Have you ever watched a sporting event and an athlete has the game of their life, interviewed after the game and they talk about this “feeling” somehow they just know/knew they would have this incredible game? Of course you have, what is that? Is it that there “talent” suddenly improved? If not so what is it? How did they go from having average performance one game to extraordinary the next?
You may be saying, but I’m not an athlete, I like to use an athlete as an example because it’s an extreme life experience however it doesn’t matter performance is performance whether it’s as an athlete, coach, parent, employee, leader or someone that needs to be creative or come up with many ideas. Alignment between your conscious and subconscious mind is critically important.
I’ve made it a passion of mine to study winning thought and almost always when an athlete or anyone that performs when they leave the level of normal performance and enter the level of extraordinary performance they talk in terms of “a strange calm” “it was as though I couldn’t hear anything but somehow I also could hear everything ” “everything seemed like it was in slow motion, time stood still ” “I simply knew I was going to have the performance of my life” “the feeling is something that I’ll never forget” “it almost seemed like it wasn’t me even though I knew it was” I think you get the point, you may have had such an experience or witnessed someone having such an experience. If their talent didn’t suddenly improve, what did?
I with my hypnosis self-improvement company A Goen Seminars Institute hypnotized over 200,000 people in the 90s and 2000’s often the experience of hypnosis is similar to some of the comments of the athletes. For example a one hour session, may seem like a few minutes, as though “time stood still” and feeling as “a strange calm” or “being incredibly in tune with your body/mind”. With hypnosis, you relax the conscious mind (10% of your mind) and you work with the subconscious mind the 90%, you will learn more about this later in the book.
Have you ever tried to change your mind only to find out that your “mind” has a mind of its own? Have you ever made a New Year’s resolution that you didn’t keep? Have you ever set a goal that you didn’t obtain? Have you ever made a commitment to lose weight and not achieve it? Have you ever made a commitment to stop smoking and not keep it? Have you ever made a commitment to be positive and found that you were negative? Have you ever made a commitment to be happy and you were sad? Have you ever made a commitment to stop worrying and found that you worrying even more? Have you ever…?
Consider this, if you had a choice to do what you do, whatever it is, your sport, your work, do you think you would be better doing it using 10% of your mind or 90% of your mind? Of course the answer is obvious, how do you use 90% of your mind you’re probably asking. Do you think that you would be better doing whatever it is that you do if you thought you were the greatest or didn’t think you were the greatest? Do you think you would be better if you are positive or negative? Would you be better if you are happy or miserable? Would you be better if you loved it or hated it? Would you be better enthusiastic or unenthusiastic? Blessed by God or not blessed by God? Motivated or not motivated? Excited or not excited? And of course the answer is obvious.
What if, you could perform, do whatever it is that you do, and had each and every one of these traits/beliefs/security structures (excited, happy, motivated, positive, confident, self-esteem, etc.) in complete and total alignment, not just one of them, or two of them, or three, but all. Would you be better doing whatever it is that you do? I call doing whatever it is that you do using 90% of your mind or more, being in total alignment with all your traits/beliefs/security structures a winning formula/level II, or zone performance.
Consider, setting a goal for yourself to play this game of life and what’s important to you, with all your traits/beliefs/security structures, in total alignment, using 90% plus of your mind and really live the adventure of life, at level II performance… I know it’s exciting, but hard to believe all I ask from you is join me on a journey and investigate the possibilities.
“If you think you are beaten, you are;
If you think you dare not, you don’t.
If you’d like to win, but think you can’t
It’s almost a cinch you won’t.
If you think you’ll lose, you’ve lost,
For out in the world we find
Success being with a fellow’s will;
It’s all in the state of mind.
If you think you’re outclassed, you are:
You’ve got to think high to rise.
You’ve got to be sure of yourself before
You can ever win a prize.
Life’s battles don’t always go
To the stronger or faster man,
But soon or late the man who wins
Is the one who thinks he can.”
