You are meant to succeed

Men are goal-seeking beings. We were meant to strive for the next mission, to conquer, to overcome adversity and claim victory. In other words, each man is designed to achieve what is best in life for him. Striving for a goal is the way to success and happiness, and the two are closely related.

"True success and true happiness not only go together but each enhances the other." - Maxwell Maltz

In order to help us define and achieve our goals, MRP offers a sidebar, weekly OYS and a wealth of complimentary knowledge from its members. It is a set of tools to facilitate our continual transformation, and even the vets here continue to transform, to improve every day.

Program yourself for success

One of the best tools for transformation is not specifically called out much in MRP yet: visualization. Not to get too philosophical on you, but regardless of your belief system, for the moment think of the mind and the body as vessels for your spirit. They are similar to a machine. Machines can be trained, programmed to do what we want them to. Input a flight plan into a plane, and the machine finds its course and performs (usually) as expected. It needs a flight plan to know where to go and it needs to move to know if it is going in the right direction.

Your mind and body are the same way. Their "input instructions" come in the form of visualization, which is the domain of your imagination. Your imagination can paint the picture of you succeeding in a mission, overcoming an obstacle or even finding your next mission. What's most important is you vividly picture your success in achieving your goal, especially how you feel while succeeding. That is how the rest of your mind and body gets the message. It's a way of communicating with your subconscious on what you want the rest of your being to achieve.

How do we know visualization actually makes a difference? Consider this example, taken from Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz (a masterpiece and I highly recommend it for any MRP member). In this book, Maltz references an experiment where three groups of people were baselined on their ability to make free throws:

  • Group 1 practiced for 20 minutes per day for three weeks. At the end of this period, they had improved their free throw performance by 24%.
  • Group 2 did not practice at all for three weeks (control group). At the end of this period, their free throw performance had not changed.
  • Group 3 visualized practicing for 20 minutes per day for three weeks, but did not do any physical practice. At the end of this period, they had improved their free throw performance by 23%.

Go back and read that last point on Group 3 again. Group 3 only visualized their practice, they did no physical practice at all, yet they still improved their abilities nearly the same as Group 1, which had practiced physically in a traditional sense!

Think of the power this now gives you. There are few limitations on the imagination, which empowers you to improve your abilities in nearly any area you can visualize regardless of your physical and logistical circumstances and limitations (e.g. COVID-19 lockdowns or something as simple as not always having the time or means to train in the traditional sense).

Tips for getting started

1 - Break your inertia. You need to be moving to know if you are on course. Back to the airplane analogy, if the plane isn't moving, it doesn't know if it's on course. Weather pattern changes and other factors may take the plane off course along its way. However, as it gets off course, it realizes this and course corrects. The plane literally zig zags to its target.

Success is a zig zag, not a straight line. You need to be taking action and willing to accept many failures in order to succeed. Go look up why Ford's first commercially successful automobile was a "Model T". Almost no one gets things right the first time around. Those that fail, course correct and persist are the ones that succeed. As Maltz puts it, "Functionally, a man is somewhat like a bicycle - it must maintain forward momentum towards a goal or it gets shaky and falls down."

2 - Set aside time for visualization every day. I suggest you start with 10 - 30 minutes. Regardless of your mission, it counts almost as much as taking direct physical action. We reviewed a basketball example above, but really this can be applied to any sport, chess, hitting new PRs in your lifts, day game scenarios, night game scenarios, martial arts, playing musical instruments, even building your frame. It is all put even more within reach through the power of visualization. Yes you still need to lift, game and have friends in real life, FFS.

3 - Keep these practical application points in mind:

  • Your success mechanism must have a goal or target that you believe already exists (it can exist in actuality, or in potential).
  • It must be in alignment with your self-image and believable to you. For example, I'm in my 40's and have been doing BJJ for 6 months - imagining me winning a UFC championship is useless because I don't see that as realistic for myself.
  • Only work on one thing at once. One goal at a time.
  • Focus on the END, NOT the MEANS. When you vividly visualize the goal, your body's internal mechanisms will find a way to help achieve it.
  • Making mistakes helps to direct you toward your goal. It provides an autocorrect that helps you "course-correct" towards your goal.
  • You gain skill by redirecting your errors until you are heading in the right direction. Then, you must FORGET the past (the errors), and focus on the final successful choice that led you in the right direction.
  • Trust in the process without worrying about it or trying to adjust it. You must “let it” work, rather than “make it” work. Your success comes as you act, and the proof of your success follows, so you can’t look for success before actions.
  • This takes some time. Reserve judgement until you have made a practice of this technique daily, focused on a single goal, for at least three weeks.

Make it a habit

This is mostly a subconscious process you are setting into effect. The key is making a habit out of training it through your imagination on a regular basis. This is how the "machine" you have been given works. Putting it to regular use is essentially creating a habit of being happy. And, in the words of Robert Louis Stevenson, "the habit of being happy enables one to be freed, or largely freed, from the domination of our outward conditions." Try this technique out for a few weeks and report your findings below.

Edit: corrected typos