How Sport Psychology Can Help You Dominate Life

Picture this:

You are a Senior Motion Designer at Rothco Media.

For the past 6 years, you've proven your competency, and so you've been given the task of preparing and delivering the pitch for a multi-year partnership with Warner Bros. Studios.

The stakes are at an all-time high.

This would be the biggest deal in Rothco's history, a multi-9-figure deal that would make Rothco the exclusive design studio for Warner Bros' next 5 blockbuster films.

If this deal goes through, you'll be promoted to Director of Motion Graphics for the entire team at both Rothco and Warner Bros. (along with a $250k signing bonus)

You have 1 hour and 34 slides to get through.

This morning could change the entire trajectory of your career and the company's future.

You've read through the material several times, you've spent hours in meetings, ironed out the details of the agreement, and your team has prepared sample work for months prior.

You walk into the board room, shake the executives' hands, and walk right up to the head of the table to give your presentation.

But something strange begins to happen...

Your chest begins to tighten. Your breath is shallow and your heart is beating so fast you worry they might hear it too!

You start to speak, but your voice cracks.

Your mouth is like a barren wasteland, devoid of any trace of moisture.

You're sweating profusely, stumbling over your words and before you know it...

You blew it.

I'm sure many of us have experienced something similar at some point in our lives.

But why does this happen?

You practiced, you prepared, you did your homework!

But you did not account for the emotional and chemical reactions of your body.

The stress response can be a real b*tch.

You can understand something rationally, you can practice, prepare, and study; but often times the ‘game day’ circumstances elicit a set of emotional and physiological reactions so different, that all our practice goes out the window.

In this article, I want to share with you one of the most interesting discoveries to come out of the field of sport psychology in the past 50 years.

The Power of Visualization

Visualization is a sort of mental rehearsal where you close your eyes, get into a comfortable position and while engaging as many of your senses as you can, you replicate the performance environment.

Whether that be writing an important exam, a firefighter running into a burning building, giving an important presentation, sports or musical performance, a first date, whatever it may be!

You want to visualize yourself performing the skill, or executing the performance to perfection, and you are aiming to induce the same emotional response.

It's not enough to simply see it, you have to feel it.

One of the most fascinating discoveries that has been proven through the use of fMRI scans is that when we visualize something, we are engaging the exact same neural pathways as doing the activity itself.

Now, there will be some degrees of variability here based on your ability to visualize, meaning how accurately you can mentally replicate the performance environment and induce a similar emotional state.

But, if you recall one of the principles of neuroscience and psychology:

"Neurons that fire together, wire together."
— Donald Hebb

Simply stated, by repeating an action in the theatre of our minds we are actually training our brain to get accustomed to that neural pathway and facilitating that action to be replicated in future performance.

How cool is that!?

I'm saying that your brain literally does not know the difference between what is imagined and what is real.

The 10,000 Hour "Rule"

In his best-selling book "Outliers", Malcolm Gladwell popularized the idea that in order to gain mastery in a complex skill or domain, we must put in 10,000 hours of deliberate practice.

However, what he left out, and what most people don't realize is that those 10,000 hours don't necessarily have to be physical practice...

Skeleton is one of those primitive Olympic sports that makes you wonder how it hasn't been banned considering several people have died doing it.

The lights go green, you sprint at full speed before jumping head-first into your sled, racing at speeds up to 95 miles per hour.

Due to the speed, there is an immense pressure exerted on the body.

Similar to Formula 1 drivers, Skeleton racers are pulling 5 G's of Force, making their 9-pound heads feel like 45 pounds.

Due to health concerns, Skeleton racers can only do 2 practice runs per day, meaning they get less than 2 minutes of physical practice per day.

This means it would take them roughly 821 years to put in their 10,000 hours and develop mastery.

So how do they do it?

Visualization.

For Olympic sledding athletes, most of their practice is, in fact, mental.

They must visualize a map of the track in their mind's eye, strategizing how they'll approach the turns, trying to feel the speed, pressure and forces they'll encounter.

Visualization has been scientifically proven to:

• Allow us to reproduce skills more quickly, accurately and smoothly.
• Manage expectations and emotions more effectively.
• Be more present in high-stakes environments.
• Have more confidence in our own abilities

In the realm of sports, visualization is not an esoteric practice at all.

Great athletes like Jordan, Lebron, Cristiano Ronaldo, Muhammad Ali, Novak Djokovic, and Michael Phelps all swear by it...

But the applications of mental rehearsal extend far beyond sports, so let's talk about how you can apply the best principles of sport psychology in your life to start completely dominating.

Applied Sport Psychology

Sam Ovens, beloved internet entrepreneur and Founder of Skool, has an amazing quote which I love:

"It doesn't matter what you believe is true,
because with work that will become true"
— Sam Ovens

Your beliefs lead to your actions, your actions create your results, and your results give you feedback which loops back around and reinforces your beliefs.

This is the cycle of personal evolution.

Now, when you understand this in conjunction with the power of visualization, you've unlocked the master key to shifting your identity.

This is critical because as I've stated previously:

We don't achieve goals, we achieve characters.

It is through the development of a new sense of self and identity that we can then attain our highest ideals.

What we can do is craft an image of our ideal character, and use visualization to reinforce that belief.

The person who has the charisma and verbal fluency to deliver an incredible presentation.

The zen-like entrepreneur who can lock onto a task and work tirelessly with unwavering focus.

