PDF [Download] Eat. By - Amelia Freer -Full Books. Barringer -Full Pages. Jordanbychkov -Full Books. Lombardo -Full Pages. Sarno M. Sarafino -Full Pages. Marieb -Full Books. Susan Milton -Full Books. Schroeder -Full Pages. Gregory Mankiw -Full Pages. Rudov -Read Online. Solomon -Full Books. Pope -Full Pages. Felder -Read Online. Kump -Full Pages. Mishkin -Read Online. Building mental muscle, like building physical muscle, requires time and effort.
The more you work on the inside, the more it will show on the outside. First you must make a commitment. As Yogi supposedly said, when you come to the fork in the road, take it. By reading the first section, you are taking your first step. Think of the book in your hands as your mind gym. Read the lessons, do the exercises, and answer the questions. If you do, you will acquire the skills needed to cre- 6 ate the ideal mental state that will allow you to rise to the next level and perform at your best by choice rather than chance.
What you think affects how you feel and perform. Training your brain is as important as training your body. The Arizona Cardinals were at summer training camp in Flagstaff, and every player could feel the stoic presence of the team's tall, toughminded head coach.
Stallings is a protege of the late Paul "Bear" Bryant. Like Bryant, Stallings valued practice time. He placed a premium on mental toughness and the work habits of his players. Now here he stood, casting a long shadow, his steely gaze fixed on a placekicker as he swung his right foot, soccer-style, into and through the ball. When the field-goal attempt sailed wildly wide of the mark-the kicker shanked the ball-Stallings's face hardened like 8 ready-mix cement.
In disgust, he turned his back and walked away, muttering under his breath. Once Gene was out of earshot, I drew the kicker aside. This was my first season as team counselor for the NFL club. Then he thought of his coach and his glacial stare.
He shook his head. But he had allowed himself to become selfconscious and coach-conscious rather than task-conscious. His mind was on his boss. If the player expected better results, he had to change his thought patterns. He needed to work on the mental part of his game.
One key to achieving success in sports is learning how to focus on the task and not let negative thoughts intrude. The mind can concentrate on only one thing at a time.
So, rather than suppress what you don't want to happen, you must focus on what you do want to happen or on some neutral thought. In working with placekickers, I use a distraction technique.
I ask them to create a word that, when said to themselves, will block out all negative thought and help relieve tension. For him "birdie" creates the feeling of success and reminds him of the fun he has on the golf course. The brain is like a megacomputer that controls the body.
Herbert Benson, a Harvard cardiologist, found that having patients focus on their breathing and repeating the word "one" lowered their blood pressure and heart rate. Try it yourself. The brain can do remarkable things but, unlike a computer, it doesn't come with an instruction manual.
Unfortunately, too often we pull up the wrong " programs" at the wrong times. This section begins with a profound quote from Tommy Bolt, the former professional golfer. Terrible Tommy, he was called. Thunder Bolt. The joke was that Bolt was bilingual-fluent in English and profanity.
His temper and club-throwing tantrums are part of golf's rich lore. According to legend, after lipping out six putts in a row during one tournament round, Bolt shook his fist at the heavens and shouted, "Why don't You come down and fight like a man?!
When a weekend golfer arrives at a water hole what is the second thing he does after fishing an old ball-a water ball-out of his bag? Stepping to the tee he tells himself, " Don 't hit it in 10 the water. If you say, "Don't hit it in the water" and you're looking at the water, you have just programmed your mind to send the ball to a watery grave. The law of dominant thought says your mind is going to remember the most dominant thought.
Think water, remember water, and water likely is what you will get. Rather than say "Don't hit it in the water," try another instruction, like "Land the ball ten yards to the right of the pin. The mind works most effectively when you're telling it what to do rather than what not to do. When I was with the Chicago Cubs, a starting pitcher telephoned me from Montreal.
He had been rocked in his last outing. In an almost pleading voice, he said he needed help. When I asked him to relate the conversation he had with himself when he was alone on the mound, struggling to find the plate, he ticked off a laundry list of negative thoughts: "Don't hang your curve.
Don't walk this guy. The ump won't give me a call. If I don't get through the fifth inning I'm going to lose my spot in the rotation. On one side I have them list their personal keys to success; on the other, their performance keys to success. I asked the Cubs pitcher to tell me his performance keys to suc- 11 cess.
I'm changing speed. Drive through. All I want you to do before the game is to focus on those three things. In less than a week he couldn't have changed that much physically. His turnaround is proof that by changing your thinking-and you can choose how you think-you can change your performance.
