MENTAL REHEARSAL

Posted on November 15, 2017 by Sydney Ceruto, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.

Hmmm, sounds like visualization huh? Well it’s not. I learned about this technique years ago and have been utilizing it with nearly all my clients, with unbelievable success in ALL AREAS OF LIFE!!
Soviets have been using this technique since the ’70’s with their olympic athletes. Jack Nicklaus has said that he has never (even on the range) swung at a golf ball without FIRST mentally rehearsing it in his mind. The list of uber professional business entrepreneurs and professional athletes have spoken publicly that they themselves use this before every big decision or game.
Okay, what exactly is MENTAL REHEARSAL???
Mental rehearsal involves imagined, mental practice of performing a task as opposed to actual practice. By rehearsing our acts by breaking them down into tiny components or parts, we can effectively work on improving certain aspects much more effectively.
This practice is nearly as powerful as physical practice.
Mental rehearsal is a potent tool because it helps people overcome habituated resistance, it links pleasure with healthy habits and it motivates people to follow through in a way that they haven’t been able to do consistently in the past. It is essential that we learn to match pleasure chemicals in the brain with the activity that gets us the result we want.
Like I mentioned earlier, mental rehearsals are not mental visualizations. Visualization implies that you observe yourself in a situation, as if watching yourself in a movie. This is called DISSOCIATED, meaning that you are seeing yourself through another pair of eyes.
In mental rehearsal, you are ASSOCIATED, meaning that you are seeing through your own eyes and having the physiological and emotional responses you would be having as if you were doing the physical act itself.
That is why when utilizing this technique, we need vivid, highly detailed internal images and run throughs to obtain the outcome we desire. We must engage all our senses (feel it, smell it, hear it etc.).
To begin to implement mental rehearsals, try some of the following tips I give to my clients.
*Establish a highly specific goal
*Hold a mental picture of it as if it were happening to you right at that moment
*Engage as many of the 5 senses as you can
*Picture who you are with, what’s the temperature in the room is, what are you wearing
*Sit up with a straight spine and focus
Like any other muscle in our bodies, to grow and perfect this technique, we need practice and repetition.