What story do you tell yourself?

The one in your own head?

Is it positive?

Or negative?

Are you kind to yourself?

Or do you put yourself down?

Do you look at the positives in you?

Or focus on the negatives?

My guess is you’re not kind to yourself.

Most of us are not.

We tend to focus on how bad we are rather than the good.

We put ourselves down.

We limit ourselves.

We are our own worst nightmares.

This was me for the longest time.

Still is to some extent.

I am my worst critic.

Know it stemmed from childhood, as most of our psychological problems do.

Side note: best book I’ve EVER read on this is called ‘What Happened to You.’ One of the few books that genuinely changed the way I see the world and myself. It will force you to reconcile your own childhood and how you turned out the way you are. Highly recommend it.

I grew up with the best parents imaginable, but they were very strict.

Especially when it came to academics.

Grew up in the classic Indian household.

If you brought a 90% home, the question was where was the other 10%.

Now being the eldest child on my dad’s side of the family where my grandparents prioritized education, this was a lot to handle.

So I internalized a lot of it.

Took it on myself.

If I brought home a bad grade, I was more critical than my parents.

Still remember getting a C+ on my grade 5 report card and had a meltdown.

Thought my life was over.

But I learned something through that experience.

Learned that getting a bad grade is ok.

Your life is not over.

All that means is you weren’t good enough.

So it’s up to you to figure out why, reflect and do better.

Learned what I did wrong, studied harder and came back next term with an A.

This happened again in university.

2nd year first semester midterm.

Almost failed.

Was shocked.

Couldn’t have that happen again.

So studied my ass off and ended up with a 4.0 that year.

This also happened to me athletically.

Grew up a short chubby kid.

Loved sports but never thought I was good enough.

Rode the bench on most of the teams I participated in.

Even with basketball, knew I had the talent but didn’t have the desire to fail.

To try.

To show people what I had.

I was scared.

I played scared.

Constantly.

Then when I got to uni, things changed.

My confidence grew.

I changed the story I told myself.

It wasn’t ‘you suck’ anymore.

It was ‘It’s ok to fail.

It’s ok to try.

You’re improving.

Just try to be better every day.’

Then when I left uni and started writing, meditating and reflecting, my story completely remorphed.

Read a book that flipped my perspective.

It’s called ‘Pimp’ by Iceberg Slim about the life of a pimp in the early 1900s.

Fascinating story but one part stuck out to me in particular.

“Always remember whether you be sucker or hustler in the world out there, you’ve got that vital edge if you can iron-clad your feelings. I picture the human mind as a movie screen. If you’re a dopey sucker, you’ll just sit and watch all kinds of mindwrecking, damn fool movies on that screen. Son, there is no reason except a stupid one for anybody to project on that screen anything that will worry him or dull that vital edge. After all, we are the absolute bosses of that whole theatre and show in our minds. We even write the script. So always write positive, dynamic scripts and show only the best movies for you on that screen whether you are pimp or priest”

You control your screen.

Now I’m not as hard on myself.

I know I’m capable of so much more.

We all are.

Today was one of those days.

Biggest training day I’ve had so far.

Looked at my schedule last week and was super nervous for today.

3k swim.

2.5 hr bike.

75% of the total swim.

Just under 50% of the total bike.

Thought it was going to be brutal.

But today, I did it!

Not only that, had some of my best performances of the year, even with poor sleep because of daylight savings time.

Swim was a mixed workout, but for my 400m fast section, got 7:15 which averages out to 1:49/100m. Not bad.

For the bike, almost hitting 30k/hr, which if I can keep it up, puts my bike time around 6 hours.

Not bad for a guy who had never biked before this year.