To win any kinds of big projects in life, you must first be able to win in your mind. I don't care if it's something really little where it's going to take you half an hour and you're going to produce a result. You've got to see yourself winning that thing.
Or if it's something huge, it could be a competitive event of a sporting nature, it could be some kind of project you're working on for work or business, it could be something you're producing, a book, a song, a video.
You need to be able to see yourself triumphant, see yourself executing this thing to the best of your ability and getting the result you want to get. But you need to be able to see and feel this in advance, before you ever begin.
Here's the problem: We look back at previous experiences in our lives where things didn't pan out that well, and they're pretty painful. And so when we want to take on something new, for whatever reason, these old memories or emotions get drawn up, almost by default and we start remembering the times we tried to do something and it didn't pan out.
Immediately, we start second guessing ourselves, we start wondering what if this happens again and we take a hit to our confidence, we start visualizing a less-than-successful outcome. And then our mindset going into this important event is totally thrown off. And as soon as the mindset is thrown off, how do you think our performance is going to be at the end of all of that? And you know what the answer is.
Let's talk about how we can make a mental shift and begin to train ourselves to start seeing ourselves victorious in whatever it is we're about to embark on, ahead of time.
There are three tips I want to give you here that can help you do it. I also want to remind you that there are videos you can watch and books you can read of successful and famous people throughout history who clearly understood the strategy, implemented it and it worked for them over and over again.
If you need an example, go look up Mohammad Ali videos. This guy knew, without a shadow of a doubt, before he started any fight that he was going to win, and he wasn't always 100% of the time right. Sometimes he did lose, but in his mind before he started he won that fight each and every single time and he showed it and it made him successful.
Let's talk about the three tips you can use. The first one is drawing up memories where you were successful.
Maybe you're about to make a big presentation or speech and immediately your subconscious, your emotional reaction to that new goal draws up all these other times where you failed or it was sub-par performance and people didn't really connect with your message. It wasn't a victorious outcome, as you wanted it to be. That may come up first, but you can immediately interrupt that by starting to remember other times where you were successful.
Maybe it wasn't in the speaking realm. Maybe you're a tennis player and you had a flawless match one day won against someone who should have kicked your butt, because you were on your game, you were focused, you were having a good day, maybe you trained extra hard for that game.
You can immerse yourself in that memory and begin to feel totally successful, for no other reason than the fact you're remembering this time previously in your life where you were successful.
You'll start to get into winning mindset. The more you dwell on that feeling, the more you can start encouraging that feeling to mold into the visualization of your current endeavor, whatever it is you're working on right now where you want to be victorious.
Then you can start shifting in your mind and seeing yourself coming out successful. Let's say you're going back to this presentation you're working on right now. Now you can incorporate those winning feelings of your tennis match into the now, into this current moment as you begin to see yourself experiencing this new win in the future.
The next tip is to start using something I call negative worry. This is the opposite of worry. We're so good at worrying how crappy an event might turn out for us or how much we're going to screw something up. What if I do this or what if this goes wrong or what if he or she says this and throws me off my game?
Before we know it, we're spiraling out of control with all these negatives that totally make us feel defeated, even before we begin. The opposite of that is to worry about what could possibly go right, and this is where the introduction of those previous memories works really well.
With negative worry, you start saying what if I actually get into a really good flow? What if I start delivering this speech and new ideas enter my mind and I get a new level of energy and I start delivering a talk like I've never delivered before and the audience is connecting with me and by the end of it I'm getting a standing ovation and incredible feedback and people are ordering from me at the end of it?
You can literally just worry yourself in a negative direction, meaning you're foreseeing a positive outcome.
You start visualizing that kind of outcome, along with those previously drawn up memories of positivity, of winning, you combine those two experiences together and now you're moving in the direction of being in the winning mindset before you begin.
That brings me to my third tip, which is how you keep yourself feeling good before the actual event begins. You've used memories, you've used some of this negative worry to move in the direction of feeling good.
How do you keep that going?
You do it with self-talk, and it can literally be a voice inside your head where you talk to yourself, saying here's some of the things I intend on creating to happen. Here are some of the things that are going to work out for me. Here's what's going to happen when I do this. I'm really good at presenting because I've practiced a lot and have a lot to share and I've had a lot of experiences that I know this audience needs to hear.
You start building more and more momentum. The more you talk to yourself in assertive, positive, winning type of mindset ahead of time, the more you're going to feel this winning mindset in your body and at a visceral level before you begin.
Imagine if you were to start to do this for both small and big challenges in your life. If you got into the habit of feeling successful before you begin and worry in the opposite direction, visualizing a positive outcome and you're talking to yourself, reminding yourself this is possible, you do this daily, weekly and before you know it this is just who you are.
Now how many opportunities do you think you're going to have to be successful versus if you enter every endeavor with a losing mindset? Who is going to have a higher degree of success in the person? Person A or person B?
The person who is expecting to win, expecting to be successful or the person who is questioning if this thing is even possible? You know what the answer is. You know who you need to be. So let's start all doing this.
Let's work on seeing the end result as we want to see it ahead of time and feeling like a winner regardless. Then you know you're going to bring your A game and however it turns out is how it turns out, and you move onto the next event always expecting to be the best.
I hope this helps you get a different perspective on your challenges and gives you a level of confidence that maybe you didn't have before. A level of confidence that might actually cause you to win, where you could have lost otherwise.
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Keye Wu
