Alastair Wallace explains how imagining failure activates the same brain circuits as actually performing it, making a poor outcome more likely. He advocates positive visualization instead: a study found people who imagined exercising gained 13.5% muscle mass. Before important meetings, mentally walk through the room, your confident voice, and people nodding back.
This is a good one. So you have a big presentation or important meeting coming up. What's going through your mind? Imagining how awful it's going to be? Forgetting what you're going to say? Your boss, Yooni, eugh! Whilst you stutter over a difficult question? Mental rehearsal like this activates the same motor, somatosensory, auditory, and emotional brain circuits as the actual physical act. Your brain doesn't differentiate between imagination and reality in this case. So thinking about failure increases the likelihood that it will happen. Sports psychologists know this. They use positive visualisation to improve athletic performance, competitive edge, and confidence. In one study, just thinking about performing exercises led to a 13.5% increase in muscle mass against those who did the exercise, who increased by 30%. So you really can think your way to success, maybe even bigger muscles, at least some of the way anyway. Your hack here is to do a positive mental walkthrough of a challenging situation. Imagine yourself walking in feeling confident, talking fluently, asking questions confidently and finishing to smiles and nods at the end. Really feel every sense of it to program your brain for success. Start visualising success and not failure, and you set yourself up for a positive outcome. I'd love to hear how you get on with this. Also, what difficult situations have you got coming up? Drop me a message if I can help.
