One of my daughters is a competitive swimmer, and I was volunteering as a timer at one of her divisional swim meets. While standing in the lane getting more and more wet with every passing heat (i.e. a group of swimmers who are lining to compete for their race), I saw hundreds of kids line up to swim that day. There were two children in particular, both about the same age, both came from the same socio-economic strata, both had about the same athletic level, and even had the same color hair. But there was a key difference in the two children.

Child 1: As he walked up to the starting block, this child was nervous, inward, and fidgety, and actually said aloud to himself “I’m not going to do well today, I haven’t had a good week in practice, I know I’m going to come in last.”

Child 2: As he walked up to the starting block, his body language was a lot different. He physically prepared himself, stretched out his arms and legs, bounced around a little bit as he was warming up, and he actually said aloud “I’m going to kill it today. I’m going to crush my time.”

You already know what happened. The first child came in second-to-last in his heat. The second child beat his previous time by over 16 seconds! In swimming, that kind of time reduction is huge and worth celebrating. The difference between these two children of the same age, the same athletic level, from the same socio-economic status, from the same team, was the story they told themselves. The one with the negative story manifested a negative outcome that he predicted for himself. The one with the positive story manifested an extremely positive outcome that he predicted for himself.

The neighborhood of our mind is actually a very dangerous place to be. If we are not careful, we can allow negative thoughts to manifest negative outcomes in our life. The majority of people have a negative bias. That is why it is so critical that we take an active and conscious role in cleaning up the neighborhood of our mind.

We need to change the stories we tell ourselves. When we are tempted to say, “I’m not sure today’s going to be a good day.”, We need to actively capture that statement, forgive ourselves for having it, turn it around immediately, and say “I know I have a lot going on, but I’m going to kill it today. I’m going to crush this project. Today is going to be an awesome day.” This is not about creating phony, unsustained hype, but rather actively and intentionally setting the tone, and creating a habit for how you will behave and how the circumstances around you will unfold – to the best of your ability to influence them. You see, we are the creators of our world, and the creators of our experience within it. We get what we expect. And what we expect to get, is a product of our own persistent thoughts, words, and actions.

So tell yourself a different story, and act in line with that story. Go “crush your time” today.

Question: Have you experienced a time where you or someone else’s personal story (habits of thinking) influenced an outcome in life? You can leave a comment by clicking here.