Positive thinking is all in your head. By which I mean, so much of maintaining a positive attitude comes from looking at a setback, a mistake, a weakness—anything you might consider a negative—and seeing it in a different light.
Take doubt, for example. Not exactly a positive feeling. It’s kind of a failure of faith—in yourself and in your higher power. If you truly believed, you’d be confident, right? That was my attitude, until something my awesome cycling instructor Rachel said last night in spin class made me change my thinking. (Not the first time she’s given me inspiration that goes beyond the gym, by the way.)
Rachel has us train at four levels of exertion—easy, moderate, hard, extreme. We were partway through a long, steep climb. Four minutes of hard work were behind us and for the final four minutes uphill, we cranked the intensity up to extreme, the hardest and fastest we’d gone all class.
“Are you confident you can finish?” Rachel asked. “Or do you have some doubts whether you can hold this pace till the end?”
Did she read my mind? My left quad was killing me, and I was sucking wind big-time. Doubts? Definitely.
“Doubt’s a good thing,” Rachel shouted.
How could that be?
“It means you’re pushing yourself. And that’s the only way you’ll get stronger!”
Aha!
What do you think? Can doubt be a good thing?
Download your FREE positive thinking ebook!
