Mental Practice Makes Perfect

Playing things out in your mind before you actually do them is a great way to improve performance in many different types of tasks.  Mental practice or rehearsing is a technique that is taught to athletes, managers,  high-performance sales people and many other professionals.   How to improve you skill in mental practice will be a frequent topic on the Next Brain Blog.

For a quick introduction check out Head Games: An Introduction to Mental Rehearsal by Dr. Scott Williams a Professor of Management and Director of the Center for Innovation at Wright State University.

He offers this nine-step procedure for doing mental practice (and I quote):

  1. “Find a time and place where you won’t be interrupted.
  2. Recline or lie down, and close your eyes.
  3. Relax, concentrate, and focus.  Take deep breaths and exhale slowly.  As you exhale, imagine that stress is leaving your body.  Start at your feet … feel all the stress leave your feet … then your legs …  then your chest … all the way to the top of your head … feel all the stress leave your body.  Free your mind of distractions and allow your mind to focus on the relaxation process.
  4. Once relaxed, focus on the specific challenging task.
  5. Mentally tell yourself that you are confident and that you have the ability to perform this task successfully.  Repeatedly tell yourself, with confidence, that you will be successful.
  6. Imagine what you will see just before you begin the task.  Visualize yourself as an active participant, not as a passive observer.  For example, to mentally rehearse putting a golf ball, imagine that you are standing on the green rather than watching yourself from the gallery.
  7. Remaining relaxed and focused, mentally rehearse successful performance of this task.  Imagine going through the process and seeing successful results.
  8. Repeat step 7 several times.
  9. Finally, open your eyes and smile.  You have successfully performed in your mind, which is great preparation for actual performance.  You should now be confident that you will perform successfully in the real situation.  Remember to praise yourself for being successful.  Self-reinforcement is another a key to self-motivation.”

Try this out on a task or performance you have coming up in the next couple of days.  Does it work? Leave a comment and share your experience and results.

Source:  Image of Diver