― Walter D. Wintle
Mission:
to change the way the world thinks…A group of rowdy teens come to a diner, one starts pounding the table, chair, wall and screaming. The diners become angry, upset, annoyed and one yells “shut that jerk up”. One of the teens responds “his mother was just murdered” with a new understanding the diner’s paradigm instantly forever changed. Mission: the paradigm of exceptional thought programming/processing the very operating system once understood forever changed.
In this here example the diner’s paradigm changed instantly, once they understood the truth/circumstances. After you use the technology of WINosp your thought process, your programming, and the way that you store information in your subconscious mind/hard drive, will change forever. Up to now, you never gave it much thought; after you apply this technology you never think about it the same way again.
Do you think that you or any person performs better if they’re negative or positive? Always the same answer, of course positive, if that’s the case, the next question obviously needs to be. What do you do to make sure that you are positive? What do you do to make sure your thoughts are in complete and total alignment around the positive theme? Or do you just magically expect it to happen? I mean once again, if it’s true, and human beings perform better when they’re positive what technology you employ to assure that you are positive.
In the last 20 years there’s been quite a bit of work studying happiness, it was thought 20 years ago that something would make one happy. For example winning a lottery would make one happy, or a great relationship would make one happy or a great job would make one happy and it may for fleeting moment. The truth of the matter is nothing makes one happy, other than oneself. The science is clear if you’re happy first; being happy breed’s success, being happy breeds great relationships, being happy breeds a high quality of life. It’s in that order, so how do you become happy? That’s what this technology is all about, however not just being happy, but building thousands of other attributes, qualities, unique skill and creating the human being that you always dreamed of being. You engineering you, not your environment engineering you, not your parents engineering you, not your boss engineering you, not your teachers, but you at the reins, in control, probably for the first time engineering the person that you were born to be.
The Subconscious Mind
Your subconscious mind is programmed by your conscious mind’s thoughts and beliefs, and the subconscious mind has no power to reject what’s placed in the subconscious mind. It cannot reason or figure out; it cannot distinguish from the truth or lie. It has no idea whether the thought or commands given to it are beneficial to you or destructive to you, it cannot argue with your conscious mind however it has extraordinary influence on your conscious mind. The subconscious mind cannot engage in editing, it cannot determine whether the thoughts are good or bad, if you believe something to be true even though it’s false your subconscious mind will accepted as true and proceed to operate as though the information is fact.
A great way to look at it is your subconscious mind is like fertile soil, whatever seeds are thrown on the soil will grow, whether they are fruit bearing or weed bearing. The subconscious mind will accept negative destructive beliefs goals attitudes thoughts and in turn produce the exact reflection of those beliefs. Just as it will for those fortunate enough to understand how the mind works, it will produce riches with the benefit of a great attitude, positive thoughts beliefs of the capabilities that are planted in it. This is a universal law that’s widely acceptable and even found in the Bible. “As ye sow so shall ye reap” (Galatians 6:7)
What the world sees in you is a direct reflection of what has been planted in your subconscious mind.
The subconscious mind characteristics and functions
- Controls automatic body functions/behavior such as breathing, heartbeat, walking, riding a bike.
- The hard drive all that is experienced in life is planted someplace in the subconscious mind whether real or imaginary.
- Is constantly being programmed by your environment in your subconscious mind and is highly programmable.
- Cannot distinguish between truths or lie, cannot edit the information that comes in.
- Not capable of knowing whether the information that is entering is good or bad, helpful or harmful, constructive or destructive.
- Has an amazing capacity to solve problems and be creative.
- Constantly as stimulus enters, cross references incoming information with the information that’s currently stored in the memory banks instantly.
- Influences every attitude that you have, every behavior, every thought, plain and simple everything that you do is controlled and influenced by your subconscious mind.
The WINosp™ Law of Insignificance the Most Significant Law of All
How’s that for what seems like a contradiction? The reason that this law is so important/significant it helps you understand and control the normal process of adopting behaviors, beliefs, traits, attributes, security structures. It’s the way that you become who you are every day, it’s why you are who you are, it’s how you became the person that interprets stimulus the way you do, it is who you are, who you “is”, who you “be”, the very “being” that you “is”. It’s important that you understand this, because the problem you see, is that it starts as insignificant, so another words if it’s insignificant, it’s also undetectable. So it happens without “you knowing it”, for good and for bad, very often you are its prey, however if you understand this law, and how to use it, it becomes an extraordinarily valuable tool as well.
