The Value of Mental Rehearsal

Some time during 1984, a colleague of mine, Sylvan Scheffler, brought to my attention and article on a gentleman by the name of Dr. Charles Garfield.

It was a Wall Street Journal article that discussed Garfield’s work with athletes

In using their minds as their gyms to help them obtain Peak Performance. I was fascinated by the article, and I contacted Garfield to see if he would be willing to meet with me to discuss the use of his techniques in enhancing the performance of financial professionals.

He agreed to see me in his office in Berkley for a fee of $4,000 to have access to him for a day. I flew out to San Francisco and rented a car for the drive to Berkley where Charles Garfield was the head of something called the Peak Performance Institute. Peak Performance was a popular scientific field in the Soviet Union, but Garfield’s group was one of a kind in the United States at the time.

After an introductory period of getting to know each other, we settled down to a discussion on Mental Rehearsal and how it can be used to help even non athletes greatly enhance their performance.

It is not that no one in the US was using these techniques. People like Jack Nicolaus, Chris Everett and Bill Russell often spoke how they used mental rehearsal to better prepare themselves. Jack Nicolaus once said,” I never hit a shot, not even in practice  without having a very sharp, in-focus picture of it in my head.”

Relaxation goes hand and hand with mental rehearsal You must know how to get totally relaxed before you try using mental rehearsal techniques. It is not that difficult. My approach is to sit in my prized comfort chair in my bedroom and then simply close my eyes. I follow this by trying to relax the top of my head and then my face, neck, chest, stomach, legs and feet. It takes a little focus, but in many ways, it is a form of meditation.

Once this is accomplished you merely think of a situation such as a talk you are planning to give or a major decision you have to make and you begin to rehearse all of the things you are going to say as well as the possible reactions you might get and then decide based on this mental rehearsal technique whether or not you think you should proceed. Similarly, this technique can help either avoid or eliminate risk. If you have rehearsed the potential consequences that may occur as a result of your actions and feel comfortable about proceeding, then you in fact have either eliminated any risk or at least you are comfortable with any risk your action may cause. If you are willing to accept the consequences of your act, then it is easier to proceed as if there is no risk at all.

This technique can help you improve your skills in sports, help you give better presentations and make better decisions. It also allows you to increase your confidence, improve your focus and concentration and reduce stress. I also find that accelerates the mastery of new skills as well as stimulates creative thinking.

Simply stated: Anything you can do that has as many positive effects as mental rehearsal is worth doing and doing well and often.

RJC

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There Is More Than One Right Answer

The first time that I was exposed to the concept that there was more than one right answer was when a met a photographer by the name of Dewitt Jones. Although Dewitt was somewhat a “hippie” in the vernacular of the sixties he overwhelmed you with his sense of creativity. He possessed a level of confidence that was contagious.

This is a man who was never satisfied that he had reached the optimal right answer, and he used his world-class talent as a photographer to demonstrate it. There was always a different angle, or a different lens or different lighting that could enhance the vision of his subject matter.

I vividly remember him talking about a picture of a tree in Yosemite that was hanging off a cliff. He showed me three different presentations of the same subject. The first was quite remarkable and most people would have stopped there. His second depiction gave you the impression that there was no possible way you could improve upon it and yet the final photograph was by far the most powerful representation of the image. He repeated this over with a variety of subjects looking for better answers using a variety of lenses and filters and multiple perspectives.

It was then that I started thinking about the proposition that there is more than one right answer could be applied to many aspects of life. I wondered why few people ever spoke of the concept of finding more than one right answer. It seems that we live in a world where people may look for answers but never look for a second or even a third right answer.

Yet one does not have to look far to see the vast breakthroughs that exist entirely because of rejecting the way something was always done and replacing it with a better right answer.

As late as 14th century, books were handwritten and illustrated. Thousands of monks would sit in monasteries copying what few texts were available. But then another right answer presented itself in the form of the Gutenberg printing press. The impact of mass-produced books and pamphlets left the world in a place where it would never be the same again. This idea barely predates Columbus by 50 years.

In the last few decades, it is almost impossible to measure the changes in life that resulted from better right answers. The Internet opened the world to better understanding, access to information and communication. We had been talking about electric cars for decades and then finally, Tesla was a new right answer for the automobile. Lift and Uber were new right answers to taxis or car services. Pay Pal was a new right answer to paying for online purchases safely. Zell and Venmo were better ways to transfer funds and eliminate the fraud that was prevalent with checks. Amazon and EBAY were new right answers for shopping and the list goes on and on. Notably, Apple was a new right answer to computers, to listening to music, to buying music and a host of other things. Kindle was a new answer to buying books, but it required another right answer, stable electronic ink before it could become practical. We are currently waiting with baited breadth to see where artificial intelligence brings us. Most of these second or third right answers became billion-dollar ideas.

Total mastery of old right answers seems to be the starting point to find new ones.

Picasso mastered “The Masters” before he went on to Cubism. Most of the greatest artist who took painting to another level were very skilled in all the basics before leading us to Impressionism, Pointillism, Expressionism, Fauvism Abstraction, Photo Realism etc., etc. Jimi Hendrix mastered the guitar keyboard before he started looking for new right answers in his music

A great starting point for finding the next right answer is very simple. The next time you find what you think is a right answer, look for anther one before you implement it. You might just find a billion-dollar idea.

