Train Your Brain to Get the Results You Want

This episode discusses the potent practice of visualization and mental rehearsal for achieving personal and professional goals.

1. Visualization is a powerful tool used by top performers to achieve their goals.
2. Mental rehearsal can help overcome fears and insecurities by creating familiarity with desired outcomes.
3. The brain moves towards what is most familiar, making regular positive visualization crucial.
4. Visualizing both positive outcomes and how to handle potential failures is beneficial.
5. Consistent practice of visualization can significantly enhance personal and professional performance.

1. Introduction to Visualization

Ed Mylett discusses the underestimated power of visualization in achieving life's goals and introduces the topic's importance. Ed Mylett: "Visualization and mental rehearsal are among the key strategies in my life."

2. The Science Behind Visualization

Mylett explains the psychological basis for why visualization influences our actions and outcomes. Ed Mylett: "Your brain doesn't know the difference between what's real and what's imagined."

3. Practical Applications

Discussion on how visualization is applied by professionals in various fields, particularly in sports. Ed Mylett: "Athletes regularly use visualization to prepare for games, which significantly improves their performance."

4. Visualizing Challenges

How to handle and visualize potential failures and setbacks as part of the mental preparation process. Ed Mylett: "It's okay to sometimes visualize not succeeding, as it prepares you to handle challenges better."

5. Consolidation and Action Steps

Mylett wraps up by encouraging listeners to integrate visualization into their daily routines for better results. Ed Mylett: "Begin to control the mental images you feed yourself to align with your goals."

1. Start your day by visualizing your main goals as already achieved.
2. Use visualization to prepare for specific challenges in your upcoming day.
3. Practice visualizing positive outcomes for 5-10 minutes before any important activity.
4. Include sensory details in your visualizations to enhance their effectiveness.
5. Regularly visualize handling setbacks successfully to build resilience.
6. Keep a journal to track your visualization topics and outcomes.
7. Share your visualization experiences with a mentor or coach for feedback.
8. Use apps or tools like Growthday.com to support your visualization practice.

I vividly remember days when SUCCESS seemed like a distant DREAM…

But it was through the ART OF VISUALIZATION, I painted a clear picture of where I wanted to be, aligning my actions with that vision. Whether it was visualizing speaking in front of thousands or closing significant business deals, THIS METHOD helped me solidify my intentions and turn them into tangible actions.

Every major achievement in my life first took shape in the workshop of my mind, setting the stage for the reality I live today.

Visualization isn't just about dreaming big — it's about creating a vivid mental blueprint of your success before it even happens.

It’s the #1 tool I've utilized to not only envision but also to achieve my goals. Whether it's sports, business, or personal development, understanding how to effectively visualize is a game-changer and in this episode, I’m breaking down how to MASTER THE ART OF VISUALIZATION.

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Ed Mylett

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Ed Mylett
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It's an overall environment to change your life. Growthday.com edge it's only a kick.

A jump, a block. It's only a serve. It's only a tackle, a run. It's only for the fans. After all, it's only pressure.

You got this, adidas.

Ed Mylett
This is the Ed Milan show. Welcome back to the show, everybody. I'm excited to spend some time with you today covering something that you all ask about often, which is the topic of visualization. And I think it's a topic that most people don't understand, nor do they take advantage of. One of the key strategies in my entire life of producing the results that I've been blessed to produce has a lot to do.

One of the key strategies is visualization, mental rehearsal and understanding how to do it, understanding the power of it and the reasons why you should be doing more mental rehearsal, more visualization. You know, I'm blessed that I've had an opportunity to coach a lot of top CEO's, entrepreneurs, entertainers, and yes, a lot of athletes. And whether that be in the UFC, in the MMA, or a golfer, baseball player. I get asked often, what do you work on with a lot of these athletes? And although we work on a variety of different things, one of them is visualization, because it's really an accepted practice in sports that you visualize things.

But most people, you can ask yourself this to begin. How much visualization do you do in a directed, intentional way? In other words, you're visualizing things, your problems, your worries, your fears. You're visualizing an appointment, let's just say. But how often are you doing that proactively?

Are you using it as a strategy for peak performance, a strategy for Bliss, a strategy to be more productive and serve more people? Mental rehearsal and visualization is one of the greatest gifts you could give yourself. And it's a great hack to producing the results that you want, because the truth of the matter is, you are more than likely producing right now what you've already been visualizing. And so taking control of that and harnessing control of it is a really, really big deal. And why?