Concept, if today you added one new positive thought to your life and you continue this every day, would today be significantly different than any other day? Would it even be different at all? If today you added one new negative thought to your day and you did this every day would today be much different than any other day? The answer is, undetectable/insignificant. The very problem is you can’t tell if it’s doing good or bad to you. Have you ever met an incredibly negative person? Everyone knows they’re negative except for whom? Have you ever met a “know it all”? Have you ever met a bitter person? Have you ever met a person that has victim mentality? Have you ever met a person that seems to want you to always feel sorry for them? In turn they are paralyzed, everyone knows that these people are this way except for the most important person, them. How does this happen?
If it happened quickly it would be easily detected, for example if you take a frog and throw it into boiling water, it will jump right out alive. If you take a frog in your put it in water the temperature of its environment and you increase the temperature one degree at a time it will eventually boil to death unknowingly. No person wants to be negative, or have victim mentality, or have, feel sorry for me mentality, or any type of negative trait/behavior, belief. What normally happens, is, some event happens, around this event, a story is created the event is interpreted by one’s operating system of their mind, it’s not the events fault, yes the event was a stimulus, but the fault lies in one’s operating system. You remember the story about the kid in the diner (A group of rowdy teens come to a diner, one starts pounding the table, chair, wall and screaming. The diners become angry, upset, annoyed and one yells “shut that jerk up”. One of the teens responds “his mother was just murdered” with a new understanding the diner’s paradigm instantly forever changed.) and his parent that was murdered, initially the diners interpreted the “event” a series of behaviors one way, and then that “event” and the exact same behaviors, became interpreted a completely a different way.
Here’s another example of times when you know your conscious mind and your subconscious mind are not in alignment your conscious mind adjusts first, often you’ll hear people say “it just hasn’t hit me yet” it hasn’t sunk in yet” when might you hear this? Often the players after winning the Super Bowl, or an actress at the Academy Awards, or the birth of a child, or the sudden loss of a loved one. What is that sensation? What is it that you’re feeling? It’s a disconnection between your conscious and subconscious, this happens when your subconscious mind still has the old set of beliefs and needs to catch up, so there’s a disconnect, you feel strange, out of alignment. To achieve maximum performance it’s important that your conscious and subconscious are in complete alignment.
That of course was an extreme event, most events are more subtle and the “victimizer” unknowingly, a loving mother, father or friend, as sad as this is, the victim an innocent baby. I have worked with thousands of people that as babies were the innocent prey of the very people that loved them most. Furthermore if you’re a parent you’re likely, unknowingly, programming, your children in a harmful way and your parents unknowingly, likely, programmed you, in a negative way. Furthermore most often believing that what they were doing was beneficial to you.
Example: imagine a baby two years old sitting in a high chair being fed by its mother and every time, feeding time comes, in one hand is a spoon with food and in the other is a toy. As the mother feeds the baby she shakes the toy and at the same time smiles and when the victim, I mean baby, eats mom claps and celebrates, proudly saying, “you are mommy’s little girl”, mommy rewards her little girl for gorging herself, thinking she’s doing right, think about that. What was the damage that was done? How was this significant in the baby’s life, at that very time, at that very moment? That’s right totally insignificant but eventually significant and destructive. What’s the problem that baby will have later on in life? Working with thousands wanting to reduce their weight, I have never met one person with a weight problem that wasn’t a victim, or pray, of the very people that loved them as children. Of course you can’t blame the mother in this example she thought she was doing right, good, loving her precious little innocent baby. But mother was sowing the seeds of insignificance, which have major significance later in life. If for example if the destructive programming resulted instantly in the baby being fat she would stop right away? It’s because of the very fact that it’s insignificant is that it is so destructive, however at the same time if you understand this law of insignificance it can be a huge benefit/blessing/tool.
