How do both elite athletes and business leaders climb to the top? Contr
ary to what you might think, it’s effective habits rather than innate talent that are their keys to success.
In Organize Tomorrow Today, Dr. Jason Selk—director of mental training for the 2011 World Series Champions, the St. Louis Cardinals—and star business coach Tom Bartow combine the most effective elements of both their disciplines to offer an organizational improvement plan that anyone can learn and apply immediately.
Talk to marathon runners, and most of them will tell you the same story about the stretch between mile 21 and mile 26.
That’s where the monsters lurk.
When you get to mile 21, it isn’t a question of whether you can physically survive the last stretch. You can. It’s a question of whether the mental monsters will find you and convince you otherwise.
[bluebox] You must remember, beating yourself up verbally often does more damage than physically harming yourself.[/bluebox]
Your self-talk represents your self-image
Self-talk is the voice in your head driving you to put in the extra time on an important project at work. When you’re worn out at the end of the day and you want to pick up and finish tomorrow, it’s self-talk that rallies you to keep going. Conversely, if you’ve decided you’re going to go to the gym three days a week, and today is gym day, self-talk is the voice in your head you’re arguing with in bed as you wrestle over whether or not you’re going to get up an go.
At a deeper level, your self-talk represents your self-image–the way you see yourself. Ironically enough, Dr. Maxwell Maltz’s Psycho-Cybernetics-the book that produced so much misunderstanding about the formation of habits–was the same one to first touch on the very important idea of self-image, and how it governs a lot of what people are ultimately able to accomplish.
Maltz’s theory about self-image is a simple one. He said that a person will not be able to consistently overperform or underperform the self-image he or she has. In other words, if you fundamentally believe you’re an average performer (or a terrific one, or a terrible one), you won’t consistently be able to do a lot better or a lot worse than that baseline self-assessment.
[bluebox]Since self-image is determined by what you consistently say to yourself about yourself, you have the power to direct your self-image by directing your self-talk.[/bluebox]
What does enhance self-image?
Learning to talk to yourself about what you do well and how you want to improve. Concentrating on solutions instead of problems, and bolstering that focus on the positive with self-talk and visualizations.
In the words of Dr. Don Miguel Ruiz, bestselling author of the book The Four Agreements, ‘the human mind is like fertile ground where seeds are continually being planted.’ Whatever seeds you plant in your mind are the ones that will grow–so use this knowledge to plant seeds for the things you want to achieve.
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