Visualization: The Peak Performance Tool

I remember my life as a performer/programmer in NJ. I spent most of my nights singing dancing and acting while I spent the day meticulously wading through programming code.

I remember, before a show, I’d usually find myself in a hectic, noisy dressing room with actors who were either singing to themselves, reciting lines to themselves, or, worse yet, complaining to themselves.

I remember sneaking out of this room and venturing out to the only quiet place in the entire theater: the stage itself. I was so amazed at how a place that could hold such drama, applause, music, and laughter could be so noiseless right before showtime.

In this place, I made it a ritual to visualize my role in the show and to virtually walk through all of my scenes. I’d take time to practice my lines and visualize myself as the character. I’d practice standing in my spots on stage while pausing every now and then to gaze at the empty house. I would imagine the seats full of nameless faces staring at me. I’d feel a slight twinge of fear quickly followed by a sublime calmness brought on by my understanding of the need to focus.

Doing this helped me become a better performer. However, it did not always relieve my anxiety and fear. For example, if I started to panic for whatever reason, my performance would go downhill fast. Once my focus was gone, my mind became a blank slate. Most people call it as stage fright.

To prevent “stage fright” in actual real life situations, I used to prepare in quite the same way. I would visualize the people, the place, the talk and the activity and think about all the different scenarios I’d encounter. I would then give myself a short list of actions and recitations thereby usually guaranteeing a favorable or, at worst, disappointing outcome.

Then something in me changed.

Three years ago, I found out (much to my dismay) that visualization is not the cure-all to life’s problems. Even worse it was preventing me from growing as a person. I sheltered myself from feeling the full breadth of emotional sensations and only knew a sliver of the emotional spectrum.

Known to me: Favorable through Disappointing.
Unknown to me: Ecstatic through Devastating.

Three years ago, I took the first excruciating steps to exposing my mind to this new reality of mine.

How did I do this? I resolved to use visualization as a tool (to perfect action) and not as an instigator (to initiate or force action). It meant that I had to go into new situations only prepared with my wisdom, my principles, and my passions.

I’ll actually write more about this in another post.

What did I learn? More than I could have imagined. I’m learning how to motivate, teach, anticipate, sympathize, argue, and convince other people. More importantly I keep learning more and more about how to let go of my constant fear of failure.

Again.....I’ll talk about this in another post.

It’s been a year since I’ve performed on stage and I don’t really miss it. Treating life as a grand experience, sincerely interacting with others, and taking emotional risks have been just as, if not more, rewarding then the sound of applause.

Do You Know Your Brain? Left vs Right

I’ve always been fascinated with the study of the brain. I’m especially interested in the differences between the two hemispheres: the left and right. They are complete opposites when it comes to learning, taking in new information, and making decisions. Here is a brief description:

The left uses symbols, words, numbers, and anything concrete. It works efficiently and shrewdly. It learns sequentially and logically. It’s predictable and knowledgeable.

The right? It’s perceptive. Intuitive. Random. A swirl of feelings, sensations, and ideas. Holistic. Spatial. It’s the source of imagination. Silent.

My personal definition:
The left brain understands the world; the right brain understands the universe.

Think about our lives here on Earth. We thrive on communication. We perfected the art of acronyms, protocols, languages, and codes. In our hi-tech society, instantaneous knowledge is the norm. We’re sequential. We live by production cycles, 12-step programs, career paths, assembly lines, and instruction booklets. We’re logical. We make decisions based on statistics, economic indices, point spreads, and interest rates. We’re predictable. We’re born, go to school, work, marry, have children and die. This is the life of a left-brainer.

Now imagine that you pause for a slight moment to look up at the night sky. You study it. You ponder the vastness of it all and how creatures as relatively tiny as us fit into the picture.

You are curious. You feel the irresistible need to search for the source of and reason for all things: life, eternity, the universe. You instinctively know that the answer lies somewhere out there. The only way to satisfy your curiosity is to explore the vastness out there. To go as far as your mind and imagination will take you.

You are creative. Focused and self-sacrificing, you learn how to travel across the universe by warping space and time. Though you can only do this for a brief time, you’re thoroughly confident in your skills. You also know that this will take many tries. Not just one. And for each journey, you pick a star. Any one will do. As soon as you’ve chosen a handful, you use these celestial orbs as indispensable guides for the most exhilarating trips of your life.

You are courageous. You summon up the strength and determination to venture into the unknown. You leave behind all that you know and love. Traveling hundreds of thousands of millions of miles, you feel like you belong to eternity.

You are depressed. At times you find yourself drifting through the deepest and darkest regions of space. Devoid of any fiery haven or celestial glow. It’s a vacuum that’s 200 degrees colder than anything the Earth has ever known.

You are angry. At times your dreams collapse under their own weight and blows up into nonexistence. The same goes for the star you chose for this journey of yours. The celestial orb spontaneously explodes right before your eyes. It can the most intense sight in the entire galaxy. With the power of hundreds of billions of suns, it engulfs any heavenly body within its vast reach. Even planets dependant on it for life are abruptly dissolved or scorched forever.

You are at peace. Every so often you find a star that’s the center of an unlikely paradise. An oasis in the midst of darkness. A sort of sanctuary all to yourself. This is what you’ve desperately hoped for. This is where you thrive.

Then comes the time when you must return to Earth. You don’t have the power to live outside of the world forever. At least not yet. You slowly begin to prepare yourself. It seems to take much more courage going back than it did when you started.