Other seeds of insignificance that a parent may sow, if you keep that up one day you’ll end up in jail. Ask an inmate if they ever heard that as a kid. Stop lying, you’re always lying, you’re a big fat liar and then the parent is surprised that they continue to lie. Words are very powerful maybe just maybe the most powerful force on earth, after love and God.
The reason that you are the way that you are, your beliefs, your operating system, the beliefs in your hard drive, all were born as insignificant, then grew and today shape who you are. At times with as the sower being meaningful and specific in engineering who you are today but most of the time a unknowing victim of the environment that you find yourself in, a wandering generality. I challenge you become a meaningful specific, create, design, engineer the person that you want to be.
The next time that you do anything that you do and for the millisecond you think it’s insignificant, reflect on this law and think about the consequences of this insignificant thing that you may be doing. Better yet every day do positive insignificant things that create a life of joy, peace, fulfillment, happiness, satisfaction, love, cherished moments, gratefulness, and endless possibilities.
Really the amazing thing is that even though it starts as insignificant, in other words you don’t notice it, significance happens rather quickly. Example if you leave your car lights on and you’re sitting in the car for a while, you would be able to listen to radio and turn on the interior lights, if you left and came back in the morning just a night later, the radio and interior lights, wouldn’t work and the engine wouldn’t turn over, the battery would be dead. Everything that you do in life that’s worthwhile is born insignificant and grows into significance.
Most Insignificant Gives Birth to Great Significance
Consider this, the greatest accomplishments in your life, your proudest accomplishments, when later in life you reflect, these significant moments of great achievement. All started as insignificant and in direct proportion significant as a result of how insignificant, and because of this many possible achievements, proud moments, were given up on because the results were not instantaneous and started as insignificant. If you recognize the extraordinary power of insignificance you will be able to guarantee that you don’t miss out on the limitless possibilities.
Everything that you experience in life is somehow tied into the circuitry of your subconscious mind and available to you, another way to look at it, available as a tool for you to use in some way. It could be after you think about a solution to a problem for days and some bit of information that you experienced long ago eventually gets to your reasoning mind and you come up with some great idea, solve the problem. When it comes to engineering you, or reengineering you, this scenario above is not acceptable, a trait has to be weaved in through all the circuitry of your subconscious mind and readily available to you instantaneously and constantly at all times. The counterproductive traits or beliefs need to be destroyed and replaced by what benefits you. Let’s take a moment and understand better the inner workings of the most complex and powerful machine in the universe called your brain.
Your brain is a 3 pound organ that uses 25% of the overall energy your body requires; your brain has an astonishing 100 miles of blood vessels. Your brain, yes the tissue between your ears, that you own, that is yours, that is a tool for you to use, to accomplish whatever it is that you want out of life, is constantly changing and improving. Every few seconds your brain destroys 100 million neurons (brain cells) and manufactures 100 million to replace them. For every thought there is a reaction in its circuitry, in addition to the reaction and in direct proportion to the thought, its clarity, its purpose, for it’s supposed (theoretical/hypothetical) benefit (perceived and believed by the reasoning mind), your brain will rewire its circuitry. Your brain has 100 billion neurons communicating with one another electrically and chemically in what’s called “electrochemical” communication.
Each one of these hundred billion neurons has wires called dendrites signaling other neurons, every day you have 65,000 thoughts, 95% of those thoughts were the same as a day before. Your brain uses the same neurons or set of neurons and dendrites for those repeated thoughts and for new thoughts other neurons or sets of neurons and dendrites connecting those neurons to other neurons that are important for the signaling of information. In order for your traits to become part of your very “being” there is a further process in your brain. Your brain needs to make a structural change called “dendrite cabling” so these traits are weaved into the circuitry of your brain. This structural change that your brain is capable of where the entire cortical networks of your brain reorganize happen most when you enter the Delta state more specifically REM. Your brain wants to serve you, however often the messaging is confusing or unclear or without the proper conviction or filtered incorrectly. If the message of what you want for yourself is clear the dendrite cabling proceeds and becomes/develops stronger and stronger, the old pathways/dendrites that are connected to old beliefs (hopefully damaging unhealthy beliefs) atrophy and are replaced with neurons and new pathways/dendrites/cabling, weaving ever increasing more powerful clusters of neurons and dendrites extending throughout your brain so this new way of “being” beliefs/security structures/attributes/traits touch and impact the important neurons throughout your brain in turn affecting the person that you are. So the distinction, engineering or reengineering you, is not a figure of speech, it’s real; the inner structure of your brain is engineered or reengineered using the science of WINosp. Just like your muscles grow when you work out, your brain cell networks grow and become more efficient, powerful with repeated use and in turn affect your thinking and your capabilities.
