Like the physical body, our attitude needs daily exercise. We all know ways to undermine our physical goals, and one of the most destructive things we can do to our attitude is say, “I can’t”.

It doesn’t even have to be verbalized. Once it’s in our brain—we’re done! So why do we hear that so often, and why do we say it so often?

I believe there are a couple of reasons. We have so many choices in our lives today that it’s easy to “choose not to try”. That’s how we escape the fear of looking foolish when we fail.

Who has ever looked foolish failing?! The person who has the ability to put their fear aside and fail once, twice, or four hundred times is usually later referred to as “champion”, or “hero”. The fool’s the one on the perimeter watching the failure fail. Now, if we made the decision “not to try” what happens? NOTHING! Absolutely nothing. We go on leading the same “safe” and boring existence.

Another reason we “can’t” is due to the fact that’s what we’ve been programmed to say to defend our comfort zone. We can even start to think it before a challenge is fully developed, that way we can be sure to keep our adrenaline from pumping.

How do we know we can’t do something when we don’t even know what it is? Well, in severe cases we have that ability. Do we get satisfaction out of activities we can do? Sure, especially if we can do them well. However, where are our greatest satisfactions? Those are the accomplishments we thought we were incapable of doing. It’s something we couldn’t do at first, but through inspiration or motivation we went for it—and found success.

Now, success doesn’t mean mastery. Success is when we take our first step out of our comfort zone. Maybe you’ve been keeping an eye on the Spinning classes, and finally felt you “could” after months of taking the internal beating of the “can’t”. Chances are you walked out of that class feeling a bit beat up, but I’m sure you felt great. You got rid of the “I can’t, and replaced it with “I did.”

All this is not new, and I’m sure you’ve all seen or heard it before. So why don’t we always have an attitude that says, “I can do that”? Well, it’s hard work—needs to constantly be reinforced, and like physical exercise the body can only take so much.