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YOUR SECRET WEAPON – Unlock the Power of Your Mind and Unleash Your Potential · Motivational Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Exceptional people begin with just ambitions. We can choose to
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: believe in ourselves and thus to strive, to risk, to persevere,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: and to achieve. We can choose to set no limits
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: on ourselves, to set high goals and dream big dreams.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: I'm talking about a desire so fierce that it changes
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: a person's life. We can use those dreams to fuel
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: our spirits with passion. We can fall in love with
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: our own abilities and our own potential, then choose to
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: maximize those abilities. We're free to choose what we're going
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: to think about ourselves. No one can stop us from
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: chasing our dreams. You get to write your life story.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: I would venture that most people are talented in something,
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: whether they realize it or not. It's something internal. Great
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: performers share a way of thinking, a set of attitudes
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: and attributes like optimism, confidence, persistence, and strong will. They
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: all want to push themselves to see how great they
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: can become. These attributes and attitudes cause champions to work
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: harder and smarter than other people. They help them stay
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: focused under pressure and to produce their best performances when
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: the stakes are highest. In the Book of Ecclesiastes, it
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: was written that the runner would the best foot speed
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: doesn't always win the race, and the strongest warrior doesn't
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: always win the battle. That knowledge persisted into the twentieth century.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: Striving to be exceptional is never easy. Going after big
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: ideas take sweat. It takes persistence, patience, and a bedrock
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: belief in yourself. I care about how a person lives
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: his life. I care about whether a person refuses a
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: place limits on himself and instead chases greatness. I had
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: a privileged upbringing. I mean that my childhood taught me
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: to be optimistic. I didn't know it then, but I
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: realized now that this was a precious gift. Exceptional people
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: I have found either start out being optimistic or learned
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: to be optimistic because they realize that they can't get
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: what they want in life without being optimistic. That's why
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: I say I was privileged. I didn't have to learn optimism.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: It was given to me. I learned to believe that
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: with hard work you could be the best. That's optimism.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: It may not be as natural for people growing up
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: today to feel optimistic as it was for me and
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: many others in my generation. Instead of seeing examples of
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: people succeeding and progressing. They can find it all too
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: easy to see examples of people struggling. One of the
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: ways people learn to be optimistic is by seeking out
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: role models who have achieved great things. If these role
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: models are in some way similar to themselves, they can
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: help instill optimism. One classic example is the evolution of
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: the world record for the one mile run. Pessimism abounded
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: about whether a human being was even capable of running
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: a four minute mile. There were articles in the press
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: in which supposed experts opined that the human body simply
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: wasn't built to run a mile that fast. Then a
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: British medical student and elite amateur runner, Roger Banister, took
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: a look at the prevailing pessimism and decided it was poppycock.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: Banister decided he was capable of running a four minute mile,
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: and he trained hard to do so. On a rainy
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: day in nineteen fifty four, he did it, running a
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: three to fifty nine point four mile. Almost immediately, an
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: Australian runner, John Landy, bettered Banister's record. Within a few years,
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: many runners broke through the once impregnable four minute barrier.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: Banister had been a powerful role model, and his success
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: turned many runners from pessimists to optim about their ability
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: to break four minutes in the mile run. Optimism is
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: an attitude that people can choose to have. Obviously, I
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: was fortunate and that my upbringing made it easier to
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: be optimistic. But if it hadn't, I could have chosen optimism.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: It's not easy, but it can be done. Optimism is
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: often an act of faith, a belief in something that
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: cannot be proven. Anyone can have it, find ways to
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: become and stay optimistic. I like anyone who's performing to
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: have an optimistic attitude, because performances go best when the
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: performer trusts their skills and lets the performance flow. One
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: way both teams and individuals can help themselves to an
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: optimistic frame of mind is visualized. Visualization is a kind
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: of purposeful, intense imagination. Optimism doesn't guarantee anything in sports,
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: It just improves your chances. So why wouldn't you be
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: optimistic if it were a choice you could make, and
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: it is a choice. I've had many clients who tell
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: me that while they believe some people are by nature optimistic,
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: they are by nature the glass half empty kind. My
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: reply to that is, okay, are you only going to
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: tackle the challenges that are easy for you. If not,
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: then the first thing you have to do is decide
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: that being optimistic is important to you, because you understand
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: that optimism is essential in fulfilling your dreams and attaining
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: your goals. Once you make that decision, you have to
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: start looking at things from a different perspective. Are you
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: going to focus on all the gloom and doom stories
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: in the media. Will you own your mind or let
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: others own it? Will you see yourself succeeding where others don't?
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: Are you going to generalize in a negative way from
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: every setback you encounter. Misfortune happens to everyone. Champions just
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: refuse to let it push them into doubtful fearful thinking.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: It would indeed be illogical to persist if you thought
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: you didn't have a chance to succeed. That's the way
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: champions think after the setbacks and losses they inevitably suffer.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: I understand that everyone, including champions, has occasional doubts. No
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: one should be upset if doubt occasionally enters his mind.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: Individuals who achieve durable, frequent success are optimists. They shake
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: off their doubts and know in their heads and in
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: their hearts. Then in the long run, they are going
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: to be successful. They're going to have great careers. Everything
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: will fall into place, and wonderful things will happen to
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: them if they keep doing the right stuff. A confident
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: self image, people tend to become what they think about themselves.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: There is enormous wisdom in that sentence, and there's enormous hope.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: We are each the biggest influence on our own destiny.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: We each have the power to construct our own self image,
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: and that the self image we construct will verily likely
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: determine what we become in life. Confidence and optimism are
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: closely related. The good portion of the trait we call
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: confidence resides in the subconscious part of the brain. Our
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: subconscious is very susceptible to suggestion. Your subconscious monitors all
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: the thoughts you have about yourself, and it does so uncritically.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: You can think of your self image as an archive
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: of all the thoughts you've ever had about yourself. Recent
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: thoughts are way more influential than thoughts that occurred further
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: in the past. Thoughts associated with powerful emotions are more
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: memorable and thus more influential than thoughts to which you
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: attach no emotions. You understand that you are not a
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: helpless victim of misfortune. You don't have to be a
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: prisoner of a bad experience. You make sure you continually
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: feed useful, positive thoughts to the subconscious. That's a champion's mind.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: A champion understands that it's fine to savor an experience
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: when it's positive, to remember it, to celebrate it when
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: an experience is negative. He understands that he can't let
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: himself get stuck in it. He can see no benefit
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: from ingraining a bad experience by reliving it or attaching
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: strong emotions to it. This ability is counterintuitive for a
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: lot of people. We're taught in school to revisit and
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: think about our mistakes. Our correct answers are passed over
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: and taken for granted. The teacher puts a big red
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: X next to mistakes. Some people tell me that making
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: this change in the way they think is hard work.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: I agree, but so is training the body. If an
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: individual wants to be exceptional, it's part of the challenge. Also,
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: thinking correctly will separate that individual from the average person.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: Even if we try to maintain control with our conscious
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: brains at the moment of truth. Your subconscious had better
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: be saying, oh, yeah, I got this, no problem. Champions
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: understand that they must be confident to a point that
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: some people might find offensive. To be clear, when I
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: speak of confidence, I exclude both arrogance and laziness. To me,
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: confidence doesn't mean that an individual or team fails to
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: prepare all of that preparation dedication is, to my mind,
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: intertwined with confidence.