Psycho Cybernetics (a video book) – 40 chapter 13 – secret of the money player
Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.
Once again, practice being who you want to be but this time take off the pressure and succeed.
Here’s the text from this video:
The Secret of the Money Player
The difference betWeen all these persons is not an inherent quality that one has and the other hasn’t. It is largely a matter of how they learned to react to crisis situations.
A “crisis” is a situation that can either make you or break you. If you react properly to the crisis, it can give you strength, power, wisdom you do not ordinarily possess. If you react improperly, a crisis can rob you of the skill, control, and ability that you ordinarily have to call on.
The so-called “money player” in sports, in business, or in social activities- the person who comes through in the clutch, who performs better under the stimulus of challenge-is invariably the person who has learned either consciously or unconsciously to react well to crisis situations.
To perform well in a crisis, we need to (1) learn certain skills under conditions where we will not be overmotivated; we need to practice without pressure. (2) We need to learn to react to crisis with an aggressive, rather than a defensive, attitude, to respond to the challenge in the situation rather than to the menace, to keep our positive goal in mind. (3) We need to learn to evaluate so~called “crisis” situations in their true perspective, to avoid making mountains out of molehills or reacting as if every small challenge were a matter of life or death.
In other words, making yourself into a money player is very doable, because it is totally dependent on a relatively short list of attitudes and skills that can be learned, exercised, and developed, and that can be accelerated in development and maintained through other Psycho Cybernetics Techniques. Noone lacks what it takes to be a money player.
Practice Without Pressure
Although we may learn fast, we do not learn well under crisis conditions. Throw a man who can’t swim into water over his head, and the crisis itself may give’him the power to swim to safety. He learns fast, and manages to swim somehow. But he will never learn to become a championship swimmer. The crude inept stroke that he used to rescue himself becomes fixed and it is difficult for him to learn better ways of swimming. Because of his ineptness he may perish in a real crisis where he is required to swim a long distance.
Dr. Edward C. Tolman, psychologist and expert on animal behavior at the University of California, said that both animals and men form “brain maps” or “cognitive maps” of the environment while they are learning. If the motivation is not too intense, if there is not too’much of a crisis present in the learning situation, these maps are broad and general. If the animal is over motivated, the cognitive map is narrow and restricted. It learns just one way of solving the problem.
In the future, if this one way happens to ‘ be blocked, the animal becomes frustrated and Jails to discern alternative routes or detours. It develops a single cut-and-dried, preconceived response and tends to lose the ability to react spontaneously to a new situation. It cannot improvise. It can only follow a set plan.
Consider the young man growing up in a tough ghetto environment, spending his time on the street, interacting with gang members, at risk virtually all the time, in an environment where any hint of fear, weakness or vulnerability may lead to dire consequences. If this is the environmentin which he learns all his conflict resolution skills, he will learn only one narrowly defined set of such skills, probably incorporating fiercely aggressive behavior and physical violence. I would suggest you might see this reflected in a man like Mike Tyson, awesomely successful in the boxing ring but horribly unsuccessful in any other setting.
Pressure Retards Learning
Dr. Tolman found that if rats were permitted to learn and practice under noncrisis conditions, they later performed well in a crisis. For example, if rats were permitted to roam about at will and explore a maze when well fed and with plenty to drink, they did not appear to learn anything.
Later, however, if the same rats were placed in the maze while hungry, they showed they had learned a great deal by quickly and efficiently going to the goal. Hunger faced these trained rats with a crisis to which they reacted well.
Other rats, forced to learn the maze under the’ crisis of hunger and thirst, did not do so well. They were overmotivated and their brain maps became narrow. The one “correct” route to the goal became fixated. If this route was blocked, the rats became frustrated and had great difficulty learning a new one.
Fire Drills Teach Crisis Conduct In Noncrisis Situation
People react in the same way. Persons who have to learn how to get out of a burning building will normally require two or three times as long to learn the proper escape route, as they would if no fire were present. Some of them do not learn at all.
Overmotivation interferes with reasoning processes. The automatic reaction mechanism is jammed by too much conscious effort, trying too hard. ‘Something akin to purpose tremor develops and the ability to think clearly is lost.
