I Think I Can, I Think I Can, I Think I Can

“I can actually feel it coming on;I can predict when I’m going to self-destruct.” These were the painful words of Peter, a golfer I introduced you to in my last blog, “I’ve Fallen and Can’t get Up”,who was plagued by a Negative Programming Cycle. While he was quite talented, his play rarely lived up to his potential in the recent past because memories of previous failures haunted him every time he stepped onto the golf course.

Do you suffer from a Negative Programming Cycle? Do memories of previous mistakes and failures or unwanted life circumstances haunt your thoughts and control your feelings, behaviors, happiness, and success? Does this create feelings of helplessness and hopelessness and that painful circumstances are just being relived? That’s the way it was for Peter until I began helping him develop a Positive Programming Cycle.

Here’s what we did for Peter. Hopefully it will work for you. First, we identified all the situations where Peter began self-destructing. I had him write them all down. A pattern developed so we only had to deal with a few types of situations. One of them was when he competed against players he deemed more talented than himself. What kind of situations cause you stress? Then he wrote down all the negative thoughts that went through his headduirng his self-destruction. What do you say to yourself in stressful situations? Write these down as well. Finally, Peter wrote down all of the emotions that he experienced while self-destructing. What emotions do you experience in stressful situations? Write them down. He finished up by writing down how his behaviors changed in these situations. Do you change how you act in stressful situations? Write down these behaviors. You now have a starting point for building a Positive Programming Cycle.

Once Peter had his lists completed I had him recall a situation where he self-destructed. I had him imagine it as vividly as possible so it was almost like being there for him. Only this time, he replaced his negative thoughts with positive ones. For example, instead of thinking, “Gee, I’m terrible”, he forced himself to think, “I’m a gifted golfer.” Since this was true, even though he had to force it, he could believe it. He replaced each negative emotion (e.g., frustration and fear) with positive emotions (excitement and love for the game). He then imagined himself behaving like he did when he was playing well. Instead of dropping his head into his chest, slouching his shoulders, frowning, and walking slower, he imagined himself holding his head up high, his shoulders back, chest out, smiling and walking with a quick pace. Finally, instead of reliving mistakes, failures, and defeat I had him imagine a successful outcome.

We considered every situation where he self-destructed and replaced his Negative Programming Cycle with his new Positive Programming Cycle. I then had him repeat this procedure everyday for thirty minutes without exception. Because playing well was so important to him, he kept to this procedure even though he didn’t see improvement in his performance for several weeks. But then things started to change slowly. His Negative Programming Cycle and self-destruction began to fade. He started playing more like the old Peter; closer to his potential. Within just a few short months his self-destructive behaviors almost completely disappeared. And when they did, he used the same procedure he used during his training to reverse the Negative Programming Cycle right in the middle of a round and turn his performance completely around.

Why did this work for Peter? First, the subconscious mind doesn’t know the difference between a real event or one that is vividly imagined. Science, through EEG monitoring has showed that the same parts of the brain become active and in the same way, whether an event is experienced or just vividly imagined in the mind. Initially, Peter could only imagine past failures and mistakes, which resulted in a loss of control over his thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, and so his performance deteriorated. It became self-fulfilling prophesy. As he increased the frequency and intensity of the positive images, thoughts, behaviors, and emotions through his simulated practice his play mirrored the new images.

The second reason this works is because the brain is made up of tiny cells called neurons. These neurons have tiny branches extending from them called synapses that connect neurons one to another to from a neural net. Think of telephone poles connected by cables. The poles are the neurons and the cabling are the synapses. Each place where the neurons connect incubates into a thought or memory. The brain builds all of its concepts by the Law of Associative Memory. Thoughts, ideas, and feelings are all constructed and interconnected out of electro-chemical messages sent from one neuron to another via the synapses that connect the neurons. These electro-chemical messages are no different than the sound of your voice travelling along the wires that connect your phone to any other phone. Or, now that we have wireless capabilities, the sound waves that travel through air from one phone or computer to another.

So when Peter would get into a situation that reminded him of previous failures, the same chemical messages coursed through his brain inducing his Negative Programming Cycle and self-destruction, which, in turn further strengthened the behaviors and poor performance. However, each time we interrupted that pattern in his simulation training, the connections weakened. At the same time, a new network was being constructed for the same situation; and as he practiced, this new network or pattern got stronger. Once the old pattern weakened sufficiently and the new pattern became stronger than the old, his performance mirrored the performance he imagined in his training.

Now unfortunately, the old pattern is never completely lost. It’s just there in a weakened state. If Peter hadn’t been vigilant and hadn’t continued his simulation training it would have been very easy for the old pattern to rear its ugly head at the most inopportune time.

How important is living Stress Free to you? Are you willing to risk spending thirty minutes a day developing a Positive Programming Cycle without knowing if or how long it will take before your stress fades into oblivion? This doesn’t mean that your situation will change. It means that your responses to your stressful conditions will change and you will remain in control of your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors regardless of what is occurring around you. You will also be able to focus on the task at hand better, and who knows, maybe your improved problem solving and creativity will find solutions that had eluded you in the past. And maybe you will find a way out of your present circumstances.