How to be better at everything you do.
My father-in-law has a saying of which I’m fond; he maintains, “Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.”
In his hey-day my father-in-law was a competitive archer, and he likes to tell stories from competitions past, but he always stresses that what he accomplished during a tournament wasn’t the result of luck or wishing or wanting to win “real bad.” It was the result of hours and hours of practice…perfect practice.
My father-in-law never called it this, but a large part of his practice was visualization. He visualized the bow in his hands. He visualized the arrow settled in the rest. He visualized the tension as he drew the bow. He visualized the arrow as it flew from the bow and, most importantly, he visualized the arrow hitting dead-center on the target.
He saw all of this happen in his mind before he ever drew back the arrow or even picked up the bow. He did all of this over and over in his mind before each and every shot he took.
Visualization is an extremely powerful tool, but it alone won’t make you a super-star. For that you need a coach. My father-in-law did have some luck on his side, he caught the attention of one of the top archery shooters who took on the role of a coach; his mentor.
His mentor taught the base skills, how to technically be a perfect archer. The rest was up to my father-in-law and that’s where persistence, visualization and perfect practice comes in to play.
So what did all of this perfect practice and visualization do for my father-in-law? Well, he didn’t pick up a bow until he was an adult and in the course of only a few years was at a point where he had to decide between turning pro and spending all of him time on the road, or keeping archery as a hobby and spending time with his children. That’s a pretty powerful accomplishment for someone who won his first bow in a raffle.
There are two keys to being better at whatever it is you do. The first key is finding a coach. You have to get your technical skills down so you can practice perfectly in the first place. The second key is visualization, using your mind to create a perfect reality in which you cannot fail at anything you attempt.
When you visualize an outcome in your brain, the chemical reactions fire just like they do when you actually attempt the same activity in real life.
When you visualize in your head, you have the ability to break the rules. It’s your own miniature “Matrix” - you can bend the rules in your favor.
You can visualize giving the perfect speech over and over, you can visualize sinking that 20 foot putt over and over, you can visualize anything you can imagine. When you couple your visualization with the skills you learn from your coach you create a situation where you’re practicing perfectly, and you’re getting better at whatever you’ve put your energy and effort into.
And through small improvements you can see a huge change in your life. If you can improve just 1% a week on whatever aspect you’re turning your energy you’ll see a 52% improvement in the course of a year.
That’s a huge return on your investment! Wouldn’t you be doing back-flips if your stock portfolio turned in a 52% return in a year? Wouldn’t you be doing back-flips if your personal-development portfolio turned in a 52% improvement in a year?
When you work with a coach or mentor and you put to work the power of visualization you unleash a tremendous amount of energy that you can direct to personal development; if you want a better than 50% return don’t settle for a 1% improvement each week, strive for a 1% improvement each day. The sky’s the limit when you put these tools to work for you!
Add comment December 13th, 2005