The charming leader with a magnetic personality who exudes confidence and authority when they walk into any room.

Whatever it is you wish to be, you can create an image of that person in your mind's eye and practice!

This might sound too good and simple to be true, but I'd urge you to try it.

My Experience with Visualization

I used to work as a Personal Trainer at Gold's Gym; and in case you're unfamiliar with how these kind roles work at commercial gyms, you're basically a glorified sales rep.

Sure, you train people, but unless you know how to sell, you'll have a very hard time making decent money.

So it was the night before I had my first-ever sales meetings, I'm fresh off a week of training and I've never done anything similar before.

Each meeting is exactly a hour, and in that time you have to build rapport, gather information about their goals, motivation, exercise history, perform a body scan, then take them through a 15-minute movement analysis, show off your expertise, then bring them back into the office to solicit the sale.

If all goes well, you then have to sign a contract, collect payment, maybe give them a fistbump and wave them goodbye at the door.

Even for someone with a lot of experience, it can be difficult to actually keep these under an hour.

So as a rookie, with zero sales experience, having my first 4 meetings ever scheduled back to back was a daunting task.

But at this point, I'd been meditating consistently for over a year and because of my studies, I knew the power of visualization.

So I sat down in bed the night before, got into a meditative state and I visualized the meetings going to perfection.

I pictured the gym, the 15-20 step walk towards the PT office, the top-40 music playing in the background, the anxiety the client may feel walking into a Gold's Gym seeing meatheads grunting as they stare down the posters of Arnold on the wall.

I pictured the shock on their face when I'd tell them the price is over $2,000 and I thought about what I'd say when they told me "I need to think about it".

I did the same thing the next morning before showing up work.

That day, I closed 3 out of 4 sales.

Nearly, hitting my commision target for the entire month.

I've been told many times after delivering presentations in school, or in the comment sections of my videos that I have a "natural" speaking ability.

But this couldn't be further from the truth...

There is nothing "natural" about it.

My speaking ability (which has long ways to go still) is a result of deliberate practice, mental rehearsal, and affirmative self-talk.

Most people tend to have a terrible fixed mindset and negative self-dialogue when it comes to things like this:

• "I don't do well with public speaking"
• "I can't remember people's names"
• "I'm not very artistic or creative"
• "I'm not athletic, or well-coordinated"

Blah, blah, blah, on and on it goes.

How many times do you say things like this to yourself?

How many times do you hear people say things like this about themselves?

The truth is we all visualize and use these principles every day.

The problem is that we don't just fail to use them deliberately, but we actually use them destructively.

We're quick to visualize the worst case scenarios and picture everything that could go wrong. We're quick to re-affirm our limiting beliefs through negative self-talk.

As Maxwell Maltz famously stated in his book "Psychocybernetics", our mind works just like a goal-seeking mechanism.

When we have certain beliefs and thought patterns about ourselves and the world around us, our subconscious mind goes to work to find evidence to confirm it.

This is called confirmation bias.

But just like this can be a mechanism for destruction if it goes unobserved, we can also choose to take conscious control over it and use it deliberately for our success.

So let me share some of my secret sauce, to illustrate how this works.

An affirmative statement that I bring to mind several times a day is the following:

"I am well-spoken, articulate, and highly charismatic. The spoken word is my sword, and I am a master at work."

Now, that is a pretty bold statement.

And believe me, I did feel resistance and impostor syndrome the first time I ever wrote that down and tried to repeat it to myself.

Regardless, I kept an open mind to this suggestion and I would visualize scenarios where I would demonstrate this ability. In front of the camera, in presentations, in conversations, and so on.

What happens after is really interesting:

1) You consciously begin to work to make the statement true.

What would a well-spoken, articulate, and highly charismatic person do?

They study.

I began to read more challenging books, I started to write more, I began to pay attention to great speakers, analyzing their cadence, rhythm, their use of alliteration and so forth.

I began to practice every week; being conscious of my use of language in everyday conversations, as well as when I film my videos.

2) You subconsciously seek evidence to make the statement true.

This is the stage in the personal evolution cycle where the feedback you receive loops back around and reinforces your beliefs.

When you practice visualizing an ideal performance, skill progression, or attribute development it's as if your mind is attuned to the respective frequency of that radio station.

(I know this metaphor is overused in wishy-washy self-help literature, but it truly is perfect so I'm using it regardless)

When your mind is attuned to this mental image, you subconsciously seek ways to make it true (the confirmation bias mechanism).

So maybe it was a conversation that went smoothly, where I expressed my thoughts clearly and effortlessly.

Maybe it's a passing comment that someone casually made, or a look of attentiveness that lets you know you've captured someone's attention.

These are subtle things which may not have registered in my awareness previously, but because of my affirmative self-talk patterns, and because of my visualization habit, I notice them.

Thus, reinforcing my belief that I am in fact a well-spoken, articulate individual.

You can apply this to any area of your life, and I suggest you do.

Closing thoughts

Now, before you go, I want to leave you with 3 very tangible things you can do to apply the things we've been talking about here.

Each one of these merits its own discussion at length, but for now I want to leave you with something tangible in case you're part of that 1% of people that actually takes action after hearing a piece of advice.

• Learn to control your breath
• Develop a daily meditation practice
• Actively monitor your self-talk and align it to your life's vision.

I hope this serves you

— Mikey 🧙🏼‍♂️