Mary Robinson Reynold's Column This Week

Are You ...Trying Too Hard?
Excerpt from MasterMinding 101 Online Course

The mind doesn't know the difference between what is real and what is imagined! It is just as easy to see yourself as successful as it is to see yourself (or others you care about) as failures. It takes no more effort to choose to see the positive picture.

When you hear yourself saying, "Things never work out for me," interrupt that thing that you habitually do when you go there, and ask yourself, "Is that how I prefer it to be from this moment forward?" All we really have is this moment. We can’t think thoughts or take actions in the past or the future. The only influence we can have is through the thoughts we hold in our minds in the present.

Experimental psychologists have proven many times over
that the human nervous system simply cannot tell
the difference between an "actual" experience
and the experience imagined in detail.

There are several interesting experiments from a variety of recourses (see appendix) about visualization which illustrate the importance of this what you are deciding to visualize with consistency:

1) At the University of Chicago, a number of students were divided into three test groups. First, they were tested for proficiency at throwing basketballs through a hoop. Then, the first group of students was told to go home and forget all about the test. The second group was told to come back to the gym one hour a day for thirty days and practice shooting baskets. The third group was told to find a quiet place at home where, one hour a day for thirty days, they were to imagine themselves successfully throwing baskets through the hoop.

At the end of thirty days, the students were assembled again in the gym for retesting. The first group, as expected, showed no change in their shooting ability. The second group, after thirty hours of practice, showed an improvement of 24 percent. Obviously practice does improve one's skills. However, the group who had not touched a basketball but had imagined themselves shooting baskets showed a 23 percent increase in proficiency! Their improvement very nearly equaled those who had physically practiced every day.

2)  Administration (NASA) researcher and current president of the Performance Sciences Instate in Berkeley, California, the Soviets have extensively researched the relationship between visual imagery and physical performance. In one study, a phalanx of Soviet Olympic athletes was divided into four groups. The first group spent 100 percent of their training time in physical training. The second spent 75 percent of their time in physical training and 25 percent of their time visualizing the exact movements and accomplishments they wanted to achieve in their sport. The third group spent 50 percent of their time in physical training and 50 percent visualizing, and the fourth spent 25 percent in physical training and 75 percent visualizing.

Unbelievably, at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, NY, the fourth group showed the greatest achievement in performance, followed by groups three, two, and one in that order. The more visualizing they did, the better they performed in competition!

3)  In another experiment, psychologist Shlomo Breznitz at Hebrew University, Jerusalem directed several groups of Israeli soldiers to march forty kilometers (about twenty-five miles), but he gave each group different information. He had some groups march thirty kilometers, and then told them they had another ten to go. He told others they were going to march sixty kilometers, but in reality only marched them forty. He allowed some to see distance markers, and provided no clues to others as to how far they had walked. At the end of the study Breznitz found that the stress hormone levels in the soldiers' blood always reflected their estimates and not the actual distance they had marched. In other words, their bodies responded not to reality, but to what they were imagining as reality.

So when I learned about these experiments and their results I said to myself, "Does this mean I never have to exercise again?"

I think you will agree with me that Movement is necessary. Any muscle not used will eventually atrophy. Visualization is a muscle, just like any muscle that can be exercised positively or negatively.

With MasterMinding, we flexing our spiritual muscle by formulating goals and setting a clear intention to visualize in ways that bring us the easiest, most efficient, pleasurable results IMAGINABLE! We do this in the presence of our MasterMind partners to LIGHTEN UP OUR LOAD by believing with and for us when we are TRYING TOO HARD ourselves.

Mary's Statement of Intention: This is FUN! I am now being shown new ways of living and work in an easy, relaxed manner and in healthy and positive ways.