Imagine, you have a goal you want to achieve and it’s going to be difficult. You are going to have challenges ahead, some you know of and some you don’t. You are going to have to put in extra time and effort to achieve this goal, which is going to take away from relaxing activities such as sleep and indulging in your favorite past times. But, if you want to achieve this goal, these sacrifices you are going to have to make.
How much you enjoy or dislike these sacrifices is completely up to you. You get to choose your mindset. You get to choose if it sucks, and you hate every sacrifice you make. Or, you have the choice to embrace the suck and appreciate the difficult situations.
In his book Embrace the Suck, former Navy SEAL Brent Gleeson writes about adapting the mindset of embracing the suck in a bad situation. If you do that, it doesn’t seem quite as difficult, and you have a better chance of appreciating the good that can come from tough situations.
I have used this trick often when working to silence my Inner Rival. I recently took on the challenge of doing 100 pull ups every workout for 180 days this year. I don’t love doing pull ups and having to do 100 of them every time I work out will be difficult and time consuming. But, when I hit the wall and don’t want to do them anymore, instead of listening to the negative voice in my head, I begin to tell myself to embrace the suck and push forward.
Each time I am able to do this and push through to finish my 100 pull ups, I am proving to myself that I can accomplish that goal and quiet down my Inner Rival even more.
When that negative voice arises, I have two options, quit, and let it win. Or take control of my mindset and choose to silence that voice and achieve my goal.
Silence your Inner Rival