I’ve been playing video games since I was old enough to hold a controller. One of the first games I remember is Super Mario Bros for the Nintendo Entertainment System. I even had to blow on the cartridge and hold down the reset button to get it to work sometimes. Kids have it so easy these days! Anyways, I stumbled across this image below, and I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s the perfect example that the thousands upon thousands of hours I’ve spent playing video games wasn’t a waste of time, but rather an education into how our brains work and how we assess situations. In both images, the height and width of the jump is the exact same. And yet, when we look at the image on the right, it’s somehow far more intimidating than the image on the left. If we had encountered the jump on the right first, it might have been enough to scare us enough into making a mistake. However, since many of us had already navigated the jump on the left earlier in the game, we felt comfortable enough to try and make the "more scary" jump on the right. What we see is what our brains believe to be true. There’s some interesting lessons we can use once we discover this is how our brains work. What we see isn’t always reality. What we feel isn’t always the truth. It’s just a good reminder that our eyes, and our brains might not always tell us the full picture.
There’s a term in psychology called “self-efficacy,” which refers to the amount of belief you have in yourself to do be able to complete a task or goal. Part of that is seeing or knowing somebody else who has done it. And another is building confidence through small wins to show yourself it can happen. So I want us today to look at one of our own self-limiting beliefs, and do the following:
Here are a few quick examples: “I’m a lost cause. I can’t get healthy because I always give up after 2 weeks.” What if you picked an EVEN SMALLER task, and only did that one thing for two weeks and a day. Going for a 5 minute walk every day. Literally 5 minutes. Doing 1 push-up every day. Then we just need to adjust the intensity! Our Facebook group is full of people who also used to think they were lost causes, but they’re spending every day slowly disproving their old self-limiting stories! Note: this is NOT toxic positivity, nor is it manifestation. It’s experimentation. Yay science! What’s one tiny change or thing you can do today to disprove one of your old stories? -Steve PS: Did someone forward you this message? Join our newsletter! ### |
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I founded Nerd Fitness way back in 2009. Wherever you are coming from, I’m glad you are here. Every week, I send out a short email that’s guaranteed to make you live a tiny bit better, think a little deeper, and overcome the obstacles that get in the way.
To view this email as a webpage, click here Quick reminder: over the next few weeks, this newsletter will start to come from a different email address. Can you add steve@stevekamb.com to your address book? It’ll help signal to the email overlords that you still want to read my fun weird newsletter! Thanks! Okay onto today’s newsletter! Small milestones that signal longer term results Last week, I completed two little things that might seem insignificant on the surface: I filled up my journal,...
To view this email as a webpage, click here Let me start with a quick announcement: Everybody should watch the movie Flow, a tiny independent film which won the Academy Award for best animated film on Sunday. Wait, that wasn’t the actual announcement. But seriously, watch that movie, and stay through the credits! The actual announcement, which is more of a “logistics” boring thing: Over the next month, this newsletter will come from a different email “send” address. Instead of...
To view this email as a webpage, click here Entrepreneur Peter Barton was on top of the world. Until he wasn’t. Barton lived a life everybody dreamed of, took pretty damn good care of himself, and was a great husband and dad to his family. And then on one fateful day, his world was shattered: A terminal cancer diagnosis. Work became less important, other experiences stopped holding meaning; he tried to pick up the pieces while mourning a future he wouldn’t get to live. He wouldn’t get to see...