When you finally arrive back on Earth, nothing’s really changed much. Except you. This is the life of a right-brainer.

I’m a right-brainer. Which side are you on?

What Is Intelligence?

Dictionary.com defines intelligence as:

the ability to comprehend; to understand and profit from experience

Okay. Great. Now that we've taken care of the formalities, here’s my personal definition of intelligence.

I believe most people are born with the potential to be intelligent. At a very young age:

• We have the ability to take in the sensations of the world.
• We have the ability to recognize what we see, taste, touch, feel, and smell.
• We have the ability to relate them to our past experiences.
• We have the ability to store them in our memories.
• We have the ability to reproduce or recall them.
• We also have the ability to control our reaction to them.

This is what I call the Intelligence Cycle. Here’s a solid example:

Say you’re walking by a pastry shop on your way home from work. You smell the aroma as you glance into the store. The mixture of pleasant shock and delight sends your head spinning. For a moment you’re in ecstasy. For just a second you ponder walking into the shop and picking out your favorite delicacy. Then you snap back to reality. Remember your diet. Remember your budget. Remember your time. You promise yourself that you’ll bake a cake this weekend.

At first glance, you might think of it as a sequence. I think of it as a cycle. It’s the cycle of learning. Once you reach the finally step. Once you’re able to control your reactions you want to increase the detail, the frequency, and the intensity of the sensation.

After smelling the pastries in the shop. You might want to compare the smell to your own baking. You might want to find “reasons” to walk by the shop more often. You might want to walk inside to get a better small. All this is the learning cycle. Raising desire through temptation. Embracing your senses. Realizing your intelligence. Making yourself smarter.

On the other hand, you could stop all the fuss and buy one freakin’ doughnut. What would it hurt? It takes very little time, little money, and you’re not on a diet. I know there’s the “little things add up” argument. For example, small but frequent expenses DO add up. But I don’t care about that as much.

I do care about your mind. It’s really quite easy for anyone to short-circuit the intelligence cycle. Impulse buying jumps from step one to step six. It will waste most of your mental potential. It’s a potential that I’m sure will bring a good amount of success and contentment to your life.

Self-Parenting And Dating

Young boys want to marry their mother. Young girls think their father can do no wrong. As a child I also shared the same fantasy. My parents were my idea of perfection. My only ideal. It was easy to love them. How could I not?

Between then and now something happened. My parents only pretended to be perfect. They were afraid and scared, but they never shared their feelings. They were frustrated and angry, but never talked about their dreams. That’s when I knew I had to look inside of myself for answers.

I've had success using basic reasoning skills to answer my own questions. On the flip side, I also have a nasty habit of asking more questions after the first one is answered. Here's one that sticks out in my mind.

Why do I keep dating women like my mother?
The answer is simple: the Oedipus complex.

How do I resolve this issue?
Unfortunately, I needed some assistance for this one. I needed the help of a certain type of woman and I did find her. Over time I actually found about a dozen just like her. These women were as strong, as good-looking, as hyperactive, and as emotionally unstable as my mother. They were oblivious to what I was doing. At the time, I was oblivious to what I was doing. But it is working. I call the technique “Oedipal Vaccination”. It takes a while to kick in. I’ve been using it for about 3 years now.

Here’s some background:
They say there are 3 aspects to a good relationship:

• intimacy
• passion
• commitment

I would say my parents had the commitment, and to some degree the passion but there was no sign of intimacy. Most good marriages have signs of all three, but the levels may vary over the years.

How does it start?
Anyway, along comes a complete stranger who cast from the same mold as my mother. My mind is transported back to when my world was young. I feel invigorated. She reminds me so much of my mother. I look past all the warning signs. I get closer. I've dated woman just like her in the past. This time it’ll be different, right?

What do I do?
I know the strength of desire (passion) and not making empty promises (commitment) can spark a relationship. I hold off on those two and focus on sharing my feelings with her (intimacy). Especially the feelings I have for her. That’s about it. Nothing else.

Why do I do this?
I always found it hard to express my feelings to the ones I care about the most.
So, it’s a way of my rewiring my mind. I want to change my personal definition of closeness from insatiable passion and blind commitment to honest intimacy.

Is it fair to the women I date?
In short, no. I don’t think it is. But I have to do it. It’s what I need to do to grow. The way I see it ,I have three choices:

• Do nothing. I could have stayed at home dreaming about her. However dating is a priority in my life. This is not an option.
• Become her friend (not opening my heart to her). I’ve tried this. It's good for a while. But I usually get bored after a while. The friendship dies off.
• Try my best to woo her. Here’s the thing….My best method of persuasion right now is telling her how I feel. If that’s not good enough, I’ll move on. Besides, I think it’s important for a woman to know how special she is.

This post is not about finding a life-long partner. It’s about what I’ve done to find myself. I want to redefine my life-long idea of perfection. I want my logical and emotional minds to see the same reality.

The bottom line. I live through my beliefs. I respect my feelings more than I respect the feelings of others. The more I realize my feelings, the more realize who I am. The more I realize myself, the more I understand others. That’s what I call the Golden Cycle.

If you’re caught in an endless cycle of failed relationships (I’ve had three), experiment with your dating habits. Shorten the cycle. Look for the warning signs. Not only in other people, but also yourself. Don’t be afraid of missing “The One”. Believe in yourself. Believe that YOU are “The One”. You’ll find “The Future Spouse Of The One” once you find yourself.