29 May Visualising Happiness
It’s been a while but a recent mailing from Lou Tice has led me to once again share his thoughts with you. As is often the case, his writings are not directly related to happiness but even though he doesn’t speficially refer to happiness there’s no doubt that the strategy about which he writes could easily be applied by those of us wanting more positive emotions.
Read his email below and think about how you can use visualisation of happiness to create a better life…
Winner’s Circle Network with Lou Tice – 5/28/08 – “Visualization Techniques”
Today, I want to talk about how athletes, and others who take performance very seriously, bring out the best in themselves.
In nearly 40 years of teaching people how to use more of their potential, I have worked with many professional athletes and sports organizations.
Athletes began to use leading-edge techniques like mental rehearsal and focused concentration years before the general public had even heard of them.
We weren’t sure then how these techniques worked, but we knew they did. Jack Nicklaus, for example, said that he would “watch a movie” in his head before each shot.
These days, thanks to many researchers, we know more. Peter Fox and his colleagues at the University of Texas monitored people’s brain activities as they performed various body movements and also as they imagined performing the movements. They found that the actual physical movement consistently involved the interaction of several specific areas of the brain. Imagining the movement activated those same areas of the brain. In other words, mental rehearsal of an action puts the mind through a neural workout that is very much like the real thing.
So whether you’re trying to break your own personal best record in a sport or sell a new car to an ambivalent customer, mental rehearsal, or visualization, can help you prepare for peak performance by walking you through successful strategies and potential pitfalls.
Lou Tice
The Pacific Institute
www.thepacificinstitute.com