elitefts™ Sunday Edition
Interestingly enough, my first college psychology lesson came on a Friday night from a fellow classmate, not in a classroom.
See, while I was in college, I had a friend who was a history major. One late Friday night, as we began to discuss an account of a battle I had recently come across, he said something that surprised me greatly. He said, “That’s not what really happened. That’s what one person saw, and what he saw isn’t what happened. It’s what he thinks happened. If you read back over the accounts of battles from spectators, you’ll find completely different accounts of the same battle by different people who were actually sitting on the same hill at the same time.” I was floored. I had never thought of it this way, and this bit of knowledge completely changed the way I looked at things. It occurred to me that everything in life isn’t all about what happened...it is about how you view it.
One of the best examples of this comes from Mr. Thomas Alva Edison, best known for being the inventor of the light bulb. What many people fail to realize is that Mr. Edison didn’t just walk into his lab and get lucky one day. On the contrary, he tried for quite some time. During a press conference upon the successful completion of his incandescent light bulb, one reporter asked him, “Mr. Edison, how does it feel to have failed over 10,000 times to find the right filament for the light bulb?” Edison responded, “I never once failed. I simply found 10,000 ways to not make a light bulb.”
Now, let’s move on to powerlifting—to a scenario that I have not only seen many times, but have also been at the center of in my youth. Let’s take a missed lift at a competition for example—a missed bench press. So, let's say that Johnny bombs in a meet on the bench press. He just can't seem to press the bar passed the mid-point every time. The bar drifts back over his face and he can’t get it back into the groove. Now, if Johnny wants to look through the self-defeated lens, he is a failure. He trained for 12 weeks and couldn’t even get his third bench press. He missed his goal. In this light, he might go drink himself into a stupor tonight and then change his entire program. He is a failure. Everything he's done was wrong. It's time to start over anew.
Now, if Johnny looks through the self-empowering lens, he would see that he has found something that is easily correctable. He's discovered that if he simply improves his front delt strength (in order to keep the bar in the groove), he will hit major PRs. In fact, this meet was great because he learned something. He learned that his front delts need to be trained more. While he’s not happy about bombing, he realizes the small changes that he needs to make to his training cycle and is empowered with this knowledge. He has a newfound sense of determination, and he can surgically dissect his lift, knowing what needs to be improved upon for his next cycle.
Looking through a self-defeated could actually drive Johnny out of the sport. It’s tough when you face defeat and disappointment, and unfortunately, it is often easier to look at it negatively. However, if Johnny looks through the self-empowering lens, he simply sees what he needs to do next, much like Edison and the filament. They both discovered what didn’t work in order to find what did.
It is truly amazing to see how simply changing your view of an incident can greatly impact your life and your lifting. One lens can destroy you; one lens can build you. But you know what the great thing about it is? You get to choose which lens you look through. You decide what you’re going to do with what happens to you; you decide how you view it. This self-empowering lens has been found to be a central key to those who are successful in life. They don’t get burdened by failures because they don’t see them as that. They simply see them as lessons learned.
Choose to be positive when viewing what happens. Not only will you have a longer lifting career, but you’ll also have bigger lifts to go along with it.
