#87 Swimming Rats

How to Increase Your Endurance by 240x (!!!)

Although I’m not a huge fan of some of the drawbacks of animal testing, this study is astonishing and worth knowing about.

Get this: In the 1950s, a Harvard-trained researcher based out of Johns Hopkins named Curt Richter ran some fascinating experiments.

He wanted to see how long rats could swim in two different conditions.

In the first condition, he simply let them swim as long as they could before giving up and drowning. They lasted 15 minutes.

Then, in the other condition, right before they were about to reach their maximum threshold of 15 minutes, he picked them up and dried them off and let them rest briefly before putting them back in.

Guess how long they were able to swim after that quick reprieve.

Only a few more minutes? Another 15 minutes? Maybe 30 minutes?

Try 60 (!!!) HOURS!!!

After being saved those little rats swam for an absolutely astonishing 240 times longer.

15 minutes vs. 60 hours. That’s crazy.

Why? How is that possible?

Richter said it was because of one very simple thing: HOPE.

The rats that had been saved had “seen” a better future. They “knew” there was a chance to survive so they just kept going and going and going.

All of which brings us to our +1 for today.

How’s YOUR hope?

Remember: The science of hope is simple.

Basic idea: When we have hope we believe our future will be better than our present. When we don’t believe our future will be better, we are, literally, hopeless.

To optimize our hope we want to optimize the three facets of hope:

1. We need to see a better future. (What’s yours look like?!)
2. We need to believe we can make that future a reality. (Do you?)
3. We need to be willing to pursue multiple pathways to get there. (Ready for Plans A to Z?)

KNOW THIS: Your future will be better than your present.

Plug into the 240x power of knowing that and SWIM to it!! :)

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