The ones who manage somehow to get out of the building have learned a narrow fixated response. Put them in a different building, or change the circumstances slightly, and they react as badly the second time around as the first.
But you can take these same people, let them practice a “dry run”
fire drill when there is no fire. Because there is no menace, there is no excessive negative feedback to interfere with clear thinking or correct doing. They practice filing out of the building calmly, efficiently, and correctly. After they have practiced this a number of times, they can be counted on to act the same way when an actual fire breaks out. Their muscles, nerves, and brain have memorized a broad, general, flexible map. The attitude of calmness and clear thinking will carry over from practice drill to actual fire. Moreover, they will have learned something about how to get out of any building or cope with any changed circumstances. They are not committed to a rigid response, but will be able to improvise, to react spontaneously to whatever conditions may be present.The moral is obvious for either mice or men: , Practice without pressure and you will learn more efficiently and be able to perform better in a crisis situation.
Shadow-Boxing for Stability
Famous boxer Gentleman Jim Corbett made the word “shadow-boxing” popular. When asked how he developed the perfect control and timing for his left jab, which he used to cut John L. Sullivan, the Boston Strong-boy, to ribbons, Corbett replied that he had practiced throwing his left at his own image in the mirror more than 10,000 times in preparation for the bout.
Gene Tunney did the same thing. Years before he actually fought
Jack Dempsey in the ring, he had fought an imaginary Dempsey more than a hundred times in the privacy of his own room. He secured all the films of old Dempsey fights. He watched them until he knew every one of Dempsey’s moves. Then he shadow-boxed. He would imagine that Dempsey was standing before him. When the imaginary Dempsey would make a certain move, he would practice his counter move.Billy Graham preached sermons to cypress stumps in a Florida swamp before developing his compelling platform personality with live audiences. Most good public speakers have done the same thing in one way or another. The most common form of shadow-boxing for public speakers is to deliver their speech to their own image in the mirror. One man I know lines up six or eight empty chairs, imagines people sitting in them, and practices his speech on the invisible audience.
Another lectured to chickens on his farm!
A female stand-up comedian I know, who asked not to be identified by name, told me that, early in her career, she practiced delivering her routine with full style and emotion as if before a big audience-but actually alone, standing c’ompletely naked, in front of three full-length mirrors arranged in an arc in front of her! She reasoned that she never felt more vulnerable and inhibited than being seen naked (which is why she preferred having sex only in a dark room) so if she could stand nude in a lit room looking at her mirrored reflections and still concentrate and deliver her routine there, she’d be able to do it easily fully clothed and thus “protected” in front of an audience. Prior to this conversation I had heard of speakers visualizing their audiences stripped to their underwear so as to be less intimidating, but I’d never heard of it speaker going au naturale!
She uniquely combined “safe” practice with simulated or synthetic pressure. For the record, she has gone onto become one of the most successful female comedians in. the business.
My point is to find a form of shadow-boxing that works for you.
Easy Practice Brings Better Scores
When the great Ben Hogan was playing tournament golf regularly, he kept a golf club in his bedroom, and daily practiced in private, swinging the club . correctly and without pressure at an imaginary golf ball.
When Hogan was on the links, he would go through the COfFect motions in his imagination before making a shot, then depend on muscle memory to execute the shot correctly. Virtually all golf instruction today incorporates such relaxed practice and imagination practice.
Shadow-Boxing “Turns on” Self-Expression
The word “express” literally means to push out, exert, show forth. The word “inhibit” means to choke off, restrict. Self-expression is a pushing out, a showing forth, of the powers, talents and abilities of the self. It means turning on your own light and letting it shine. Self-expression is a yes response. Inhibition is a no response. It chokes off self expression, turns off or dims your light.
In shadow-boxing you practice self-expression with no actual inhibiting factors present. You learn the correct moves. You form a mental map that is retained in memory. A broad, general, flexible map. Then, when you face a crisis, where an actual menace or inhibiting factor is present, you have learned to act calmly and correctly. There is a carryover in your muscles, nerves, and brain from practice to the actual situation.
Moreover, because your learning has been relaxed and pressure-free, you will be able to rise to the occasion, extemporize, improvise, act spontaneously. At the same time your shadow-boxing is building a mental image of yourself acting correctly and successfully. The memory of this successful self-image also enables you to perform better.