Now that you understand the magnificence of what’s in your brain, practically speaking, it’s important to understand specifically when the downloading is most effective and efficient. The best state to get the information to the subconscious mind, “download the software” is deep relaxation called “Theta”, this is the state that hypnotherapists attempt to get their patients. In this state transformation can truly take place however, the truth of the matter, is most hypnotic sessions fall far short of the Theta state and normally reach the alpha state, effective however not even close to the effectiveness of the Theta state.
The 3 to 10 minutes before you fall sleep and the 3 to 10 minutes after you initially wake up are Theta states, then as you become more aware Alpha state, for example: have you ever waken up but you’re still dreaming, you know that you’re awake, sometimes you have one of those really “good” dreams so you attempt to prolong it and get a really good part, that would be an example of the Theta state. During the Theta state the critical analytical reasoning filter is sleeping, so to speak, and the programming is directly affecting the subconscious mind. Be very careful what you allow yourself to think about or listen to the 10 minutes before you fall sleep and the 10 minutes after you wake up. Don’t ever fall sleep with the television on, you likely will have no idea what is being programmed into your subconscious mind during the Theta state if you’re lucky it may be good but today by the nature of television shows and all the drama/controversy/conflict it’s likely rather damaging, become the gatekeeper of your subconscious, protect it and more important fill it with healthy beneficial programming, engineer you into the person that you always dreamed of being.
A Word is a Trigger
What really is a “word” take any word the word “mother” what is that? A mother is: loving, generous, kind, nurturing, giving, produces life, female, has ovaries, has breasts, wears dresses, likes to shop, etc. I could write a book about “mother” and so could you and if we compared books 99% would be the same and probably 1% or so would be unique representing additional unique likely experiences in our lives? So imagine the word “mother” as a trigger for everything I just described and so much more. Every word we use is a trigger, and they’re all levels of triggers for example a “grandmother” is almost everything that a mother is plus some additional things, parents are 80% of what a mother is plus some other things, are you getting this concept of what a word really is? In addition if we were to compare notes and there was an interesting word or combination of words that you used to describe mother I would, or another words my subconscious mind would, readily accept those new words describing mother with no hesitation whatsoever and my critical analytical filtering mechanism would not get in the way, this is an important distinction, more about this later.
If I was at your house, looking through your book library and I pulled out a book. Think of a book right now that you have in your book library, okay imagine, it’s in my hand now and I asked you what’s this book about? What would you say, you would likely summarize the book in just a few words however the book was full of many other words, how could you just summarize it in a few words when there may have been 60,000 words in that book? Did you not read the rest of it? What those few words represented is a trigger, every single word that you read in the book is in your subconscious mind but not readily accessible, top of mind, but if it was a really great book or seminar program or class wouldn’t you want that top of mind? Or if you went to a great coaching program to learn how to be a great football player or soccer player or whatever, wouldn’t you want all that available top of mind? Of course you would. Those additional 60,000 words in the book are very easily embraced by the subconscious mind when describing that book, in other words your critical analytical filter would not reject those words because this is the normal, acceptable through repetition, way that new things occur to us, or become present to us.
The other reason that this is important, is how the subconscious works, for example when you are engineering you and there’s a new belief/security structure/traits/attributes that you are introducing to your subconscious there is a natural resistance by your reasoning conscious mind’s critical analytical factor. However if you already have this trait, it’s part of you, it is who you are, it is part of your being, it is who you is, and there are other words that make up this trait or way of being or the way you interpret stimulus or how things occur to you; then it’s widely acceptable by your critical analytical filter and into the structure of how that word occurs to you.
