Name: Mind Gym
Rating: 4.3 (141 reviews)
Author: Gary Mack & David Casstevens

What’s in it for me? Give your mind a boost!

As anyone who’s ever done long-distance running will tell you, it's not just about being fit. Sure, having a well-trained body is essential, but your mind, your attitude and your mental grit are equally important. Because, when you’re nearing the end of the race and your body is on the verge of giving up, it’s your mind that will push you over the finish line.

But a well-trained mind doesn’t just come in handy in long-distance running. If you want to succeed in life, you should make sure to give your mind – the most important muscle of all – regular exercise. It’s time to step into the Mind Gym. These blinks will show you the ropes.

You’ll also learn

what your most important muscle is, no matter what the sport;
why your goals should be SMART; and
why 90 percent is better than 100.

Top physical performance is impossible without a well-trained mind.

We all know that good old Nike slogan: Just do it. You might also know that, for all it’s simplicity, this piece of advice is often hard to follow. Why? Negative thinking stops us from taking action.

It’s funny how our thoughts seem to impact us precisely the way we don’t want them to. If, while playing golf, you tell yourself not to hit the water, you’re likely to hit it anyway. Why? Your thoughts were so focused on the water that your body began aiming for it, too. Avoid outcomes like this by keeping it simple and focusing on what you want, not all the things you’re afraid might happen.

Of course, the power of thought alone can’t carry us toward success. It’s the combination of physical and mental training that allows us to perform to our full potential. One study of three groups of basketball players demonstrated just this.

The first group took free throws for one hour, the second sat and visualized their free throws for an hour, and the third did both for 30 minutes each. When it came to the free throws afterwards, the third group outperformed the others by far.

While most of us know more or less how to train our bodies, few really know what to do when it comes to training our brains. Like our bodies, our minds have their own strengths and weaknesses. Pinpointing these will give us both confidence in our abilities and a clear idea of where we need improvement.

Get started on your brain training journey with some inspiration from the Japanese concept of kaizen. This refers to constant daily learning simply for the sake of improving yourself one step at a time without stressing too much about the final outcome. If you think like this, you’ll have an open mind ready to take in anything that can make you a stronger, better person.

See yourself as a winner to become one.

Do you consider yourself a winner or a loser? Sure, you might not think yourself a winner right now, perhaps because you haven’t performed so well competitively, or because you feel your skills aren’t quite there yet. But if you really want to increase your chances of success, it’s time to put that all aside. If you think of yourself as a winner, it’ll make you more likely to become one.

Self-consistency theory explains that the way we think about ourselves is powerful enough to impact our actions. This is why those with a negative self-image struggle to achieve top performances. Put simply, you can’t win if you see yourself as a loser.

Achieving mental toughness means excelling in seven critical areas.

We all know that in many sports, the physically strongest and toughest have an advantage. The strong, tough wrestler has a considerable advantage over an opponent weaker in body. And yet, toughness isn’t all about bulging biceps: mental toughness is just as important as physical toughness.

In order to develop mental toughness, you need to train yourself in seven areas – the seven C’s of mental toughness.

Slow down and let your excellence shine from within.

Now that we’ve spent some time investigating how you can work your way to success, it’s time to take a closer look at success itself. What is it? We often consider success, excellence and top performance as quantifiable, in the form of records, medals and prizes. And yet, there’s a form of excellence that can’t be measured – and it also happens to be the most worthwhile.

Great athletes will benefit from aspiring to inner excellence. This is a reflective state of mind in which you are accountable for your thoughts, feelings and actions, no matter how much you want to give up. Here, competitions become challenges that kick your drive to succeed into gear, with no fear of failure to hold you back. It’s in this state that you’ll allow yourself to shine.

Love, learning and labor are all vital to a successful and fulfilled life.

When it comes to judging your success, whose opinion should you trust? Should you ask your colleagues? Friends? Maybe even your rivals? Well, when it comes to deciding how worthy your achievements have been, the only person you should ask is yourself. Only you can tell whether you’ve given your all.

When judging yourself, take a look at a few of the areas considered by Harvard researchers to make up the metrics of a successful life.

Key ideas in Mind Gym