Are you trapped by your mind?

A big part of conscious living for me, is evaluating often where one’s mind is at. What is the flow of thoughts like? Are we being grateful? Compassionate? Brave in the face of our goals and dreams?

Let me, for those of you who don’t know here, introduce you to Turia Pitt. She is, quite simply, an amazing human. I had the fortune of seeing her share her story this evening thanks to my gym, Flow Athletic, as a part of our ’30 days clean’ challenge – a month of strengthening the body and mind.

This is a woman who at aged 24 ‘passed away’ 3 times on the operating table, while being saved from burns that affected 70% of her body in a ravaging bushfire blaze, while on an ultra marathon in the outback of Australia. This is a woman who gives you a mega dose of perspective.

Turia is an amazing reminder that we have but one life time. In the face of life’s many adversities, big, small or collossal as the case has been for her, we are forced to see through the pain or difficulty to generate the progress? The alternative is to give up, back down or change course to avoid that progress and slowly become a victim of our circumstances. Turia was told she’d never run again or swim again. She was told she’d never do loads of things again, but she’s defying it all. How? With her mind. She is making conscious decision after conscious decision, to be brave in the face of her goals and quite simply, smash them!

“Yeah sure I’m trapped by my body in a way, and it doesn’t do all the things it used to let me do, but lots of other people are trapped too, ey?

Trapped by their minds.”

When she said this, it was such a truth bomb. So many minds are trapped. So many of people’s dreams are a secret and die with them.

What is in the way for you perhaps, between where you are now and where you want to be? Is your mind trapping you in some way?

The world’s best athletes are able to map their goals with a crystal clear vision. It’s a skill we can practice and get better and better at. It’s something we have to start small with for most of us and increase the size of our goals over time as our power to kick goals increases. Another favourite example is the incredible Alisa Camplin, who decided on a sport she’s never done before, aerial skiing ( she was I have to say, already an elite athlete at the time in another sport). She then mapped out between the time she decided, and the 2002 winter Olympics, and all the steps in between on a daily level, that she would need to achieve, to win a gold medal at the Games.

How crazy is that, right? She then went about it. Nothing was easy, but was it worth it? Heck yes! She won. After one particularly terrible injury, she was told she’d never have children. Did she? Yep. Mind set is so, so much of what delivers us the successes we desire in life.

“But that’s nuts, I don’t want to have big goals like that”. It doesn’t matter how big you make your goals, they just have to be yours and true within your heart.

An adversity so many women face today is self hatred. It sets so many of us back. How on earth do we wave a magic wand over women and get us all to adore ourselves – completely! We are going to have to use our minds. How you look does not determine your value as a human being. I remember thinking for a while when I started writing about health topics: But I’m a size 12. Who is going to aspire to the stuff I talk about when they see I’m not skinny? Honest truth, I thought it for ages. My mind had me trapped there for a little while.

Another truth bomb from this evening’s talk given by Turia was this:

Why, why, why indeed!

So, hearing Turia speak has brought me to make 2 commitments.

To set tiny goals. I haven’t had much success with big ones this year – been a bit too fuzzy in the head over my goals and joining the dots, so I am going to reduce the goal size dramatically. Turia talked about working on stepping down just ONE STEP in her rehab and how much of a challenge that was. ONE STEP. I’ve spent a little time tonight thinking about those little ONE STEPS for me at the moment and I’m going to smash those in August. First one was done in a training session where I finally broke the minute plank into 1.08. Yahoo! All in the mind.

Secondly, to continue to love myself and all my bits and help other women and girls do the same. I remember sitting down with a trainer to discuss my weightloss goals. I didn’t have any, I said. I just want to get strong and feel awesome. Why talk in kilos and centimetres when we can talk in ‘feeling awesome’. So we set strength goals.

Turia in her brave and determined glory is a wake up call for everyone who dares hear it. There is loads of important stuff to get done in this world. Pick something that puts a fire in your belly – gosh knows there’s enough to choose from at the moment – and get goal setting. Raising compassionate kids could be your goal – it sure is one of mine. Another goal of mine is to finish my second book to help families on their real food journey. Another goal is to grow my community to being a significant ary of real foodists changing the food system and comsetic industry from the grass roots.

Making the world a better place doesn’t mean being on a front line in a war or chaining yourself to a tree or making someone else’s goals yours too. Different strokes for different folks, so here’s to freeing the traps of the mind, focusing on the stuff that counts and being very, very grateful for the gift that is each day of our lives.

If you want to catch more of Turia’s story, hop onto google or you could start here. 

It was brilliant that she was on the cover of Women’s Weekly last month in Australia.

Amazing, brilliant, inspirational women are who should be on the cover of all of our magazines. *Beauty* is NOT the only goal post for women and to be beautiful has MANY definitions, not just aesthetic.

Conscious living is for the bold and the beautiful. That’s you!

 
 
 
 

Cover Image Credit: Avilés (sourced from pinterest with no more detail that the artists’ signature)