Because we all have fears. We all have insecurities. These fears and insecurities will find a way to express themselves one way or the other. And so if we can't take control of our fears and our insecurities and we don't build up mental rehearsal and visualizations, the things we want, the things that give us confidence, one or the other are going to end up expressing themselves. That's why it's so important that you really learn to take control of your mental rehearsal and visualization.

And why is that the case? Here's the deal. You move towards what you're most familiar with in your life, okay? So there's a degree of familiarity in our lives that we move towards what's comfortable, what's safe, what's most familiar to us because it requires the least amount of thinking. Your brain really wants to operate and conserve energy as much as it can.

So the more things it can do habitually without having to think, the easier it is on your brain. And so it's constantly trying to get you to move towards what's familiar. And so if what's most familiar to you is your fears, your worries, your anxieties, your insecurities, you will move towards them. If you wonder whether thats accurate or not, we try to avoid things that are unfamiliar to us. People have asked me, oh my gosh, I saw that golfer, he had a putt to win the golf tournament from 5ft and he missed it.

And he missed it for two reasons. Either he was very familiar with the mental rehearsal and the visualization he or she was of missing and they programmed that fear in. So they moved towards what was familiar and which was missing the putt or they didn't do any mental rehearsal whatsoever. And when they got into that pressure situation, their brain was not familiar with that environment, with that situation and so it wasn't able to function at its optimal level. And so the reason that we want to make sure that we're doing mental rehearsal and visualization regularly in our life is so that when we get there, we're familiar and we're likely to move towards that result.

We've already visualized. If we don't, if we only take visualization about our fears and worries, which is what most people do, you will move towards those because you're familiar with them as well, or the absence of any preparation. When you walk into a meeting to give a prep, a presentation, you've not mentally rehearsed the result, you've not visualized the result. If you've not done that, you've left it up to your own devices. And more than likely because you're unfamiliar, your brain cannot perform at its optimal level.

So that's why mental rehearsal preparation, because your body doesn't know, your subconscious mind does not know the difference between what's real and what's imagined. And so the more you rehearse it, the more your brain believes, your mind believes that you've already done it, you've already accomplished it. So when you enter the environment, you enter the situation, you will gravitate and move towards what's most familiar. Hey, guys, I want to talk to you about Shopify. You know, when I started the show, the furthest thing from my mind was doing online business, and now I can't imagine my life without it.

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Think about it this way. How much thinking do you do when you walk into a room full of strangers, right? You walk in, you don't know anybody in there. You're pulling up to an event, and you don't know a soul. You're gonna walk into a room with 50 or 100 people.

You're doing some thinking, aren't you? You're thinking about, why would I introduce myself? Is my hair the right way? Did I do my makeup correctly? What's a story that I could tell tonight?

That's funny. What if they asked me this? Your anxiety and nervousness level goes up no matter who you are, right? Because of the unknown, the unfamiliar. And so what happens is you just start thinking and going into pattern mode.

You're going into mapping mode because where you're going is unfamiliar. Now compare how much thinking you do when you walk into a room like that compared to just walking through your front door to your house where everybody's familiar. Do you really even have to think about it? When you walk from your kitchen to the living room where your family is, do you do any thinking whatsoever? Does your heart rate go up at all?

Is there anything in your body that's changing? From a neurobiochemistry standpoint? No. You're almost doing zero thinking because you're familiar with it. And so in life, if you can begin to become that familiar, like you are with your own family and friends, with your dreams, your goals and your ambitions, or maybe it's as simple as just a specific result in one occasion.

The more you've done that, the more you're not going to have to think nearly as much and process information. This is really called mapping. And so life is really better when you don't focus on what's going on around you. But you focus on what's going on inside of you. Okay?

So think about that for a second. Life is always better when you don't focus on what's going on around you, but you focus on what's going on inside of you. So there's this great story that my producer was sharing with me. He's a big soccer fan about Wayne Rooney, who's one of the most legendary players of all time. And he said he would take his visualization to a level that blew most people's minds.

And he would literally get with the equipment manager before a game and ask him, what uniform are we going to be wearing? And so he would get the actual uniform and know what it looked like. He would also want to know what music they were going to be playing when they came out, when they were getting ready to play. He would want to know the exact song, and then he would also want to know the weather. So he would then get back, and the night before the games would visualize that uniform, would visualize that music playing, would visualize that weather, so that when he got there, it was all familiar to him.

