“While this might not seem like much now, breaking this barrier was actually once considered impossible. The mile has existed since ancient Roman times. It is a unit of length equivalent to 5,280 feet (1,760 yards, or about 1,609 meters), originally used by the Roman army to signify the length of one thousand paces of a Roman legion, with each pace equaling two steps. For thousands of years, no one—not one single person—could eclipse the four-minute mark. For that reason, sportswriters and even physicists postulated that human evolution had certain limits and that running a mile in less than four minutes was one of those limitations.

Then Roger Bannister changed history.

Using innovative running strategies that focused on less running and more intense, shorter training sessions, in 1954 Bannister did the ‘impossible’ and became the first human being ever to run the mile in less than four minutes. His time: 3:59.4.

But the most amazing things happened after Bannister broke the record. Just forty-six days later, his record was broken—and then it was shattered again and again and again. The lesson is an important one, and it has nothing to do with running or the four-minute mile. Bannister had smashed through the real problem that prevents most successes. It’s a dark secret that few people ever discuss or admit: most of our barriers are mental. And those mental barriers can place physical and emotional limitations on what you can actually achieve in reality.” – Joe Manganiello from Evolution

We’ve heard the story of Roger Bannister before but it’s worth revisiting...

What are you telling yourself is impossible? Is it?

Of course, some things are, in fact, impossible and we’d be wise to step away from those pursuits. But some stuff is just really really really hard.

Lest you think this is just Joe kinda going off into crazy-intense-ville, bare in mind that the eminent Harvard researcher and professor Ellen Langer tells us nearly the same thing in her classic book Mindfulness.

Here’s how she puts it: “When we think of resources being limited, we often think of our own abilities. Here, too, our notion of limits may inhibit us. We may push ourselves to what we believe are our limits, in swimming, public speaking, or mathematics. However, whether they are true limits is not determinable.

It may be in our best interest to proceed as though these and other abilities might be improved upon, so that at least we will not be deterred by false limits. It was once assumed that humans could not run the mile in fewer than five minutes. In 1922 it was said to be ‘humanly impossible’ to run the mile in less than four minutes. In 1952 that limit was broken by Roger Bannister. Each time a record is broken, the supposed limit is extended. Yet the notion of limits persists.”

Plus: “Research like these vision studies highlights the dangers of setting limits for ourselves. For instance, I’ve asked my students: What is the greatest distance it is humanly possible to run in one spurt? Because they know the marathon is twenty-six miles, they use that number to start and then guess that we probably haven’t reached the limit, so they answer around thirty-two miles. The Tarahumura, of Copper Canyon in Mexico, can run up to two hundred miles. If we are mindful, we don’t assume limits from past experience have to determine present experience.” 

She warns us not to be so quick to accept “false limits.”

What limits do you need to push?  #3:59.4