Let’s try a different way, because this distinction is important for you to completely understand we are taking a little bit more time to make sure you have a complete understanding. Take the trait “happy” clearly a very important quality; studies have proven if you’re happy you will make more money and many other benefits. If right now you’re not happy, to have happy occur in your life consistently, in other words become part of your belief/security structure/attributes/traits and be present to you at all times, for your use effortlessly, could be difficult especially if you’re very unhappy or depressed. Often people that are unhappy joke a lot, often disguising unhappiness, joking makes one happy for sure at least temporarily, if you’re joking a lot you’re having fun, and if you having fun you are also happy at least temporarily, let’s say that you’re unhappy or depressed but you like to joke a lot and you want to engineer being happy into your life into who you are, into your very being. Don’t start with happy, that is so incredibly foreign to you and likely be rejected by your critical analytical factor. Start with something that you are now, such as your quality of always joking and make happy part of joking. So in other words, don’t build with happy, build with joking first. This is the natural way that your brain functions, your brain very readily and openly embraces a word that describes another word; this is part of the natural filing system in your subconscious mind. Just think for a moment learning a brand-new word and its definition can be difficult to remember, however a word that you already know the definition that’s described in a slightly different manner with a different word is very quickly retained and remembered. When engineering or reengineering you this building process becomes incredibly important for the complete embracing and downloading into the subconscious mind, so these new ways of being, are constantly occurring and present to you to use effortlessly at all times.
These two concepts are important as you engineer the person that you always dreamed of being you will find that the new beliefs/security structures give strength to one another and for a time, at the beginning, exponentially. In addition we group a set of WINstructions on an attribute, starting with the longest and ending with the shortest defining further for your subconscious mind an understanding of exactly what you want the attribute to mean to you, or what this word really is, thus entering the subconscious mind stealthily through your filtering mechanism in addition defining what exactly is the meaning.
Engineering “me” begins…
… Become the person you always dreamed of being …but there will be some surprises.
What is your core competency? What are you naturally gifted at doing? What are your God-given abilities? What are you best at? What are your talents? What are your children’s core competencies? What are your children’s natural gifted abilities? What are your children’s God given abilities? What are your children best at? What are your children’s talents? Do you know the answer to these questions? Do you think if you knew the answers to these questions you would be better off? Do you think if you knew the answers they would help you guide your future or your children’s future? Do you think if you knew the answers to these questions you would better know what subjects to take at school? If you knew the answers to these questions would you be better at setting a career path? If you knew the answers to these questions and you set a career path that was a direct reflection of your natural unique abilities and skill sets, do you think you would be more successful?
What is your core competency?… And how to know!
The one question that one can almost always be sure of the answer, what is your natural unique ability etc., the answer seems to always be, I don’t know. Yet across the board everyone agrees that it’s important to know, that if one knew they would be able to match/suit their skills/talents/abilities, first with an educational path, then with a career path. Yet subject/career selection seems for most, to be rather blind, more of the guess then a certainty, almost like throwing darts on a page of different career choices. Is that the best way to go about it? There is some testing that one can do but after most have more questions and confusion than they had in the first place. How do you know for sure, what’s in that magnificent factory of yours called your brain that creates for you, your unique abilities? And more important how do you ensure that these abilities, are present for you?