You know, a lot of athletes and people ask me, should I only visualize me getting the. Yes, because I'm mapping. Making the putt. Making the putt? Making the putt, or hitting the shot, or having the knockout, or closing the sale, or getting whatever it is that you want.

Should I only visualize the positive things? And that's a really interesting thing, because the way your brain works, it actually probably serves you most to be always visualizing the positive result. I do think that it's okay sometimes in life to also visualize something that isn't favorable. So, in other words, because it's going to happen, so do I let my athletes, about 10% of the time, it will say, okay, let's just, let's. Let's hit a bad shot.

We've hit a bad shot. What happens in our body now? We're walking to that shot. How do we deal with it? And so they now are able to deal with something that's inevitable or if it's one of our fighters.

And I go, listen, you just had the first, you know, it's bad round. He got to you. You took a couple shots. Looks like he lost round one. You're sitting on the stool, bam.

How do we shift that and visualize from there? Because if you don't visualize some of the unforeseen circumstances that take place and your response to it, in my opinion, when that happens, and it's unfamiliar territory, you're lost. But if you say no, I've been there before. I've missed this putt before. I've missed a shot before.

In sales, it's okay to visualize them not always saying yes, but objecting and giving you a reason for not doing it. They may have a question or a concern. Right. So I don't think it's a negative thing. Sometimes I don't want to pattern this where it's a pattern I've created.

But I think it's okay to, in sales, visualize getting a no or an objection or in a sport having a failure happen. And then from there, what you need to visualize so that when the inevitable happens, because life happens, you're going to miss a sale, you're going to not hit every putt. Not every at bat's gonna be a base hit, right? Not every shot's gonna be in the basket. And so it's okay to say, okay, I just missed the shot.

What do I visualize from there? So we're not really visualizing the miss. We're visualizing it's happened, what feels in my body. I know what that is now what do I do? And so because you'll watch in sports, most of the great athletes, it's not that they don't miss, it's what they do after they miss.

It's not in life whether you're gonna miss or get rejected or have a difficult circumstance or situation, what do you do when it happens? And so I think it's okay that you spend a little bit of time in that zone and then your visualization is your way out of there. So we're not visualizing misses. What I'm suggesting is, is that you're visualizing. Okay, I've just missed.

Now visualize the way out. Mentally rehearse the way out. If you listen to this show for a while, you've heard me and my guests talk a lot about how critical it is to have your wellness goals in order, especially lately with me. So you know how powerful visualization is when you visualize yourself 110, 30 years from now, you've achieved all your goals. Ask yourself this, am I healthy at that point in your visions?

Of course you are. But like anything else, without a plan to get and remain healthy, you can't hit the goal. That's why I'm so thrilled to be partnering with lifeforce. It's co founded by my good friend Tony Robbins and Peter Diamantis. Lifeforce is a leader in proactive care.

The Life Force membership includes everything you need to understand your wellness and help you make good decisions today to keep you on track in the future for your health. Listeners on my show get $250 when they first sign up for their membership by going to mylifeforce.com ed. That's mylifeforce.com ed. Take control of your wellness with lifeforce and see what the healthiest version of you actually looks like and is capable of. These products and statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.

These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. I think you can spend a little bit of time on that, just like the great Wayne Rooney did. I'll tell you one more story, and I don't know whether this is accurate or not. I don't remember the man's name, and I'm sure I'm messing the story up. So forgive me, but I think the premise of the story and the point that it illustrates is valid.

And so the story goes, I was told this many years ago that there was evidently a soldier who had spent some time in a POW camp. And when he was there, in order to keep himself sane, frankly, he would mentally rehearse and visualize himself playing an entire 18 hole golf course, round of golf. And again, this is just a story that I was told. I hope I'm giving it justice. And the point of the story is that it illustrates the power of visualization.

And even if I'm off by the facts a little bit, you know, indulge me a little bit here. But he would visualize playing each shot throughout the day, mentally rehearse and visualize it. And many years later, when he got out of the POW camp, he went home, I believe it was to Texas, somewhere in the midwest. And his body was totally atrophied. He had no muscle mass left.

He had lost considerable weight. He had been obviously hurt and injured and beaten when he was in the camp. And one of the first things he asked to do when he got on his feet was to go play golf. And the story goes that he went out in that first round of golf, shot, even par. And afterwards they asked him, how in the world did you do that?

You've lost 50 pounds. You've had all these injuries, you've had this terrible mental battle you've had to go through. And he goes, it's easy. I haven't missed a putt in four years because what he had done is mentally rehearsed when he was playing those rounds, making that putt, hitting that shot. Now, whether or not that's an accurate story or not, I don't know.

