When I was in high school, I wrote a paper on how elite athletes use mental training to improve their performance. It fascinated me then and still does now. I think it's so cool that it works. That the brain can't tell the difference between things happening in reality or in our minds, and that we can use that to improve our physical performance. Mental training has been around for a long time and is no secret, but still very few of us who aren't elite athletes use it. Like it would only work if you're at the top level. Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
Even though this has fascinated me since I was in high school, I still forget to actually use it. Now that I've started using it more recently, I'm finding more and more occasions where it's useful, not just in training. Let me give you an example. I took care of a horse this summer that I rode a lot, but had such a hard time getting it to canter. I tried different strategies, but nothing worked. Then I decided to try mental training. I visualized myself riding and getting into a canter, and how beautifully he went into a canter. That's exactly what happened in reality the next time I rode him. Just a few minutes of visualization a couple of times made a big difference.
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This can just as easily be used before an important meeting, a presentation, or any other task in daily life. Take a few minutes and see myself doing what I am going to do and that it is going really well, I feel how it feels, I see how it looks around me, I experience it as if I am there. I feel the joy of having accomplished it and that it went exactly as I wanted. An acquaintance of mine told me that he was going to give an important presentation to potential customers and that in the days leading up to this meeting, he had visualized every morning how he was going to conduct the meeting, how well it went, and how it felt. He was skeptical about this at first but gave it a try and said afterwards that it was the best presentation he had ever given; it went exactly as he had visualized. If you want to try the same routine he used, which I also use every morning now, it's completely free to copy. This morning routine is also about training yourself to focus on what you are grateful for and increasing your own energy. It can be found at the following link: tonyrobbins.com/priming
