This technique is adopted and practised by the top 2% of the world. It is so simple yet not practised commonly. Athletes like Michael Phelps, Tom Brady, and Novak Djokovic also use the Mental Movie Technique, and they’ve seen significant positive changes in their lives. So, let’s see how to rewire your brain in 30minutes.
How to do it in short: Try to sit for 30 minutes daily without any interruptions and stay at peace while imagining your goals or what you want to be. Try to make that imagination as vivid as possible because what you’re essentially doing is rehearsing the actual situation before it even happens, and our brain can not make the difference between imagination and a real-world situation.
Let’s dive in and understand our brain and how it is helpful.
Benefits of Mental Movie Technique
Adopting this technique has shown significant changes in personality, health, abilities, and even talents. And this has made people’s chronic failure turn into success.
It is also essential because almost all psychologists agree that most of us underrate ourselves, shortchange ourselves and sell ourselves short.
Today, we’re only beginning to glimpse the creative potential of the human imagination, particularly in our images of ourselves.
Before directly jumping into the technique, here are a few things that should be clear before getting started with the Mental Movie Technique.
Self-Image and Its Effects
Whether we realise it or not, everyone has a mental picture of themselves. It may be sharp or vaguely defined, but it is there. Self-image is our own conception of the type/sort of person we are.
This self-image is created from your own beliefs, the beliefs of others for you, your past experiences, and your successes and failures, especially in childhood.
The thing that we do not realise about this self-image is that whatever we feel our self-image is, it becomes real and true, but we never question the validity of that particular self-image because one can’t be the same and someone’s ability can’t be the same throughout their lives. It becomes more of a mental barrier and constraint.
Our self-image prescribes the limits for accomplishing a particular goal. It prescribes the “area of the possible”.
Self-image has 2 golden rules:
- Your talent, personality, abilities, feelings, and behaviour will always be aligned with your self-image.
- One is never too old or too young to change his/her self-image and start a new life, and numerous experiments have shown that once self-image is changed, other aspects consistent with the new image are accomplished easily and without strain.
Jesus said: “It is nearly impossible to really think positively about a particular situation as long as you hold a negative concept of yourself”.
A child in school failed maths and considered himself a failure, even though he failed in an exam. After discussion with counsellors, his grades drastically improved. Changes in the student’s point of view and self-conception altered his attitude towards the subject, making it easier for him to score higher marks.
What is the mental movie technique?
You must know that our brain and nervous system can’t tell the difference between imagined and real experiences. The brain reacts in the same way.
The mental movie technique holds that mental practice of an activity daily is equally effective as actually practising it. Mental practice helps to make it perfect.
Since the beginning of time, successful men and women have practised using mental pictures to achieve success.
Mentally picturing the desired end goal forces you to use “positive thinking”. Your efforts are used to carry you toward your goal, rather than being used in your mental conflict when you want to do one thing but picture yourself doing another.
Why and how it works
The new science gives us insight into the fact that these mental pictures are not due to “magic” but to the natural, normal functioning of our minds and brains.
Cybernetics regards the human brain, nervous system, and muscular system as a highly complex servo-mechanism. This mechanism is a goal-seeking machine that steers its focus toward the goal by correcting itself using feedback and stored data.
And once you see a thing clearly in your mind, then the success mechanism will take over and do better than you can do consciously.
How to do it
Dr Harry Emerson Fosdick says that “Great living starts with a picture, held in your imagination, of what you would like to do or be”.
Step 1: Set 30minutes daily when you can be yourself without any disturbance and be relaxed
Step 2: Now close your eyes and let your imagination run wild. Make the picture as vivid and detailed as possible.
Step 3: This movie should feel real, so pay attention to the small details like sounds, objects, sights in your environment. Detailing would help you because, for all practical purposes, you are creating a practice experience, and it should feel real.
Step 4: During this period, you see yourself acting appropriately and successfully. Ideally, if you keep reminding yourself and practising, your nervous system will take care of you. Just say, “I’m going to imagine myself acting xyz way now”.
Doing this regularly will store data in your midbrain and central nervous system. It helps create a new image of yourself. This new image will help you be a 2.0 version of yourself.
Things to Remember
- Many people feel they can do it better if they imagine themselves sitting down before the movie starts.
- It is not necessary to do it with a hard stop for 30 minutes, but start with 10-15minutes, eventually it’ll grow. What’s more important is doing it daily.
- Initially, you might feel that the goals aren’t clear, the picture isn’t very vivid, and it isn’t as detailed as real life, but practice will make your imagination open up.
Try this for 15 days and tell me how you feel. And did you see any change in your life?