Present for you? What exactly does it mean you may be asking, if the unique ability that you have, if a belief/security structure/traits/attributes that you have is not present for you for the most part its useless. Derek Amato is one of the worlds “acquired savants” after hitting his head left him with an amazing ability to play the piano. Derek for the most part was an athlete and never played an instrument or taken a music lesson or studied music however shortly after hitting his head, at his friend’s house, played the piano for the first time, beautiful complex selections, as if musically gifted and played the piano for 30 years. Was his brain capable of that before he hit his head? Dr. Donald Treffert author “Islands of Genius” after studying acquired savants said “they know things that they never learned and that they came with factory installed software…we all come with factory installed software… In the acquired savant the dormant capacity is released… we all have this ability”
Tony Cicoria after being hit by lightning was able to compose classical music, Orlando Serrell after getting hit with a baseball discovered he could name the day of the week for every date, Alonzo Clemons after falling on his head able to sculpture animals in minutes, some of which have sold for $45,000, amazing abilities. In another acquired savant case, a high school dropout mugged and beaten became the only person in the world with the ability to draw complex geometric patterns called fractals this high school dropout also discovered a mistake in pi (a mathematical formula relating to area of a circle). These amazing stories clearly reveal the extraordinary power of your mind and that the ability must be present to be useful.
The path for which you were born
When you engineer you, and after you have completed engineering you, the vision may not always reflect the outcome. Another way to put it, what seems to typically happen, is that you will gravitate, in other words be attracted to certain ways of being that will be constantly present for you. In other words, the journey of engineering you will unveil to you “YOU”, as you build and perfect you, the real you is uncovered, in turn, help you; “map out” the path for which you were born.
WINosp for Winning in Sports
In 1960 Olympics the East Germans first started to use the power of the subconscious mind with their Olympic athletes in the 1964 Olympic Games Russia did as well. By 1968 all the countries that competed in the Olympics used the power of the subconscious mind to help their Olympic teams.
Earl Nightingale a leading expert on how the mind works said the secret of life comes down to six words- “you become what you think about”
Einstein said-“the ancestor of everything is a thought”
Jack Nicholas-“golf is 90% mental and 10% physical”
Yogi Berra-“baseball is 90% mental, and the other half physical”
Penn State coach Joe Paterno-“football is played, above all, with the heart and mind, it’s played with the body only secondarily. A coach’s first duty is to coach minds. If he doesn’t succeed at that, his team will not reach its potential.”
Psychologist Charles Garfield-“great athletes acknowledged that 60 to 90% of success in sports is due to mental factors.”
Mohammed Ali-“the fight is won or lost far away from the witnesses, behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road; long before I dance under those lights.”
Greg Louganis, Olympic diver practice mental visualization imagining in precise detail 40 times before climbing on the platform.
Venus Williams-“some people say I have attitude-maybe I do… But I think you have to. You have to believe in yourself when no one else does-that makes you a winner right there.”
Tiger Woods-“I’m the toughest golfer mentally.”
In a Russian study scientist compared Olympic athlete’s physical time training to mental time training and the benefits. The first group’s training was 100% physical, the second 75% physical and 25% mental training, the third group was 50-50, and the fourth group was 25% physical training and 75% mental. They trained like this for a period of time, and then were tested to see which group performed the best and improved the most.
What percentage of your time do you devote to physical training? What percentage of your time do you devote to mental training? (It doesn’t have to be sports related, whatever interest you have answer this question relating to that interest) Let’s see if you think that percentage should change after the results. In the Russian study the group that performed best was the group with 25% of their training physical and 75% mental. These were Olympic athletes the best of the best, is there any doubt whatsoever that the mind plays at worst an important role in your athletic performance and at best it’s profound, significant, maybe even dominant.
Natan Sharansky spent six years in a Russian prison after being accused of spying for the United States of America while in solitary confinement he played chess in his mind remarkably in 1996 he beat world champion chess player Gary Kasparov!
Cleveland clinic foundation studied two groups workouts, one group was physical and the other virtual (in their heads) the physical group had a 30% improvement in strength, the group that imagined their work out with their mind had an amazing 13.5% improvement in strength without physically lifting a weight or doing exercise incredible when you think about it. A study of brain patterns of weightlifters discovered that the same parts of the brain were affected and stimulated whether they imagined they were lifting weight or actually lifting weight. Mental practice alone has been found to be almost as good as physical with the most effective being both.
Jack Nicholas is known to never hit a shot not even in practice without having a sharp focused picture of in his head of the shot and where it will land. Mohammed Ali used different mental practices to enhance his performance such as affirmation, visualization, mental rehearsal, and probably the most powerful WINstruction ever uttered “I am the greatest.”