Put another way, if you don't like the program you are watching, switch the channel. Learn to use your mind or your mind will use you. Actiol'IS follow our thoughts and images.
Sometimes it takes just a little extra something to get that edge, but you have to have it. Louis dugout with his eyes closed. Mark McGwire wasn't napping. The man with the broad shoulders and Popeye forearms , who had already hit one home run that late September afternoon, was deep in thought-mentally rehearsing. A ripping swing. A I3 cork-popping sound. Away it went, a streaking line drive. The ball landed in the left-field stands for home run number seventy-proving to the last skeptic that Big Mac's sixty-nine others that season weren't flukes.
McGwire hit five home runs in the last forty-four hours of the season and waved good-bye to Sammy Sosa, with whom he had formed a mutual admiration club and competed in a dinger derby unlike anything baseball had ever seen. Sports psychology has been called the science of success because it studies what successful people do. What we have found-and what McGwire and other great athletes validate-is the value of mental rehearsal and imagery.
Here is how Carl Yastrzemski described his use of imagery: "The night before a game, I visualize the pitcher and the pitches I'm going to see the next day.
I hit the ball right on the button. I know what it's going to feel like. I hit the pitches where I want to. If you take twenty athletes of equal ability and give ten mental training they will outperform the ten who received no mental training every time.
This is what we call the head edge. One interesting study involved college basketball players. For three months, one group shot free throws for one hour each day. Another group spent an hour each day 14 thinking about shooting free throws. The third group shot baskets thirty minutes a day and spent thirty minutes visualizing the ball going through the hoop from the foul line.
Which group, at the end of the study, do you think improved its free-throw shooting the most? The third group did. The imagery had as much impact on accuracy as shooting baskets. He divided the team into two groups equally matched for ski-racing ability. One group received imagery training; the other served as a control group. The coach quickly realized that the skiers practicing imagery were improving more rapidly than those in the control group. He called off the experiment and insisted that all his skiers be given the opportunity to train using imagery.
One Saturday we went to Randalls Island for a clinic. I sat in wonder in the presence of Pele, the greatest soccer player in the world. I still remember what he said: enthusiasm and the mental edge are the keys to winning. Pele described his routine, which was the same for every game he played. An hour before he stepped onto the field, Pele went into the locker room, picked up two towels , and retreated to a 15 private corner.
Stretching out, he placed one towel under the back of his head, like a pillow. He covered his eyes with the other. Then he began to roll his mental camera. In his mind's eye he saw himself as a youngster playing soccer on the beaches of Brazil.
He could feel the gentle breeze. He could smell the salt air. He remembered how much fun he had and how much he loved the game. Pele then hit the fast-forward button of his mental video. He began recalling his greatest moments in the World Cup and reliving that winning feeling. Then he let those images fade and began rehearsing for the upcoming game.
He pictured his opponents. He saw himself dribbling through defenders, heading shots, and scoring goals. After a half-hour in solitude, alone with his thoughts and the slide show of positive images, Pele did his stretching exercises.
When he trotted into the stadium, washed in cheers, he knew he was physically and mentally prepared. An exercise for this section is called the mind gym. At the time Bob wasn't a dominating big-league pitcher.
He didn't have a great fastball, relying instead on location and changes in speed. In working together, I asked Bob to create his own mind gym, an imaginary retreat where he could go before games to reflect and mentally prepare. His vivid imagination created an elaborate studio. Bob's mind gym featured a bubble-like structure-an energy machine with a ticker 16 tape that flashed positive affirmations, and a state-of-theart sound system. From his mind-gym bed Bob could stretch out and watch a highlights tape of himself on a big-screen TV mounted overhead.
Tewskbury later bloomed into an All-Star with the Cardinals. To get the head edge, try creating your own mind gym. You always can do mental practice, even when you are physically tired or injured.
Make your images as vivid and as clear as you can. See yourself overcoming mistakes, and imagine yourself doing things well. Remember, confidence comes from knowing you are mentally and physically prepared. Sports psychology is the science of success. Studies show that within a group of athletes of equal ability, those who receive mental training outperform those who don't almost every time.
Mental skills, like physical skills, need constant practice. Kids at school called him "Peanut" and other hurtful names. A figure-skating judge said he was too small to succeed in international competition. But now here he was, on center stage, at five-foot-three, lIS pounds, the biggest attraction of the Winter Olympics.
