Coach Jason discusses how to play Full Force by using the power of visualization.  A technique used by Champions in a all major sports, Jason shares stories of himself and others and the incredible results they receive by making visualization a daily habit.  Jason also shares specific strategies to making them more effective.

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Create your Results in Advance with the Power of Visualization

 

This episode, this show, is going to be something that you can immediately take away. You’re going to get better even while you listen to this because there’s going to be exercises, there’s going to be demonstrations. You’ll be able to take those and immediately apply them as soon as this thing is over. You’re going to be able to improve your performance right away, regardless of the sport or if it’s in business or if it’s just going out and enjoying a relaxing dinner with friends or family. If you learn to see the results that you want in advance, you have a significantly greater chance of fulfilling that outcome and those intentions as well as enjoying yourself far more on this beautiful journey of ours.

When I talk about creating our results in advance, I’m talking about the power of visualization; the tool, the habit. Sometimes I call it a champion habit. If you look throughout time, you will hear the best players of the five major sports, in track and field, in the Olympics, you will hear them all talking about how they sit down and they mentally rehearse. They use positive mental imagery. They visualize. Whatever they specifically like to call it, it doesn’t matter. It’s all about creating pictures and movies in our minds of how we want ourselves to perform. Here’s the best news of all. You already know how to do it. You create pictures all the time whether you’re aware of it or not. It’s all about learning how to channel it and how to maximize it and that’s what this episode is going to be about. I’m going to teach you not only ways to improve it and make it more impactful but also a step by step process that’s going to tell your brain, “This isn’t a daydream. This isn’t fantasy. This is something I specifically want to create. Now, go out there and create it for me.”

<figure class="wp-caption alignright" id="attachment_667" style="width: 300px;"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Visualization: You’re still able to visualize and get just as much results out of it by sitting down and focusing on the process.</figcaption></figure>

One other thing I want to bring up too is some people might be saying, “I don’t visualize. I can’t make pictures.” I’m that way too. I have a very challenging time. Some people aren’t that visual, in fact I’m very kinesthetic. If you just get a sense of knowing that this is happening in your body, that’s my recommendation to you. An example of, “I can’t visualize.” I want you to go ahead and close your eyes and think of what color of shirt you’re wearing or someone you saw today. What color of the shirt are they wearing? You just know, right? You know that it’s burgundy. You know that it’s green. Just because you can’t make very clear and picture-perfect pictures in your head, you’re still able to visualize and get just as much results out of it by sitting down and focusing on the process. Don’t just see it; feel it and we’ll get into all those steps later on. A little demonstration to really show how big of a difference, how big of a deal this habit is, what I want you to do is I want you to stand up. I do this all the time that speak and all the different classes and the workshops that I run. I have everybody stand up. If you’re driving, you’re not going to be able to do this. Come back to this later because you will see in a matter of 90 seconds how powerful visualization is.

What I want you do now you’re standing up, put your feet together. I want you to stick your right arm right in front of you with your index finger pointing straight out. I want you to comfortably, slowly, turn to the right as comfortably as you can go. When you get all the way to the very end as far as you can stretch, make sure those feet are staying together, very important. When you turn as far as you can go, I want you to stick a mental snapshot, where you end up on the wall or what tree are you pointing at or wherever you are right now. Just take a quick mental snapshot. Come back around. Drop your arm and just close your eyes. Just imagine doing that same thing again with your arm up. Imagine that arm is up. Imagine you’re turning all the way to the right as far as you can, but imagine this time that you’re able to go two feet further, two feet further than you actually went. Once you get there, uncoil yourself, come back around and see yourself, feel yourself, do it again. Do a little playful energy now, a little bit excitement. How far can I go this time? This time I want you to go two feet even further. Now it’s four feet past the way you pointed. Playfully go all the way there.

Once you get there, uncoil yourself, and come back around. One last time, real playfully, go three extra feet on top of that. Now, seven feet. When you’re spinning all the way around to the right, you’re like Bugs Bunny. You’re coiled up your past 360 degrees, am I right? Have that big smile on your face, just enjoying how silly this all is. See yourself all the way, seven feet further than you actually pointed. Uncoil yourself, unwrap yourself and come back around. Open your eyes. Keep those feet together. Right hand back up, index finger pointing straight ahead, comfortably turn as far as you can to the right. I’m guessing you went at least 25% further. Of all the times that I’ve done this, dozens and dozens of times of doing this in demonstrations, nearly everyone goes at least 25% further and you didn’t warm-up, you didn’t stretch. All you did was set a course. You set a direction in your brain. Your brain when it visualizes something, it doesn’t know what’s real or what’s not real. When your brain sees yourself that this is what it’s capable of, this is what’s possible, it just goes ahead and tells your body, “We can do this, go ahead.” 25% further, just like that. Now, you understand how just in a matter of minutes, how much you can improve your performance, how you can get your body to do things that you couldn’t do minutes ago just by closing your mind and seeing those results in advance.

We talk about the Beast system. We talk about what animal do we use to anchor this in so that we always remember it? With the Beast, we talk about the Canadian goose. When I first learned this system and these principles, I was like, “What, Canadian goose?” We’ve learned about a crocodile and a lion and even an armadillo. They all make sense to the principle, but what does a Canadian goose have to do with visualizing? They walked me through and they said, “What’s the shape in the sky that the geese fly?” I go, “That’s easy, that’s obvious, it’s a V. Is that it?” They said, “Do you know why they fly in a V?” “I don’t know, it looks cool.” “No, because it creates less resistance in the air.” The lead goose, he’s flying, he’s taking the brunt with the force and all the other geese, they’re just drafting off of him. When the lead goose he gets real tired, he just slips and falls in the back of the line and the next one steps on up. When the geese fly in their V, when they’re migrating long distances, when they fly in the V, it gets them there the fastest, the most efficient and the easiest way by flying with the V. Our V is visualization because when we take the time to make this a daily habit, a champion habit, of seeing our results in advance, it gets us there the fastest, the easiest, the most efficient way possible to.

What’s the name that we use for the Canadian goose to help us remember, to trigger us into visualizing our results in advance? It is VALDEPA. Within VALDEPA is a very important piece of the clue to what we also need to understand and know when we’re taking the time to do the habit of visualizing. VALDEPA stands for: VAL, the value creates the desire, the DE, which produces the power to achieve. What that means is we put and attach things to these images and these movies that we’re making, when we attach what’s important to them, that’s what creates that fire or that desire deep inside. We’re going to go out there and we’re going to do whatever it takes. Why is it so important that you produce, that you create this movie in your head? That is going to give you the motivation, the driving force to do whatever needs to be done to make this happen.

I know you’re beginning to see and understand, beginning to trust in me that this is a tool used in all different types of sports to get the results that they want. In fact one of the stories that I always share with my one-on-one clients is a study that they did that took a bunch of people and they had them shoot a hundred free throws. They recorded how many free throws they make out of a hundred. They took all the people who participated in those hundred free throws and then broke them up into three groups. For the next 30 days, they gave each group different set of instructions.

The first group, “You get to shoot and practice a hundred free throws every single day on the court.” The second group, they said, “You don’t get to touch a ball this month for the next 30 days. All you’re going to do is visualize a hundred free