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Functional realities

AWARE72

AWARE72

MuscleHead
Oct 17, 2010
323
18
Functional Realities
By Neil Gardner.
Neil Gardner - Index

A series of articles to inspire and stimulate.

After last Issues big effort I was asked by a few readers to explain WTF is/are Functional realities. So here we go again off on a tangent.
Our functional realities are what we use to get through the day, they come from our five physical senses and from a few extra ones that science hasn’t defined, but we can call the sixth sense –whispers- I see fat people.

With this input we are able to make judgments about the physical world around us and build up our reality in accordance to the rules defined therein.
It’s easier to grasp if I explain what functional realities are NOT.

Lets look for moment at DYS-functional realities. Paranoia, Bi-polar, or better yet phobias. Scared of mice? Why? You know that they will not bite you or attempt to crawl up your trouser leg, but all the same you have a fear of them. This only becomes dysfunctional when it permeates your every day functioning. So a dysfunctional reality is a series of imbalanced senses providing an unclear or alternate reality. Which in some cases may well help you cope (war, stress, life/death situations) but in every day life is dysfunctional.
Righto mi lad, that’s all well and good. How does that fit into a Bodybuilding magazine?

Easy. You want to lift heavier? You want to go faster? You want incredible gains in as short time as possible? Then you need to focus on improving the functional realities that are appropriate to such a task. The mind is an amazing piece of biochemical machinery, the subconscious part of it where our ideas and interpretations come from is even more cool.
It doesn’t exist.

The brain is the organ of the 'mind'. The mind is the manifestation of the workings of the brain. The subconscious is another manifestation of the conscious mind.
So whilst the conscious mind controls our perception and tells us what reality is the subconscious absorbs all we receive and makes no such distinction. As far as the subconscious is concerned everything we perceive is true and right. It takes our prior experience and intellect to decide what IS true and what to make our own personal reality.

This is the meat and potatoes of the article. You need to ‘program’ your mind to believe, without doubt, certain things, that will speed you training towards more gains.
First, set a goal. This needs to be the end goal. No matter how silly it sounds now you must say it and write it down. You must place it in a spot where you will always see what you wrote and you must read it out loud several times a day. The more you say it, the more your subconscious hears it. The more your subconscious gets it the greater is the chance that your conscious minds accepts it as truth and, presto, you have just changed a reality. This is a functional reality.

Changing your functional realities, to align with your goals, is as easy as setting your end goals and then believing with utter conviction that you can achieve them. Most people have not the courage to set an end goal, believing the journey is more important, and indeed there is no doubt that the journey can be greater than the destination. However having an end goal means you can plan short and mid term goals to plot a course, the time frame is often irrelevant to the end goal. Reminding yourself of what lies ahead in all of the various short and mid term goals is harder. It is a daily, if not hourly chore to keep the focuss of your life on the end goal. So ….. set the end goal go on I DARE you!
Mine is to Win the Mr Olympia. Ok Ok laugh it up…. Most people did/do, however I have the Aussie titles under my belt along with placing higher in international shows than almost any other aussie. A seventh in an IFBB pro show, how many have done that!! How ever you cut it my end goal has dragged me in some pretty good results along the way. Now it’s your turn. 90% of all elite sport is above the shoulders. So broaden your mind, to broaden your shoulder, and start with reprogramming your dysfunctional realities into functional, performance enhancing ones!

Good training
Neil.
 
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