Figure skating is the main event of the Winter Games. It is rich theater, made-for-TV drama. The anticipation is delicious. For the performers the pressure is palpable. One tiny mistake-one fraction of a point deducted by unforgiving judges-can mean the difference between triumph and tears.
Scott Hamilton stood alone in the spotlight. In the American skater had finished fifth at the Games in 18 Lake Placid. Now, after four years of working on eliminating his weaknesses in training, after four years of waiting and dreaming, this was his chance, perhaps his last chance, to win an Olympic gold medal. Hamilton took a deep breath and launched body and soul into his routine. He glided, jumped, and spun.
Arms outstretched, he became one with the music, his flashing skate blades cutting stencils in the ice. Four minutes later it was over. Bravos filled the arena, and bouquets tossed from the stands littered the ice. The applause sounded like hard rain. Hamilton reminded us that winners come in all sizes.
Wearing a shiny gold medal that hung almost to his waist, the American Olympic champion lived his dream. That night in Sarajevo he credited his success to his mental preparedness. The skater's comment intrigued me. All of us are performers in the game of li fe. We face pressure and competition every day-at work, in the boardroom, in the classroom, on the golf course, on the tennis court, the basketball court, and at play.
With Hamilton's quote in mind, I began a new career studying the psychology of stress and the psychology of 19 success. My mission was to learn alII could about playing under pressure. I wanted to find out why, under pressure, some athletes break through, as Hamilton did, while others break down.
In what ways, and to what extent, does the mind influence how we perform? What is pressure? Golfer Lee Trevino said, "Pressure is when you've got thirty-five bucks riding on a four-foot putt and you've only got five dollars in your pocket. Never one to duck a question, baseball's space cadet thought a moment, then announced, "Thirty-two pounds per square inch, at sea level.
Pressure exists. Every athlete, whether he or she admits it, feels pressure in competition. So where does pressure come from? The heart beats faster, and breathing quickens. No one is immune. Jack Nicklaus, who has won more major championships than any golfer in history, says, "Pressure creates tension, and when you're tense, you want to get your task over and done with as fast as possible. The more you hurry in golf the worse you probably will play, which leads to even heavier pressure and greater tension.
But when tension rises, two things happen: the feet can't move and the diaphragm collapses. It's automatic. It's in the genetic code. In fact, if you don't feel any pressure you're probably not going to do your best.
Former big-league pitcher Goose Gossage thrived on pressure. Goose was a master at keeping his job in perspective. I remember asking him how he handled the pressure of being a closer. Gossage said, "Every time I come into a game I think of my home in the Rockies, and that relaxes me.
And I tell myself the worst thing that could happen is that I'd be home fishing there tonlorrow. Sixteen years after watching him win the gold medal , I spoke with Scott when he was in Phoenix with the Stars on Ice tour. When I told him that his "fifteen percent" quote about pressure became my inspiration for writing this book the skater smiled.
Hamilton said he approached his gold-medal performance in Sarajevo with "refined indifference. When the spotlight came on and the music began, he let fate carry him through. The hard work was over. Now, he told himself, go out and enjoy. In fourth place after the short program and feeling she had nothing to lose, the year-old took a leap of faith and skated with abandon.
Sports Illustrated described her performance as "uninhibited joy. A close friend, Ken Ravizza, is one of the first sports psychologists to publish a study on the experiences of athletes during their "greatest moment" in sports. He found that more than 80 percent of the athletes said they felt no 22 fear of failure.
They weren't thinking about their performance. They were immersed in the activity. They were in "the zone. Go into your mental studio, which we discussed in the last section. Recall a time when you broke through, when the pressure workedJoryou. Notice what you were doing, feeling, and saying to yourself. Were you relaxed or tense?
Excited or anxious? Did you fear failure or feel a desire to win? Were you focused on the outcome or absorbed in the process? Everything gets interpreted. Pressure is in the brain oJ the beholder. Learn to view pressure as a challenge to meet rather than a threat cif defeat. An LTG is a fierce competitor, a battler, an athlete who looks at pressure as a challenge, who refuses to lose, and never, ever quits.
An example of an LTG in another sport is the soccer player who once had the ball stolen during a scrimmage. As the defender turned upfie! He lay there, grinning in disbelief and admiration at the girl who had fouled him and then walked away without a glance back.
Her name is Marie! Margaret Hamm. The highestscoring woman in the history of international soccer is 24 the definition of mental toughness.
Shy by nature and labeled a reluctant star, Mia told her teammates, "Nothing stands between us and success but our will to win.
