No matter what your sport or what your health and fitness goals are in life, here are 5 perspectives to use that will enhance your experience, guaranteed!
1. Cultivate an Attitude of Gratitude
Be thankful for your body. It’s such a gift to be able to be physically active and see your body support you in your physical endeavors.
You likely put many hours into your training, so sometimes it’s easy to forget and take for granted our body’s response to the load we place on it.
Recall how far you’ve come as an athlete and how much progress you’ve made.
Play golf? Recall how awkward you were during the early days on the driving range.
Swim? Remember when you could barely swim two laps in the pool?
Training for a marathon? It’s taken months of dedication and adaptation as you ran mile after mile.
Sometimes when you stop and realize where you WERE as an athlete and how much progress you’ve made, it’s quite an eye opener.
Think about injuries you’ve overcome, obstacles you’ve busted through and choices you’ve had to make to enjoy an active lifestyle.
None of these are easy to handle, so bring that attitude of gratitude with you as you pursue activities that bring you pleasure and you’ll enjoy them even more!
2. Believe
Believe in yourself.
It’s easy to get discouraged and think you won’t ever reach your goals.
Setbacks happen, it’s normal. Get back in the game and start from where you find yourself and keep going!
Surround yourself with a good community of like-minded people and learn to use their support. They’ll help you stay the course, however, the core belief in yourself must come from you.
3. Understand your Nutrition and Hydration Needs
As an athlete and active woman you should know what your nutrition and hydration needs are. Don’t get caught up in what someone else is doing. You have your own needs.
Also, make sure to learn what it takes for your body to recover. Being smart about your recovery time is essential to keeping yourself training long into the future.
4. Stay in the Moment
I know you’ve heard this before, but it can be tricky to really grasp what it means.
Simply put, stay tuned in to what’s happening with your body. Stay present in both your mind and body to what you’re experiencing. Stay focused on what you are doing and how you’re feeling while you’re exercising, training, or racing.
You can do a body scan asking yourself questions such as: am I feeling hydrated, how is my heart rate, how do I feel?
Think about what you are doing in this moment. Don’t fall into the mental trap of spending too much time in future planning.
For instance, if you’re out for a hike and your thoughts turn to “what am I going to have for dinner tonight?” it’s likely that you’re probably hungry and should take in some fuel NOW!
Staying present fosters a sense of enjoyment and enriches your experience and memory of what you’re doing. It takes practice, so if you’re not already working with this idea, start now.
5. It’s All About the Journey
I know, this sounds like a platitude but it’s really true. As athletes we reach for new goals and experiences. We can be overly result-oriented so we have a tendency to forget to enjoy the journey and focus too much on our improvement or lack of results as a measure of success.
I train many first time marathoners.
The first goal I look to instill in them is that they finish the marathon with a smile on their face.
Their result time for that first marathon is insignificant compared to having a great experience. There is only one first, and I want them to enjoy it and perhaps even think about doing it again. It requires that their mindset focus on the journey!
There will always be rough spots and obstacles to overcome if we’re active and pursue an active lifestyle.
I think these five focuses help us keep one foot in front of the other, doing our best and moving forward.
Your perspective is key to how you’ll experience your life, so add these five to your perspective checklist and let them enrich your active lifestyle!
shelli
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