How powerful is our mind? Are we not learning from Haanel that the mind Is all-powerful? That our thoughts control our actions?
Back in the early 80’s, as a high school basketball coach I attended a coaches’ clinic and the headline speaker was Stan Kellner, a very successful coach from Long Island, NY who discovered the Holy Grail for training his players when he read the book Psycho Cybernetics by Dr. Maxwell Maltz, who was a plastic surgeon.
Dr. Maltz was puzzled when his surgery made a women look like a movie star, but the woman still believed she was ugly. Those repeated experiences led Dr. Maltz to study the power of the subconscious mind.
Coach Kellner used Dr. Maltz’s research to develop his own book called Basketball Cybernetics, and his system of mental practice. A player who could not catch the ball could practice mentally with a 100% success rate, and develop into a player who would catch everything thrown to him, even the most difficult passes in the most crucial times of the game.
Shooters got better, too. Ball-handlers too, and soon those pretty good teams became great teams and began winning championships. Coach Kellner’s teams accomplished more, and did it with far less physical practice time, which not only saved a lot of time, but also the wear-and-tear on the players body that usually comes in the long season.
The subconscious mind does not know the difference between a real or imagined event…so imagine closing your eyes and practicing shooting mentally for 30 minutes and never missing a shot!
Seeing yourself do the skill perfectly every time. What a great memory to take into the next competition! And the next. And the next, getting better all the time with no stress!
We now have the opportunity to use the same technique to train ourselves to do whatever we set our mind to do, and we know how, and we know it works!
Thanks Hal for sharing. Yes as we see visualization is a key component to it all. A coach was rather rare.
Fantastic insight, Hal! It’s incredible how powerful our minds shape our skills and successes. The Coach’s approach using mental practice is truly inspiring. It reminds us all how crucial mental exercise is and the strength of our thoughts. Thanks for sharing!
Great reminder Hal that all change you which in the other world can only happen when we change things from the inside.
Yes, I remember that book. It’s true…I know just playing a game with friends or family, when I envision the disc or bean bag going in the hole…Concentrate , see it feel it …I do it!
This is so true. I think we always heard this in sports, to imagining getting that ball in the hoop. see it feel it live it. Or while working out to concentrate on that muscle growing etc. It’s funny how we didn’t take that mentality to other areas of our life.
And like you said above,
“Dr. Maltz was puzzled when his surgery made a women look like a movie star, but the woman still believed she was ugly”, how sad is this. It doesn’t matter what you do on the outside if you can’t get the inside right.
Yes, Hal, it is great to have the opportunity to set your mind on something, practice it with feeling, and accomplish it. You have this….