This One Thing
I just learned how to increase my endurance by 240X!
No potions. No app to install. No purchases necessary.
Intrigued?
On just two pages of a new book I’m reading about techniques used to develop your best self, I felt like I had been given the golden key that unlocks the treasure chest of all knowledge.
It starts with rats. I know – rats …
The author, while opposed to many aspects of animal testing, related the findings of an old study.
Back in the 1950’s, a Harvard-trained researcher named Curt Richter, conducted some studies through Johns Hopkins.
He wanted to see how long rats could swim under two different conditions.
In the first one, he let rats swim as long as they could before they drowned. They lasted fifteen minutes.
I know – lab studies …
In the second one, rats were allowed to swim up to the point where they looked like they were about to give up – around their threshold of fifteen minutes. At that point, they were removed from the water, toweled off, and allowed to briefly rest before they were returned to the water.
How long do you think they were able to swim?
Maybe just a few minutes? Another fifteen?
Shockingly, they swam for sixty – yes, 60 HOURS!
Two hundred and forty times longer!
What?
What had changed for those rats?
The researcher concluded that they had experienced one simple thing: HOPE.
They had experienced the possibility of a better future. They ‘knew’ there was a chance of that better future, and they kept swimming and swimming towards it.
How’s your HOPE meter doing these days?
Hope is believing our future will be better than our present. Take that away, and we succumb like the poor rats in group one. Hopeless.
Whatever the muck we may be mired in, if we can sustain our HOPE, then our endurance is strengthened.
How do we create or find hope for a better future?
We need to SEE a better future and have GOALS that inspire us.
We need to believe that WE CAN take the steps needed to make our goals happen.
We need to have a PLAN to move forward with those steps – and be flexible enough to modify our plans to include different approaches that will ensure success.
Bringing your best self to each day’s starting line means you are committed to a brighter, better future.
You are going to show up!
With HOPE!
For success!
In health –
Deidre
NEXT Tuesday, August 19th, will mark the 100% full launch of Toolkit for Caregiver Emotions!
Yippee! Those of you who have pre-ordered, the eBook version will be ready to read that day! There will be lots of book promotional sites advertising the eBook on sale at $0.99.
In the meantime, the paperback is currently also at a discounted introductory price, so it’s a great time to pick one up for yourself or someone else who could use a helping hand with their caregiving emotions.
The honest, helpful reviews of readers are pure gold to authors, and I thank each of you who have chosen to take a minute to do that. Just a sentence or two can make a big difference. Thanks!