Train your mind

Most every American knows Peyton Manning, Denver Broncos quarterback, NFL Super Bowl champion and MVP. To many, the best quarterback of all time.

Regardless of where he lies in the final stats, there is no doubt that he has demonstrated that training your mind is critical to great success. In fact, when he had potentially career-ending surgery in 2011, he did what many thought couldn’t happen and made a decision to seek the best training of his mind and physical body to step back into the game again. And he has done so with sheer greatness.

The first step in his decision: train your mind.

Most everyday we are hit with an array of challenges, decisions, problems, etc that have the potential to take us down. A simple action or reaction can send us reeling and quite often those are left whirling in our minds, often creating a life of their own. What if he meant that? Did that text she sent mean what I think it meant?

The National Science Foundation estimates that a human brain produces as many as 12,000 to 50,000 thoughts per day, depending on how deep a thinker a person is. Most of the so-called random daily thoughts are about our social environment and ourselves.

As you can see, with our brain on overdrive, we simply must train our minds to think positive and focus on the best of ourselves, our abilities, our intentions and of course, people.

One of the interesting things about the brain is that it is methodical. In my research, I read that a thought actually becomes a physical pathway in the brain. According to life coach Tim Brownson, the more you have a thought, the more you groove that path and the easier it is to have it again. That’s why having the thought “Why do I suck?” is never a great idea.

That’s where the training part comes in. I don’t want to overcomplicate this, but instead give you this to contemplate today. We are all champions in one way, shape or form. Peyton Manning just does it on a national stage. When troubles come our way, we have a choice to train our minds to go into what I’ll callexcellence mode.

What pathways have been etched into your mind due to constantly thinking or focusing on them? It could be a person in the workplace that has driven you to drink or at the very least you have hit your head against the wall so many times trying to navigate the situation. It could be a family member (Thanksgiving is a few weeks away in case you want to get prepared now…), that always seems to say the most life-draining things that leave you wondering where they came from or where you came from. It could simply be that you are really hard on yourself for pick your issue: over spending, not doing enough charity work, not working out enough, never picking up the phone and calling your best friend… You get the picture.

Let’s “groove” some new paths in our minds today and put our minds on excellence mode.