/Interpretation Qualities: These days, data is as precious as gold. Business owners with data analysis abilities make correct predictions. As a result, their ventures grow in volume.

Development/Coding Knowledge

Programming knowledge gives business owners an edge whether the application is developed in-house or outsourced. It assists in getting updates deployed and handling application underperformance without getting professional support every time.

Hacking proof framework

There is no benefit of having an advanced automated system if can be penetrated. Successful business owners have above-average knowledge of cyber security and hacking attempts. They are able to choose top-notch anti-hacking software without much of an ambiguity.

Communication Abilities/Soft Skills

Here are some key communication qualities that business owners should have:

Communication/Conversation: Business owners should use to-the-point sentences in both written and oral communication.

Issue Resolution Abilities: Business owners should be able to drill down to problems and solve them. This is done successfully only if an entrepreneur has in-depth business domain knowledge.

Agile Implementations

It is mandatory for business owners to have knowledge of iterative/agile models. With such a competitive environment, it is impossible for business owners to succeed without adopting an agile framework.

Create a productive well-crafted Business Strategy

A productive business venture starts with a clear vision. The first factor making a business successful is the idea behind it. It helps with endless growth and combating competition successfully. Katherine Philips once mentioned that business goals are inevitable if goals are set concretely.

  • Goals should be based on smart achievements instead of complexity. Focus on the value that each one of them adds. 
  • Business objectives should not be vague. Key indicators should be constructed to measure the success/failure of each milestone.
  • Be realistic when setting goals. Do not aim at impossible milestones since they can be demotivating.
  • Milestones/goals need to be time-bound. Set a completion deadline for each one of them. 
  • Business goals should not be alien. Owners can think out of the box but not be obsolete / unrelated.

Create a productive well-crafted Business Strategy

Business owners cannot succeed without having a network. Some tips help in this case. Attend conferences and professional gatherings to connect with other entrepreneurs.
Here are some other related points business owners should pay attention to.

  • Attend meetings and conferences to stay updated with trends and meet business owners who already have well-set ventures. This helps in enhancing the learning curve of new / growing entrepreneurs.
  • Being a part of business communities/groups is very productive. When one shares opinions and discusses decision-making tactics, it helps in preventing errors and enhancing success rate.
  • Even the most experienced business owners have mentors as learning never stops. Take part in mentorship programs so there is an assurance that you are following the correct roadmap.

Conclusion

There is absolutely no doubt that business dimensions have evolved with technological advancements. Successful entrepreneurs have grabbed these changes in due course of time and continue to evolve. On the other hand, people following old paths and conventional steps fade out of competition. In a nutshell, keep an eye on the processes and practices you follow as these factors decide success rate.

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Success Advice

Understanding the Power of Yes and No: How to Create Boundaries For Success

These words have a significant impact on how our success unfolds

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Creating legal boundaries
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The two smallest yet most powerful words in life, “Yes” and “No,” have a big impact on our growth on both personal and professional levels. In addition to affecting the choices we make every day, these words have a significant impact on how our success unfolds. (more…)

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Motivation

From Couch Potato to Go-Getter: A Step-by-Step Motivation Plan for Everyone

By understanding what motivates you, you can turn your dreams into reality

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How to be motivated
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Are you tired of feeling like a couch potato? Do you want to transform your life and become a go-getter? You’re not alone! Many people struggle with motivation, but the good news is that change is possible. (more…)

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Success Advice

10 Micro Financial Habits for More Wealth and Peace of Mind

The World Economic Forum still reports that half of U.S. adults lack financial literacy

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micro financial habits
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You’ve heard about developing financial habits, but what about micro-financial habits? Micro habits are the tiny things you can do every day with minimal effort that, together, transform your future. (more…)

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