A short spoken anecdote by Catherine Bell recounting how Michael Jordan used a recorded self-narration of his intended performance (listening repeatedly to his own voice) as a visualization and mental-preparation technique. The anecdote emphasizes the power of self-belief, internal dialogue, and repeated auditory visualization to shape performance.
I remember when I heard this story, this changed my perception on the power of this more than anything. And it was a friend of mine, he's a billionaire, Bill Bartman. He shared a story of he was in the middle of buying the Chicago Bulls. And he would go to every single one of the practices and games and everything like that. And Michael Jordan would be sitting on the sidelines and he'd be sitting there and he had the earphones in his ears and looking down at the ground with his, know, elbows on his knees, just focused. And Bill would eventually came over and was like, what are you listening to? And Michael Jordan just be like, ah, listen to the Red Hot Chili Peppers. And he said a number of times. And finally Bill came back. He's basically like, bs what are you listening to? And so finally Michael Jordan got real with them and said what he was. What he did was he created, he wrote out exactly how he was going to perform and how the game was going to go. And then he. He recorded himself saying it so he could see it in his mind. He was hearing himself. Because our unconscious minds believe our voices, right? Whether we believe it or not, people don't like to hear their recorded voice. It doesn't matter. Our unconscious mind believes when it hears us. Because think about our internal dialogue. It's in our voice. So he was listening to himself say how he was going to perform and how the game was going to go. And he listened to it again and again and again. And sure enough, obviously the rest his history. So that was profound.
