Mental performance?

Marriott School of Management, Brigham Young University

Last week I sat with several dozen people I had not seen since we graduated with our MBA degrees in 2006.  We clustered in groups across the top floor of the Marriott School, listening to Dr. Craig Manning, a Mental Strength Coach, as one of the activities of our 5-year reunion.

"And after several months of meeting and journaling, this US Olympic team ski jumper went from the bottom of the barrel to number one in the world!"

I shared a curious glance with one of my renewed-friendship friends.  "Possible?" we said with our eyes.  "Probable," we nodded.

Dr. Manning then continued:  "Life is made up of four areas:

1. Physical
2. Mental
3. Emotional



Heather McPhie (who went from good skier to great), and Dr. Manning

4. Spiritual

"We spend most of our time in the 'Physical', and suffer if the other 3 areas get out of balance.  What I'm going to teach you is how to get in balance."

And here is what he taught:

• Attention creates progress.  Whatever we focus on moves. 
• Repeat attention builds paradigms.  Our thoughts literally build trails in our brain that become more and more reinforced with frequency.  The first time we think, 'I can do this,' we create a trail.  The second time we think it, we reinforce it.  And somewhere in the nth time of thinking it, it becomes so strong a reality for us that we now see the world through that lens.  It is now our new reality.
• Paradigms accelerate us to success or distraction.  Achieving a goal happens when we have sufficient belief in our ability to do it that we act.  The more we think 'I can do this' the stronger our paradigm of success and the more we decide to act in ways that get us closer to our goal.  But on the other hand, each thought of 'I can't do this' has the ability to veer us of course and to reinforce the trail to distraction. 
• Success has a formula.  High Performance = Potential + Training - Distraction
• High performance = success
• Potential = your strength(s)
• Training = daily stuff you do to make your strengths 'great' (not strengthen your weaknesses, which may be innate and therefore capped at 'good')
• Distraction = thoughts of "I can't do this" or "I shouldn't do that" which have a tendency to quickly reinforce mental trails, build paradigms, and influence our actions away from what would have otherwise achieved success.

"So how do you put this into practice?" Dr. Manning continued, "get a coach and send him or her a daily journal, as follows:"

1. Vision (what you want to achieve)
2. 3 actions you can do today to achieve the vision
3. 1 thing from yesterday you can do to improve

The room buzzed with comments as Dr. Manning left and we took a small break.  "What could you do with this?" I asked a friend.  "I like the way he said to focus on your strengths that haven't seen any progress in a while."

I thought then of my health.  I've been slightly overweight for a decade and a half now, having allowed myself to be too distracted by work and thoughts of "I can't do this" to make any material change for the better.  What about an experiment to see if I can strengthen my mental balance, and thus improve my physical body?  "I can do it," I thought.  My brother Ben decided to become more healthy, acted on it, and has lost 50 pounds while gaining the ability to run a 5K.  Very inspiring to me!

I left the meeting curious.  What will this be like to purposefully journal my way to positive change and a healthier body?  How much can I achieve with this?  Can't wait to find out!