Ever watch a video of someone doing something and think “I could do that!”?
Ever try and realize “Wow that was harder than I thought!”?
That was me trying pistol squats. What’s a ‘pistol squat’? It’s a one-legged squat. Sounds difficult, but I thought “I can do a normal squat, why not try one leg?”
I try and fail, over and over again.
Frustrated, I give up. Until I talk to a fellow trainer/massage therapist who tells me that while I do need to work on my leg strength, it’s my ankle mobility – or lack thereof – that is preventing me from even getting into position to do the squat.
Basically no matter how strong I get, unless I work on the mobility of my ankle joint, the pistol squat will remain elusively impossible.
Which gets me thinking – are we asking ourselves to do impossible tasks in life too?
The popular adage is that “nothing is impossible”. You may have heard it before – everything is possible if you just believe. BS.
It’s not that there isn’t some truth to the statement. It comes from a good place.
There are definitely some things on our “lists of impossible” that should be removed because it’s just limited thinking that keeps us from thinking we can do certain things.
However in this age of social media, over-commercialism, and pervasive “reach-for-the-stars” mentality, we’ve come to a point where everyone believes that everything is possible.
Where does that over-positivity land most people? Depressed and overwhelmed.
It’s great to believe you can do anything. It’s damaging to believe you can do everything.
And worse yet, many believe they want something simply because they’ve been told (subconsciously) that they want it.
I want to be able to do a pistol squat because some of my friends can do it, it looks cool and demonstrates leg strength. I don’t really have any other reason to want to do it.
What are you trying to do that you have no real reason for?
Do this today: Write down every goal or ambition you have for yourself. Then for everything you want to do, ask yourself “Why do I want to do this?” Did the motivation come from a real internal desire or someone else’s external pressure?
Let’s not only stop asking ourselves to do impossible tasks, but let’s also stop chasing other people’s goals and dreams.
