Ever since the Olympic Games begun at Olympia in Greece in 776 BC , runners from around the world have been competing against each other. After 2 millennia, runners with gold medals and broken world records and others with the highest achievement, yet no-one had done the mile within 4 minutes. Was this ever going to be possible?
In fact many of the coaches had actually believed that the attempt could actually result in physical death, that the heart would not be able to cope.
When Roger Bannister an Oxford university student finally broke the 4 minute mile on May 6th 1954, within a few weeks several other runners had run the mile within 4 minutes.
How was this possible? Did the entire human race all of a sudden get physically faster in the summer of 1954?
No they didn’t, but what happened?
You see Roger didn’t listen to what people had said and he knew what needed to be conquered was not the physically mile, but the mental mile that existing in his head. The world’s athletes consciously or even subconsciously simply didn’t believe that it could be done, they had made up their minds that they had reached the peak of human physical speed.
But once this fact had been proven wrong, and runners across the world said that if Roger Bannister can do it, then so can we.
Our beliefs are a very powerful force on our behaviour. It is common wisdom that if you really believe that you can do something then you will, and if you believe something is impossible no amount of effort will convince you that it can be accomplished.
Beliefs like “it’s too late now”, “there’s nothing I can do anyway”, I’m a victim..” can often limit us from fulfilling our full potential.
Limiting beliefs are not set in concrete, they were not there when you were born, you learnt them as you grew up from your elders.
Beliefs are kept in our subconscious mind and like habits, they run automatically behind the scenes without any conscious effort on your part.
Most of your beliefs serve you well, it’s the limiting ones we’re concerned about.
Beliefs can be changed, or is it your belief that they cannot?
Flickr Creative Commons image by sashafatcat
Credit where credit is due: Andrew wood
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I really like your post. Does it copyright protected?
Hello Katty,
No it is not copyright protected, but a mention would be appreciated.
Fiaz
My own experience has been that beliefs and behavioural habits work together to keep me stuck in old lifestyles that don’t serve me now.
Actual, real change has come about from a combination of discipline in behaviour and openess to new beliefs so I agree with what you’re saying.
The first step is being open to other ideas and practices.
Thank you for your thoughts, you speak from experience…