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Have you ever heard the following phrase, "Without a vision the people perish." Who's heard this before? It's what the Good Book says, and I believe it to be true. Okay, but here's the thing. When we're visualizing what you're doing versus what you want to create, it's a huge difference. Now check this out, okay. This next study, I don't know why it hasn't been
shared more, but this is extremely powerful. Okay, so the Cleveland Clinic, which is a very reputable research organization and hospital, published a study from mental power to muscle power gaining strength by using the mind. So they did a study where they had people contract their fingers or visualize themselves contracting their fingers. The mental concentration contractions group increased their finger strength by 35% without actually contracting their fingers. They visualize
themselves contracting their fingers, which is doing the rep. Does that make sense? You all with me on this? You're visualizing yourself doing the rep. The mental contractions group augmented their elbow strength by 13%. So without lifting a muscle, they got stronger by up to 35%. Now, the physical training group increased their finger strength by 53%. Now notice that. That's a bigger increase but only by about 18%. What does this indicate? It means when the mental contraction
is the visualization of the behavior. So they were visualizing themselves contracting their fingers not visualizing having a stronger finger. They were visualizing the contraction. Does that make sense? This is a big difference. Y'all with me on this? That's why when you're visualizing outcomes it's a beautiful thing, but when you visualize the contraction you get the outcome. Which is if you want to be stronger what you want to do is focus on what? The contraction. Does that make sense?
So that's what an implementation intention does and without actually doing anything this group was able to actually be stronger. Which I find staggering. Who thinks that's a staggering statistic by the way? 35% stronger only 18% stronger if you actually lifted a finger literally. So we conclude that mental training employed by the study enhances what's called
cortical output signal and drives higher muscle activation. So what that means is as you're visualizing the behavior or the contraction, the cortical output is brain output and it's telling your muscle you're contracting even though you're not. That's like being worried about something even though there's nothing there, but you're still worried. Why? Because you're probably visualizing something happening or something going wrong. There's some part of you that's imagining
the worst case scenario as it's happening in real time. Who follows? Does this make sense? Right, when you're in a sad state or depressed state usually what you're thinking about what's occupying your mind is what? When you get triggered into sadness or grief are you visualizing somebody
else smiling? Probably not. So what we have to realize is that we can actually, when we regulate, use the ability to pre-visualize something happening and the behavior that we want to do in the moment and we can build strength in our muscles and in our nervous system just by visualizing it. Now the key here is to do this work when you're not triggered. