"The Little Man Inside You" -by Ryan Anderson

The Little Man Inside of You
Who is this man? What does it mean?

Intro: Ryan Anderson is an extreme athlete, entrepreneur and client of Alfa Life Coaching. His passion is what drives him in life and we have worked together since October 2009 in order to hone that passion and energy to create the success he knew he deserved. This is an article he wrote after participating in the Arrowhead Ultramarathon Endurance Race in Minnesota in Feb of this year.

The Arrowhead 135 endurance race; another challenge. A famous quote reminds me that, “we all suffer one of two things: either the pain of preparation or the pain of defeat.” It’s two weeks before the race and I’m thinking to myself – have I done enough training yet? Do I have all the gear I need? Have I finally pushed the limits too far? Will this be my last race?
Visualization is one important tool in my pre-racing mentality, if not the most. If you go there in the mind, you go there in the body. A famous book by Maxwell Maltz, called Psycho Cybernetics is one of the most powerful books in this field and it talks about Olympic athletes using the technique of changing your own self-image and how your mind and, more specifically, your subconscious mind work. Whatever you focus on, your subconscious will atomically guide you there. It’s also known as your cervo- mechanism or automatic mechanism. Your subconscious brain cannot differentiate from the past, present or future so, the secret to success is to create, in your mind, the desired result prior to it happening in order for both your subconscious and conscious mind to help guide you there.
One technique is to recreate the entire scenario just like in a movie, using all five senses. Remember a time in your life when you had success and try to duplicate it. What does it feel like? What does it taste like? What are you going to do? How are people going to see you or treat you? Perception is reality to your subconscious, so by changing the way you perceive things and looking inside yourself, you end up changing the outside world around you.
Now usually when you finish, complete or accomplish a goal, you have two feelings after.
1) You feel amazing finishing a race with a sense of accomplishment and fulfillment. However, if you have visualized well enough ahead of time, you have already experienced a part of this in your mind.
2) The second is a feeling of setting a new goal or challenge – sometimes without it, you feel lost again. Since, I committed to going back next year; it’s that excitement again of a new goal, with new energy behind it.
As I have learned, the most important moment in any goal or dream is not when you finish it, no matter how big or how small. It isn’t when you run into challenges along the way either. No matter if it’s a physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, or financial goal it’s all the same; the most important moment is that exact moment when you decide 100% in your mind that you are going to do it. Napolean Hill writes over and over again in his famous and bestselling book, Think and Grow Rich, “It’s the burning desire backed by persistent effort that will make anything happen.” Once that decision has been made and you start taking action, everything else starts falling into place. People start talking about it around you, events present themselves, and things start to happen around to you that are precisely what you’ve been looking for. Dr. Wayne W. Dyer sums it up nicely when he said, “The state of your life is nothing more than a reflection of your state of mind.”
What did I learn from this adventure? Well, I learned that even though I “failed” in crossing the finish line, I gained something from it. The question is what? Was it to recognize how many great people in my life support me in my passion? Was it to tell me that I “still have it” in regards to staying on top athletically, but there’s always a new challenge? Looking back, I did accomplish more by completing half this race than in any other full race I had completed in the past; I ran and walked for 26 hours straight completing 70 miles/100 kms while pulling a 40lb winter sled behind me in the cold dark winter forest. I battled frostbite, dehydration, hypothermia and severe foot blisters to make it where I did. Maybe the lesson was to help keep me on track in life. Perhaps the lesson was a mixture of all of the above. But one thing that stuck with me was that along the trail when I was in the dark cold winter isolation I realized no matter what I had on my ipod - music, books or mind motivation – nothing could match the feeling of having a physical person there beside me. The realization that two people who just met can run beside each without talking for hours and not only be comfortable, but help each other accomplish each of their own goals and with ease.
I have learned lots from the Arrowhead 135 and I am now stronger, smarter and more prepared for the next adventure to come!
By- Ryan Anderson
February, 2010

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Aisha Alfa, BA (Psych), CPC
Owner, Certified Professional Coach
Alfa Life Coaching
www.alfalifecoaching.ca
Dream Bigger. Succeed Faster.