FIRST THINGS FIRST:
You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to read documents in the Training Center. You can get it here FREE!

**Click here to download your free version of Adobe Acrobat Reader for .pdf files**
Table of Contents previous
Winners Visualize their success.

Today, I want to talk about how athletes, and others who take performance
very seriously, bring out the best in themselves.
In more than 30 years of teaching people how to use more of their potential,
I have worked with many professional athletes and sports organizations.
Athletes began to use leading-edge techniques like mental rehearsal and
focused concentration years before the general public had even heard of
them.

We weren't sure how these techniques worked, but we knew they did. Jack
Nicklaus, for example, said that he would "watch a movie" in his head before
each shot.

These days, thanks to many researchers, we know more. Peter Fox and his
colleagues at the University of Texas monitored people's brain activities as
they performed various body movements and also as they imagined performing
the movements.

They found that the actual physical movement consistently involved the
interaction of several specific areas of the brain. Imagining the movement
activated those same areas of the brain. In other words, mental rehearsal of
an action puts the mind through a neural workout that is very much like the
real thing.

So whether you're trying to break your own personal best record in a sport
or sell a new car to an ambivalent customer, mental rehearsal, or
visualization, can help you prepare for peak performance by walking you
through successful strategies and potential pitfalls.