In yesterday’s article I talked about how our ways of thinking are what really determines our results, and not necessarily how much experience, education or training we have. If we have bad ways of thinking, we’ll achieve poor results. One of these bad ways of thinking is our psychological barriers, our own self imposed limitations. We may not even know we have them. Here’s a great example of how someone overcame a self-imposed limitation and thereafter became a legend in their field.
In the 1970’s it was considered impossible for a weightlifter to clean and jerk lift more than 500 pounds. Many had tried to surpass this mark, but none had ever succeeded. A Russian weightlifter named Vasily Alexeyev was one of these who just couldn’t break this barrier.
One day, his trainers loaded up his bar with 501.5 pounds, but told Alexeyev it was 499.9 pounds. He successfully completed the lift, breaking the world record. Just as importantly, he set a psychological precedent for the field by surpassing the 500 pound mark. Many other lifters were able to lift 500 pounds after Alexeyev had done it.
After that, Alexeyev was an unstoppable juggernaut in weightlifting. Even more impressively than his 501.5 pound mark, Alexeyev broke the clean and jerk world record an amazing 32 times in his career, eventually lifting a superhuman 564 pounds.
Evidently, after that 501.5 pound lift, Alexeyev had smashed in his own mind any limiting notions about what he could accomplish. When we let go of our notions of what we can achieve and let our actions and determination alone determine what is possible for us, some of us will achieve things no one else has ever achieved before again and again, like Alexeyev.
Now how can we get our thought processes working so we are thinking in empowering ways, rather than disempowering ones?
One way is having big goals. Small goals limit us because they’re easily achieved. We tend to slow down when we’re near completing a small goal, and so we never get much momentum toward achieving more if we focus on small goals. Small goals don’t test our capabilities and therefore don’t build them. But big goals pull us beyond our ideas of our own potential into new realms of capability. When we, like Alexeyev, are unaware of our or ignore our current capabilities, we open the door to achieving more than we’re currently able to do.
The key thing is you need to believe you can achieve whatever goals you set. It’s no good to make a goal like “I want to get 100 listings this year” or “I want to make $200,000 this year” if you really and truly don’t believe you can.
In my next article I’ll discuss how you can make your goals more believable and therefore more achievable.
