One Year and Some Healing

I just took my annual Army Combat Fitness Test—also known as the ACFT—and I improved my ACFT score by over 50 points since this time last year! How did this happen? Well, I don’t know, but I have a guess: less exercise and more healing.

One Year Ago

Since the last time I took and passed the ACFT in August 2022, I got one year older. I moved to Colorado. I also shifted from weight-lifting about once per week and doing cardio (rowing) about once per week to leisurely walking outside for an hour every other day as my only regular exercise. That change in my physical activity seemed contrary to the 10% improvement in my physical performance on my ACFT one year, so I decided to look into other, non-exercise reasons for the drastic improvement.

I realized that in the last year, I not only integrated the larger dissociated parts of my heart into my core self, but also the small dissociated parts. If my mind was a vase broken by PTSD, this past year would have been like taking all the pieces to a restoration expert who carefully glued the large pieces together and then glued the small chips into the remaining cracks. It was a big year.

Mindset Matters

The primary manifestation of that healing showed up in how much I was able to control my mindset during the ACFT. You see, in the past few months, I have been getting more and more confident in the realization that my mindset really matters. In fact, I’ve been meditating on the truth that my mind (conscious thoughts) trains my heart (subconscious thoughts), and my heart runs my body (including my brain, muscles, hormones, and metabolism). Thus, as I practice being more aware of the self-talk in my mind, I get to choose and practice more healthy self-talk, and that programs my subconscious to run my body in a way that matches this healthy self-talk.

For example, instead of saying, “I don’t know if I can do this,” I say, “I wonder how well I can do this.”

Instead of saying, “Oh no! I haven’t prepared myself to succeed,” I say, “Oh! I guess I’ll be digging into my treasure trove of experience and my connection with God to do my best on the fly.”

Instead of saying, “I’m getting old, I’m bound to hurt myself,” I say, “God created me to get stronger and better until the day I die.”

This is not just programmed positivity, it’s a deep realization of who I am and how God created me.

Taking It to the Field

As a result, I saw my performance almost double in two of six ACFT events, and stay the same or get slightly better in the remaining four. Almost no working out for a year doesn’t usually produce those results, but getting the inner healing needed to choose a powerful mindset does.

It turns out that mindset can change our physical performance even more than exercise.