The key to doing more might just be in the brain.

Because the strange truth is that your limitations are mental – not physical.

Reminds me of Navy Seals training.

They push soldiers to their physical limit – and the ones that graduate – are the ones that are able to push through to more than they ever thought possible.

It’s amazing how our body forms to what the brain tells it.

In recent experiments, scientists have found that even elite athletes can be tricked into improvement by essentially lying to them. In one experiment, cyclists were told to pedal a stationary bike at top speed for the equivalent of 4,000 meters. Later they repeated the task while watching an avatar of themselves pedaling in the earlier time trial. What the cyclists didn’t know was that the researchers had turned up the speed on the avatar. And yet the cyclists were able to keep up with their avatars, surpassing what they thought had been their top speed. “It is the brain, not the heart or lungs, that is the critical organ,” said the esteemed neurologist Roger Bannister, best known as the first human to run the mile in less than four minutes.

–Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, Think Like A Freak