You Have To Be There Mentally Before You Are There Physically
41. You have to be there mentally before you are there physically.
Your mind cannot tell the difference between an actual experience and a mental one. This fact is mentioned a number of times throughout this book. The reason I believe it comes up again and again is because it is important for you to understand the role your mind plays in determining success. The key to this Tool is to start to think about what you want and where you want to be. This is obviously why we write our goals down in our S.A.N.E. section.
The reason we need to use this application is to expedite the probability of reaching our destination. So how we can help that occur is to start thinking about being there before we get there. If your goal is to win a swimming meet, you want to visualize in your mind what the water feels like. What it feels like to win the race. How it feels when you’re holding the trophy at the end. By going through this process over and over in your head, your body will start to feel the event happening before it actually does.
This can be applied to other areas besides just athletics. If you are trying to build a successful business, what are the things you would see in your mind that a successful business would have? You would see happy customers buying your product. You would see them sending their friends and family to your business. You would see employees making the extra effort to build the business of your dreams. As you continue to run through this exercise, you will start to program your brain to feel what this feels like long before you ever get there. Hence, you will start doing the things that make this success begin to feel real and then translate it into reality.
If your goal is to get into shape, what do you think it would feel like to be fit? What do you think you would be doing if you were in the best shape you could be? You would be active and fitting into better clothes. You would be getting compliments from your friends and coworkers. Your confidence would be the highest it had been in some time, maybe ever. When you keep thinking about it mentally, you start to feel what it would be like.
When you start by training brain pathways before you get to the actual event, you will plow a way for these goals to actually occur. You can go in many directions with this Tool. You might pretend to walk like the most successful lawyer in town would walk. You may fantasize that when you get in your car, you are driving that dream car you have always wanted. It works on so many levels. It keeps you focused on what you want, it trains your brain to get used to the feeling of the ultimate destination, and in a weird way you essentially enjoy the prize a little before you actually get there. You get your mind more prepared to accept wins.