The Americans won the World Cup, outlasting China in a final game that featured two exhausting overtimes and a dramatic shootout. If Mia Hamm wasn't the heart of her team, then she was the left ventricle. In this section we will define the seven characteristics of mental toughness.
They are a set of behaviors and beliefs about yourself, your work, your sport, and how you interact. A person who is mentally tough looks at competition as a challenge to rise up to rather than a threat to back down from. Like physical skills, mental toughness can be learned through quality instruction and practice. Professional golfer Nancy Lopez clearly defines a competitor. Quitters take bad breaks and use them as reasons to give up. Why would 25 the greatest basketball player in history attempt to play another sport?
Because he couldn't accept not trying. Late in life, Joe DiMaggio said he would give away all his trophies and records to be twenty-five years old and able to compe te again. Tiger Woods said, "Every time I play, in my own mind I'm the favorite. They almost never fall victim to self-defeating thoughts. Jordan said he went into every game believing he was the best player on the court until someone proved otherwise.
Very few did. Successful athletes are able to control their emotions and behavior. They focus on what they can control and don't allow things that are out of their control to affect them. The hallmark of mentally tough athletes is the ability to maintain poise, concentration, and emotional control under the greatest pressure and the most challenging situations.
Mentally tough athletes focus their time and energy on their goals and dreams. They are selfdirected and highly motivated. Listen to John McEnroe: "There are scores of players who can hit every shot in the book who never make it into a Grand Slam event. Those 26 who make it are there because they are mentally tougher. They wanted it more. He worked hard to get back into shape. The results speak for themselves.
Mentally tough athletes know how to stay focused and deal with adversity. In working with hockey teams, I'll sometimes approach a player in the locker room and give him a shove when he isn't looking. I want to see his reaction. Oftentimes the player will instinctively make a fist and draw back his arm, ready to throw a punch. In hockey and basketball the athlete who retaliates is usually the one who gets penalized.
I tell tennis players they can expect two or three bad calls in every match, sometimes more. How they manage their emotions can determine whether they win or lose. A mentally tough player will say to himself, "OK, if I've got to beat the other guy and the referee, then fine-I'll do that.
A mentally tough athlete must be willing to take a risk. That's what peak performers do. In the book Adversity Quotient author Paul Stoltz compares success with a mountain.
Only climbers get to the top. The campers, those who get part of the way up and decide to stay where they are, will never feel as alive or as proud as 27 the climbers.
As the philosopher said, it takes courage to grow up and to achieve your full potential. Mentally tough athletes possess an inner strength.
They often play their best when they're feeling their worst. They don't make excuses. Competition is won or lost on the six-inch playingfield between the ears. Learn to love the competition. When his clients exhibit this preoccupation, he shares with them the following Zen riddle. Afremow draws a chalk line on the floor and asks them how to make the line shorter without erasing its edges. The answer-draw a longer line next to it, thus making the original line shorter in comparison.
Afremow provides concrete strategies that can be readily applied to any situation to achieve success in your performance domain. Through the use of enlightening Zen stories, inspirational quotes, and clever performance principles, Dr. Afremow details the five Cs to lengthening your own line. With the winning tactics in Lengthen Your Line, you too can focus on chasing your own potential and take your performance to the highest level.
This book is a must-read for anybody aiming to be something bigger than what they are. Through stressing the importance of confidence, motivation, and discipline, the reader is given real-world examples of success after failure and are inspired to keep going no matter what might happen. The book is great for anybody who is serious about taking their passion to the next level, or looking for a reason to have passion in the first place. If you feel like you're in a rut or like you're simply unable to nudge or move forward, this book has very pertinent advice for you, too.
Everyone can benefit from the techniques outline in Mind Gym: The Ultimate Guide for Beginners, and they will find themselves in awe of their newfound ability to perform upon shedding themselves of the insecurities and anxieties that clouded their judgment before. The idea underneath it all is very simple: you go to a real gym in order to train your muscles.
Shouldn't you go to a "mind gym" to train your mind? Historical greats, not only from sports but from every industry, have underscored the absolute importance of having a strong mind.
Many famous athletes have said that having a strong mind is as important as having strong muscles, and more still have said that the majority of being a top-level athlete and being great at a game is having a honed mind.
Your ability to perform - not only in sports but in anything under the sun - can be broken down and torn apart and once you've broken them down into tiny little pieces like that, you realize that a lot of it your ability to perform is actually in the way that you approach it. Through confidence, diligence, and motivation, you can go from a zero to hero with anything you can dream of. What it ultimately comes down to is your wil. As the name implies, this website has thousands of free eBooks.
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