Things were not going so well for me a few months ago.
I had a goal that I wasn’t making any progress on.
I was stuck. And the more effort I exerted toward this goal, the worse I did.
At first I was making decent progress, but then progress stalled. Figuring that more effort was the answer, I began to practice more often.
But instead of my numbers going up, they decreased.
I made a number of adjustments to my technique and the way I was training, all to no avail.
Then one day I thought to myself about a phenomenon I call the “itch factor.”
This is when you haven’t been able to train, practice, work, play or engage in something you truly love to do for a week or so, and when you finally get back to it, you can’t wait to jump in. In short, you are “itching” to re-engage.
In my case, instead of physically training each day toward this goal as I had been, I decided to stop physically training and only allow myself to visualize the result I wanted. I took an entire week off from physically working on the goal as I pictured what I had been working toward.
And on that day when I finally allowed myself to let go physically, the “itch factor” was off the charts.
What was the result?
I smashed through the plateau. I crushed it. I ripped through it and did so with ease.
Many times in our lives the secret to making progress is what I’ve been teaching for decades. If you put in more time than anyone else, and you have a goal that you keep in mind while doing so, you’ll rise to the top.
But then there are other times when this idea doesn’t work the way you planned on. Even worse, it backfires.
That is when you can play around with mental imagery only.
You stop doing the physical, or you cut way back on it – and you replace it with mental imagery of the result you want along with the feeling of successfully accomplishing it.
After adding more mental imagery and less physical training into the mix, I was once again astounded by the results, even though I “shouldn’t” be.
The takeaway: Whenever you hear the adage that “hard work” is the secret of success, give yourself permission to explore and experiment with the flip-side of that same coin. More often than not, doing so is the game changer you needed to employ.
Matthew Furey
