Positive Psychology: Learn To Be Optimistic

We are who we spend time with, including our own self. Martin Seligman, PhD., wrote about ‘Learned Optimism’. Despite its usefulness about being positive, pessimists are better than optimists at evaluating conditions during a crisis. Napolean Hill wrote: ‘What your mind can conceive and believe, it will achieve.’ You can, if you want to.

The trouble is: if there’s a will, there’s a will not! If you need a kick-start in your pants to get going, here is a good piece by Inc. magazine. Work with Type A colleagues, and you may be agitated into action. You may even learn to procrastinate away your procrastination.

You have heard about the seven habits of highly effective people. So, what are the seven approaches of productive people – those who get more done in their working hours, or even get it done much earlier. Endurance athletes can accomplish a lot even if they hold full-time jobs.

I love swimming, but it is the workout I hate! Have you ever considered mixing your swim drills up? What about fun activities between? How about dry-land workouts? Changing variables help in injecting excitement and fun to an otherwise staid and static training program. Even my students in class enjoy the occasional physical activity or puzzle.

This morning, I rode for 100 minutes. It was a strategically-placed workout for an ‘easy’ week. Coach assigned this week for me as ‘easy’ for recovery. I did a 20-minute warm-up, followed by 20 sets of 1-minute low-cadence pedaling on the highest-gear I could manage; rest period was one minute between sets. I completed the menu with descending sets of 3 minutes, 2 minutes, one-minute, and 90 seconds with 2 minutes recovery between sets.

Last night I ran in the swimming pool for 30 minutes and followed up with swim drills for 40 minutes. It has been a challenging fortnight of conditioning. Come January, I will have to step up my training intensities and mileage. It will be serious business. 226K are not something to fool around with. It can be impossibly hard work at times, and obscene at other times. I would need an inordinate amount of optimism and motivation to complete each session; all lessons unto them selves.

The point to all this? To coax the body into handling more physical stress in incremental amounts. However, at times it needs to be surprised with a harder session. Triathletes adore routine; so does the body. Once the body gets bored, it stops adapting and becomes resistant. Do shock your body with variety so that it does not get too intelligent, and refuses to progress. It's all in your mind and body. Stay tough. Be bold.