To achieve success, visualize success
Chase Hughes spoke about rehearsing before a big fight, or a big event in your life, whatever it might be. He spoke about the importance of visualizing everything. Of seeing it through to the end, visualizing success, and then doing it over. Repeating it again, and again, and again, in your mind. Visualizing and anticipating, so that when you do step into the ring, the office, onto the stage to give a presentation, you are prepared for whatever comes your way. And the more you rehearse, the higher your chances are of succeeding.
It’s something that Charles Duhigg also spoke about in The Power of Habit. He used Michael Phelps as the example.
Michael Phelps had a very specific routine that he followed every day during training. This was intentional. So that when we woke up on race day, he was able to get right to action without having to think. There was not hesitation. Part of his routine during training was visualizing his race. His launch off the board. His stroke. His breathing. His turn. Visualizing each piece of the race.
He become such a master of visualizing his races, that during one race when his goggles started filling with water, preventing him from being able to see, he didn’t panic. He knew exactly what to do. He had visualized this race so many times beforehand, that he didn’t need his sight. It was already programmed in him, and he won, despite not being able to see.
That’s the power of rehearsing.
But I think perhaps the more important thing that Chase Hughes said was that every time you envision your event, race, fight, or presentation, and that vision is filed with fear, anxiety, things going wrong, and insecurities, that also counts as a rehearsal. A bad rehearsal, but a rehearsal nonetheless. And each time you rehearse in this way, you engrain the opposite outcome in your brain. You begin to engrain failure, because that’s what you see.
It was a very interesting perspective because it is true, and I had never thought about it that way before. It would be the equivalent of repeating the wrong lines or the wrong scene while rehearsing for a movie, or play. If that were to happen, chances are the performance would be shitty.
It’s also interesting to me, because that is what I did in preparing for my trip to the cabin a couple of weeks ago. I thought about all the things that could go wrong. I thought about all the things that were making me nervous. I had planned on going out a week earlier to run reconnaissance and see what the trail was like. Get an idea of how difficult it might be. Even knowing about the parking situation, and permitting. But I never did it.
I went in blind, suppressing my fear and anxieties, instead of acknowledging them. So, it should be no surprise that when disaster struck, when I feel in a snow well and was stuck chest deep (aka, my goggles filled with water), I immediately decided to turn back. I had never visualized successfully getting to the cabin. I didn’t know what to expect. I hadn’t planned. So it didn’t take much to throw me off.
Don’t that negative rehearsal a place in your mind. Shut it down. It doesn’t serve you. Worrying and giving yourself anxiety over something you have to do or want to do, is not going to help you be prepared. It’s just going to hamper performance.
Instead take the time to visualize success, from beginning to the end. Anticipate where things might go wrong, what questions might be asked, and then figure out the answers. Step out into the field before your trip, or onto the stage before your presentation. See what it feels like. Get comfortable in the uncomfortable environment.
Take the time to go through the motions. Stay positive and smile. Give yourself the best chance to succeed by visualizing yourself on the other side of success.