Studies of the brain have shown over and over again that simple thoughts produce many of the same mental brain responses as actual actions. Imagination/visualization/thought trigger many processes in the brain such as motor control, attention, perception so the brain is actually improving its ability with mental practice alone. Strong belief in one’s ability alone increased motivation, confidence, motor performance and are important winning factors to perform at your best.
Athletic Director for the University of Michigan Greg Hardin is touted as the universities “secret weapon” and is the heart and mind coach for all the university’s 900 athletes. New England Patriots star quarterback Tom Brady widely credits Greg Hardin for getting his mind ready teaching him to believe in himself when it was doubtful he would even have a starting position. Hardin coached Brady to discover his “winning edge” by capitalizing on his strengths of drive, determination, work ethic, competitiveness and minimizing his weaknesses his athletic abilities. Consider, is drive, determination, work ethic, competitiveness, a talent one’s born with or a belief that one develops? And is athletic ability a belief or is it a talent that someone’s born with? By forming, strengthening these beliefs today Brady is widely considered to be one of the greatest quarterbacks to ever play the game, despite his lack of athletic ability, think about that. Brady credits this heart and mind coach to be one of the most influential people in his life.
Desmond Howard Heisman Trophy winner-“if it wasn’t for Greg Hardin I wouldn’t be a Heisman Trophy winner… but first we have to get you mentally right is what Greg Hardin told me” as incredible as the above quote is what’s even more incredible is what the Heisman Trophy winner didn’t say, for example he didn’t say, if it wasn’t for my coaches, if it wasn’t for my talent, if it wasn’t for my team, what he said basically if it wasn’t for this heart and mind coach that got me “mentally right” I wouldn’t be a Heisman Trophy winner. If you’re an athlete what percentage of your time are you spending to get yourself mentally right? In the above Russian study the best results were from the group that spent 75% of the time in mental exercises/development, as far as what is the ideal formula between mental and physical time devoted to training is not completely certain, what is certain is that the combination is always dominant compared to one or the other.
Tiger Woods has described in an interview that often when he plays “I am so entrenched on the moment… my subconscious mind takes over… there are many shots I don’t remember hitting, I remember my club selection, I remember the ball flight… the more intense I get the more things slowdown… a lot of those times I don’t hear noise, I don’t hear anything I am so into the moment and hitting the shot-mentally prepared for that moment of hitting the shot and being mentally prepared for the shot… it’s almost as if I get out of the way… it’s as though my body does all the work and I just sit back and watch” Tiger has also said in other interviews that sometimes when he plays “it’s as though I blackout” Wood’s dad learned in the special forces the power of the subconscious mind and how the US military used it, initially taught his son and later Tiger worked with other experts in the field.
What is this experience that Tiger Woods is describing? What is happening in his mind when he’s hitting the shot and doesn’t remember hitting it? Is a similar to driving a car and getting someplace and not remembering how you got there? Is it that the conscious mind is not even involved and his subconscious mind is hitting the ball? Are you better off doing your athletic passion using 10% of your mind or 90% of your mind?
Michael Jordan-“it’s the mental that separates the good from the great players” in an interview Jordan described that he played his greatest games in slow motion and everything around him was quiet.
The conscious mind is able to process approximately 40 bits of information per second while the subconscious mind is capable of processing as much as 40 million bits of information per second, if you were experiencing your world at 40 bits per second and then you could experience your world at 40 million bits per second how would the world appear different to you? Do you think your world would slow down, if you were playing your sport and processing all that information at a much faster rate do you think you’d be any better? If you are quarterback and you could process information at a much higher rate, would you have time to look over the whole field to not only see who is opened but also in addition calculate and figure out once the receiver catches the ball which receiver would likely get the most yards?
The power of the subconscious mind is truly magnificent and boundless in its limitless abilities to live the adventure of life, full of limitless opportunities whether it’s in sports, work, health, addictions, raising children, understanding and utilizing the most incredible factory on the face of this earth, the one between your two years is paramount to living the life for which you were born.
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