The Significant Dozen - Twelve Concepts That Can Lead You to a More Meaningful and Productive Life

The Significant Dozen

Twelve Concepts That Can Lead You to a More Meaningful and Productive Life 

As a student of personal development for the past 45 years, I have had the privilege of being exposed to some of the greatest minds in many aspects of personal development. People like Peter Drucker and Larry Biederman in Management, Jim Redfield in Spirituality, Charles Garfield in Peak Performance, Ted Levitt in Marketing, Hyrum Smith and J. Mitchell Perry in Psychology, DeWitt Jones in Understanding Multiple Perspectives, Robert Cialdini in Persuasion and Charlie Dwyer in Influence and Deepak Chopra in Life Fulfillment, just to name a few. All of these men and many other men and women have had a great impact on my life.

In thinking back over the years, I have had a chance to reflect a lot about the most important lessons that I have learned that have both helped me to lead a more fulfilling and productive life.

In the 22 years that I have been a professional speaker and motivator, I have had the opportunity to try several of these concepts on hundreds of audiences throughout the country. The response has been overwhelming.

Limiting these lessons to a 12 was a struggle at first but after spending many years determining which ones should be included, it is now easy for me to present to you, “The Significant Dozen.”

This blog will give you a basic outline of these concepts. In the next twelve months I will provide you with a more detailed insight each month of one of these concepts and how it relates to your self-improvement and personal development.

There is more than one right answer

Over the years it has been increasingly obvious to me that our entire educational system causes individuals to look for only one right answer. The discussion around this concept shows the value of constantly looking for more right answers. It show how things like UBER and Tesla and Amazon are a result of another right answer to apply a particular problem or opportunity.

Mental Rehearsal and Developing Repeatable Processes

“I never hit a shot, not even in practice, without having a very sharp, in focus picture of it in my head.”  Jack Nicklaus

Mental rehearsal is by no means unknown to most athletes but the formalization of the technique and its’ systematic use by non-athletes is quite a new concept. The discussion around this concept centers on developing mental rehearsal techniques to improve productivity and eliminate risk from life.

Rechecking Information

Customer service is based on exceeding expectations. The importance of understanding what people’s expectations are, is critical in forming meaningful and trustful relationships. The only sure fire way to learn what they thing is to ask them. This discussion talks about the importance of rechecking information since people evolve and will change what they think many times during the course of a relationship and it is imperative that we constantly recheck there feelings about a plethora of issues.

Todays Solution to Time management

Most time management techniques were developed in an age without cellphones, emails and text messaging just to name a few of todays distractions. This discussion centers on the concept of getting rid of things and delegating things rather than trying to just prioritize. Historical time management techniques no longer work in the current age. It is just physically and emotionally impossible to comply with all of the demands that are made on our time today.

This lesson was given to me by Peter Drucker in 1977.

MAGIC: the Secret to Successful Delegation

No one concept can be more successful than proper delegation techniques in making anyone more productive. In this discussion the Larry Biederman’s acronym MAGIC is dissected and used as the “secret sauce” in successful delegation techniques. All great delegators use this technique.

There is No Such Thing as a Coincidence

One of the many quotes attributable to the New York Yankees Hall of Fame catcher, Yogi Berra is, “It was Déjà vu all over again.”

Jim Redfield taught me that whenever people cross our paths, there is always a message for us. Chance encounters do not exist. But how we respond to these encounters determines whether we’re able to receive the message. If we have a conversation with someone who crosses our path and we do not see a message pertaining to our current questions, it does not mean there was no message. It only means we missed it for some reason.” In this segment we will touch on how to proactively get that message.

The Price of Influence

Dr. Robert Cialdini’s work shows the remarkable value that influence can have on persuasion. Most people are familiar with tenets of his work. But, Dr. Robert Dwyer has shown in his work that there is a price that one pays for influence. This discussion weaves the work of these two giants into a workable influence model that can be adapted into anyone’s’ personal and business life.

Enlarging Your Circle of Excellence by Rewarding Effort

Too often we search for perfection. We also judge others on our definitions of perfection. This can really be detrimental to personal relationships. This segment explores the importance of enlarging your circle of excellence, a concept advanced to me by Dr. Mitchell Perry, by relaxing our criteria as it applies to others and allows us to judge effort as well as results.

Get to Know the Most Important People in Your Community

The value of knowing the most important people in your community is well documented in my previous writings and lectures. The concept of how to identify and meet these people is too important to leave off this list. By having these personal relations we can do tremendous good for others and ourselves.

Keith Ferrazzi’s book, “Never Eat Alone,” is one I could have easily written.

The One Rule that Will Insure You Lead an Ethical Life

The world is filled with black and white deeds. When an action considered is black, we have been trained to avoid it and when it is considered white, we know we can proceed. All of the problems in ethics center on when something is grey. This segment ensures us to do the proper thing when we are in between black and white.

The Law of Giving

“The Universe operates through dynamic exchange…giving and receiving are different aspects of the flow of energy in the Universe.  And in our willingness to give that which we seek, we keep the abundance of the Universe circulating in our lives.

This segment discusses Robert Cialdini’s Rule of Reciprocity and the concept of Acts of Kindness.

Developing a Robust Capacity to Enjoy the Process

The proverbial question of “How many people say on their deathbed that they wish they had worked harder?”

The Philosopher, Tom Morris, gave me the key to life many years ago. In coordinating the various parts of our life through a robust self-inventory, we can very easily put into effect a more meaningful business and personal life.