But what I can tell you is that it's illustrative that I've seen something like that in many athletes and many business people's lives, where in spite of external circumstances, they've controlled the inside so well that when they, like I've said, they focus on the inside, that when these variables happen, which is life, a failure, a setback, an unforeseen situation, that they're comfortable because they haven't missed a putt in years, when they visualize their way out of that. And so inside of you, you can visualize. So give yourself the gift on a more regular basis of mentally rehearsing the meeting you're going to go to, do it 3456 times, and actually sit in that visualization. Ask yourself questions. When you visualize, by the way, the way you get better at it is you do more of it.

In the beginning, when we're visualizing or mentally rehearsing, we're not very good at it because we haven't done it before. We get distracted easily, or we don't even realize, we don't even take control of what we're seeing. But begin to ask yourself, when I visualize, do I see it in black or white or color? Let me make some distinctions about what you're seeing. Can I feel things?

Do I smell things? Do I hear things? Can I take this picture that I'm seeing, this result? I want to produce this award. I want to win this, you know, this situation.

I want to get out of a date, that I'm going on this potential sale, that I've got this baseball. I want to hit this putter. When you watch it, start to ask yourself and take a look at what you're seeing. Like, for example, where's the camera? That'd be interesting, huh?

Do you see the camera where you're looking at it out there so you see it from your own perspective, or do you see it from the person situation who's watching you? Do you see it from above? Just taking a minute, and you go, wow, I've never thought about that before. Well, think about it. It'll help you take better control.

You know, when I work with athletes, when they're baseball hitters, I'll often, often ask them, I'll say, close your eyes and visualize hill line drive up the middle. And they'll go, great, I did it. And they'll open their eyes like, okay, good, where was the camera? And they're like, huh? I said, where was the camera, I don't know.

I said, well, let's close your eyes and do it again. I said, the camera could be a lot of different places. The camera could be you in the batter's box and you're seeing out at the pitcher in the field. It could be like you watch baseball on tv because you're familiar with it and it's behind the center field fence looking over the pitcher into the catcher. It could even be the view you get on deck.

But the first thing is to at least see what you see. Now you have a chance to play the video. And so ill ask them, can you see what you see? Yes. Okay.

And they say, well, no, but its for me in the batters box. Awesome. So then we know and we go much more detailed than this. But its beginning to just see what you see, hear what you hear or dont hear, smell what you smell or dont smell. Right.

For the most part, most people can very quickly go, I see things in black and white, or I see them in color, and then just start to take control of what it looks like. And then the only other thing to ask yourself if you want to really reinforce a visualization is you could speed it up a little bit or you could slow it down. You could zoom in if you wanted to. And the more you just kind of play with your ability to visualize, the more it becomes a muscle. Zoom in, zoom out, change the color, add some music to it.

Right. Speed it up, slow it down, and then just repeatedly see something over and over again. It'll serve you. And so it's something that I teach the athletes that I do. It's not very complicated.

It's just basically starting to take control of your mind's eye, of what you think about. You don't have to be very specific with it. It could just be the same thing you see every time. But the more you prepare, you will begin to move towards what you're most familiar with. And what's great about that is anxiety level goes down and your brain, your subconscious mind at least, doesn't know the difference between what you're imagining and what's actually happening.

And so you actually can get a hit every time you're up to the plate. You can make a putt every single time you stand over it. You can get a yes. And the more specific when you start with a visualization, oftentimes in the beginning they'll be very general, but the more you get good at it, maybe it gets more specific where you can even see when you've helped somebody out in your business, them thanking you and the smile on their face, maybe you can begin to feel what it feels like with their gratitude. Right?

I'll have athletes often, I'll say, did you make the putt? How did it feel? Fist pump that thing. Lock it in. Right.

So the more you do it, the more it grows, is something you. You build as a habit. It doesn't need to be any more complicated than that. But I'm telling you, life is a whole lot better when you focus on what's going on inside of you as opposed to what's going on around you. And the more we just get internal, we begin to, you know, take some measure of control over the mental images we're feeding ourselves, the more we can produce a result that's in congruence with our goals.

So I hope today helped you. I want to challenge you just to begin to do a little bit more visualization, just the concept of it, little bit more mental rehearsal, and begin to train yourself to produce the results that you want in your life as you move towards the thing you're most familiar with, which is what you want instead of what you don't want. All right, everybody. God bless you. Max out.

This is the Ed Marlon show.