Dry-Shooting Is the Secret of Good Marksmanship
A novice on the pistol range will quite often find that he can hold the hand gun perfectly still and motionless, as long as he is not trying to shoot. When he aims an empty gun at a target, his hand is steady.
When the same gun is loaded and he attempts to make a score, purpose · tremor sets in. The gun barrel uncontrollably moves up and down, back and forth, in much the same way that your hand tremors when you attempt to thread a needle (see Chapter 11). Many good pistol coaches recommend lots of dry run target shooting to overcome this condition. The marksman calmly and deliberately aims, cocks, and snaps the hand gun at a target on the wall. Calmly and deliberately he pays ati:ention to just how he is holding the gun, whether it is canted or not, whether he is squeezing or jerking the trigger. He learns good habits calmly. There is no purpose tremor because there is no overcarefulness, no overanxiety for results. After thousands of such dry runs, the riovice will find that he can hold the loaded gun, and actually shoot it while maintaining the same mental attitude, and going through the same calm, deliberate physical motions.
Shadow-Boxing Helps You Hit the Ball
I visited a friend of mine one Sunday in a suburb of New York. His 10- year-old son had visions of becoming a big-league baseball star. His fielding was adequate, but he couldn’t hit. Each time his father threw the ball across the plate, the boy froze up-and missed it by a foot. I decided to try something. “You’re so anxious to hit the ball, and so afraid you won’t, that you can’t even see it clearly,” I said. All that tension and anxiety was interfering with his eyesight and his reflexes; his arm muscles weren’t executing the orders from his brain.
“For the next ten pitches,” I said, “don’t even try to hit the ball.
pon’t try at all. Keep your bat on your shoulder. But watch the ball very carefully. Keep your eyes on it from the time it leaves your
Daddy’s hand until it goes by you. Stand easy and loose, and just watch the ball go by.”After ten trials of this, I advised him, “Now for a while, watch the ball go by and keep the bat on your shoulder, bufthink to yourself you are going to bring the bat around so it will really hit the ball, solidly and dead center.” After this, I told him to keep on “feeling the same way” and to keep watching the ball carefully, and to “let” the bat come around and meet the ball, making no attempt to hit it hard. The boy hit the ball. After a few easy hits like this, he was knocking the ball a country mile, and I had a friend for life.
The Salesman Who Practiced “Not Selling”
You can use the same technique to “hit the ball” in selling, teaching, or running a business. A young salesperson complained to me that he froze up when calling on prospects. His one big trouble was his inability to properly reply to the prospect’s objections. “When a prospect raises an objection or criticizes my product, I can’t think of a thing to say at the time,” he said. “Later, I can think of all kinds of good ways to handle the objection.”
I told him about shadow-boxing and about the kid who learned to bat by letting the ball go by with the bat on his shoulder. I pointed out that hitting a baseball or thinking on your feet requires good reflexes. Your Automatic Success Mechanism must respond appropriately and automatically. Too much tension, too much motivation, or too much anxiety for results jams the mechanism. “You think of the proper answers later because you’re relaxed and the pressure is off.
Right now your trouble is you’re not responding quickly and spontaneously to the objections your prospects throw at you. In other words, you’re not hitting the ball that the prospect throws.”
I told him first of all to practice a number of imaginary interviews- actually walking in, introducing himself to a prospect, making his sales pitch-then imagining every possible objection, no matter how screwballish, and answering it out loud. Next, he was to practice “with his bat on his shoulder” on an actual live client.He was to go in with an ”empty gun” as far as intents and purposes were concerned. The purpose of the sales interview would not be to sell. He had to resign himself to being satisfied with no order. The purpose of the call would be strictly practice-”bat on the shoulder,” “empty gun” practice.
In his own words, this shadow-boxing “worked like a miracle.”
As a young medical student I used to shadow-box surgical operations on cadavers. This no-pressure practice taught me much more than technique. It taught a future surgeon calmness, deliberateness, clear thinking, because he had practiced all these things in a situation that was not do-or-die, life-or-death.
Shadow boxing takes on a whole new meaning!
And with that, we will meet again next time with chapter 13,
How to Make Your “Nerves” Work for You
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And, always keep smiling with love and light,
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