Going Further: How Eliminating Limiting Beliefs Can Unlock Potential

In 1983 Cliff Young, aged 62, completed the Sydney to Melbourne Ultra Marathon of 875kms in a time of five days, fifteen hours and four minutes. He was not an elite athlete and turned up to run the race in his work overalls and boots (and without his dentures!). He knew very little about the race or strategic racing and proceeded to just keep on running to cover the distance. His pace was slow, and on day one he was towards the back of the pack. To much surprise, he won the race.

Perhaps Young benefitted from the lack of expectations on him. He didn’t have quality kit and had trained by chasing sheep on his farm. He also believed he had the stamina to keep going. However, the biggest factor that led to Young’s success was that because of his lack of understanding of the race, while the other competitors stopped to sleep for six hours each evening, he kept moving forwards at the same pace. He did not limit himself by what he believed; whilst other competitors believed they needed to sleep to win the race or that they needed the right kit, Young didn’t have such beliefs because of his lack of understanding of what the “correct” approach to running the race should be.

Put simply, Cliff Young won the race that year because he had no limiting beliefs.

A couple of weeks ago I attended my first live coach training on values and beliefs run by The Coaching Academy. We watched a clip of some footage of Cliff Young and learned his story. As an ultra-runner myself, I was immediately drawn to his story. Following this we went into some co-coaching sessions and it was during this session that I learnt some of my own limiting beliefs. The goal that I had taken to the session was around trying to gain back some running speed however, through working through this goal it transpired that I had created some limiting beliefs of my own without realising.

“I’m just a mid-pack runner”

“I run for the experience not a fast time”

“I’ll never get back to a 47 minute 10km”

“I’m not as fast as most people”

“All the gear, no idea”

The truth is, I’m an experienced runner and have raced many distances, including multi-stage ultras in challenging environments and done pretty well. So why am I letting myself believe that I’ll not get faster? Why do I not believe in myself to improve my fitness and skill? And, most importantly, are these beliefs getting in the way of me becoming faster?

During the course of the short coaching session, we had reframed my goal to include challenging my limiting beliefs around my running with the view to increase my running speeds. I left the session with an action which centred around an activity that would help me to begin to challenge my beliefs. On a Tuesday I attend a class at Barry’s (a treadmill and strength based HIIT class) where I run double tread meaning I get almost 60 minutes of running. Before the coaching I had been of the mindset that I need to build up my running, start back at beginners’ speeds and walk if I needed to. Following the session, I set a challenge to myself to move towards the intermediate speeds and try not to drop below 6mph in recoveries unless absolutely necessary. I changed my beliefs to “I can run well, I am a good runner, I can run intermediate”. This has had a huge impact; in the space of two weeks I’ve gone from running just over 5mph to well over 6mph in under 60 minutes of work. I didn’t do this through increasing my fitness drastically, just through changing my mindset to one where I felt like anything was possible.

This experiment with my running is not yet over. I’ve a few races lined up this year and I’m planning to keep doing benchmark activities to see where I am at and track my progress. I’m going to catch those limiting beliefs as they come to mind and challenge them.

As I’m starting to work with clients, I’ve been identifying some of their limiting beliefs, challenging them and seeing if they can see how they may be impacting their life. I’m also on the lookout for more of my limiting beliefs and working with them in my own coaching sessions. There’ll be a future post about how to challenge limiting beliefs, but for now I pose the question to you: what could you achieve if you had no limiting beliefs?

 You can view the incredible story of Cliff Young here