This is a short YouTube talk (single-speaker monologue) that argues a simple practice—"releasing control"—improves performance. The speaker cites a brain-imaging study of a professional freestyler showing reduced activity in executive-control areas during improvisation, and explains that letting go reduces anxiety, opens creative brain regions, and enables bottom-up processing (e.g., muscle memory) for better outcomes.
If you want to improve your performance at any activity, all you have to do is this one simple task. Researchers scanned a rapper's brain while he was performing a memorized piece and then again while he was freestyling. This was a professional freestyler, by the way, and what they found is that there is decreased brain activity in areas of the brain responsible for executive control and monitoring our thoughts and behaviors. So these really good freestylers have a way of releasing control to improve performance and creativity with which is something I have always used before going on stage to give a big speech or doing something really important before going up on stage. I have always said I am releasing control. Angels take the wheel. I have done all that I can do to prepare for this situation. Not only does letting go of control relieve anxiety, which will improve your performance, but it also allows the more creative areas of your brain to come up with solutions where the more controlling areas might not have been able to. And you'll also be able to utilize something called bottom up processing, which is something a lot of athletes do when they use something called muscle memory.
