The Power of Mental Rehearsal
Visualize who you want to be and what you want to accomplish
Michael Phelps is the most decorated Olympian of all time. Winning 28 medals over the course of 4 Olympic Games, he set an incredible standard for all future athletes. Phelps’ phenomenal success wasn’t by accident; he visualized, mentally rehearsed, practiced, and created it all.
Phelps and his coach Bob Bowman have publicly shared his preparation techniques for swim competitions, which includes visualization and mental rehearsal.
First, Phelps would visualize his success. He focused on the exact time he wanted to achieve to win a gold medal. He had a clear vision of what he wanted to achieve, which became the drive that motivated his grueling daily practices.
Then, Phelps would mentally rehearse each race before they happened. Here’s a description of how he and his coach mentally rehearsed:
“They started Phelps’ visualization process by getting the body in a completely relaxed state. Bowman stressed how the visualization had to be very vivid and rehearsed many times. Phelps would rehearse his races hundreds of times before the day of the race so that when he would step up on the blocks, his body goes on autopilot. His body knew what to do from rehearsing so many times, and his races became second nature in a way that his brain already knew how to swim the race.”
According to Bowman, vision and mental rehearsal are two sides of the same coin. “You must program your internal viewfinder.” Having worked with some of the most successful swimmers in the world, Bowman believes the key to success is mental rehearsal because it is a “proven, well-established technique to achieve peak performance in nearly every endeavor.” “The brain cannot distinguish between something that’s vividly imagined and something that’s real.”
In last week’s newsletter, I shared about how you can recreate yourself by using identity-based visualization. This is the same technique Michael Phelps used for preparing for all his success. He visualized who he wanted to be and what he wanted to create, and then mentally prepared himself for that eventuality. We can all do the same when it comes to growing ourselves and creating our own success.
In an interview with Forbes, Phelps’ coach Bob Bowman shared that he believes anyone can use Phelps’ techniques reaching their goals:
[All] of us—regardless of our field—have a strong belief in who we are today and who we’d like to be tomorrow. When we set goals in business, sports, or any area of achievement, there’s a gap between where we are and where we want to be. “The most strongly held mental picture is where you’ll be… so get really good at mental rehearsal,” Bowman advises. “If you can form a strong mental picture and visualize yourself doing it, your brain will immediately find ways to get you there.”
As a leader who desires to become a more conscious leader and reach your full potential, visualization and mental rehearsal are indispensable practices. Whether it’s preparing for a big meeting, setting your annual goals, or recreating yourself, visualization and mental rehearsal will help you achieve greater success.
So how do we go about visualizing our success and creating a new version of ourselves through mental rehearsal? Dr. Joe Dispenza has been teaching these techniques for many years and his research shows that meditation is a powerful method for visualization and mental rehearsal.
Start with a daily meditation where, like an actor, you embody the person you want to become and what that person experiences:
“Just as actors can use their craft to change themselves, we can use similar skills to change ourselves. Any time we can embody the feelings ahead of a new experience … any time we mentally rehearse how we’ll act or feel in a new future … we’re using the same “muscles” actors use to inhabit a new character. “
“The more we practice; the more we rehearse; the more we cultivate the emotions of our new future … the more prepared we are for a new experience. The more we’re ready for the unknown.”
When you meditate, visualize, and mentally rehearse, you should feel like the person you want to become and enter your day with that energy and experience. It’s amazing how mentally rehearsing what you want to achieve actually helps make that experience happen.
This week, make the commitment to visualize and mentally rehearse who you want to become and what you want to accomplish. Then start noticing how what you envisioned and rehearsed starts manifesting in your life. This is the power of conscious co-creation.
Work happy. Live happy. BE happy.
Meredith
The way we work and build teams is rapidly changing. Leaders often feel unprepared to navigate the transition. As a conscious leadership coach, consultant, and communicator, Meredith helps leaders and their teams create new ways of working and relating so they can prepare for the future by consciously co-creating it.
Contact her to develop your conscious leadership and transform your organization into the workplace of the future.
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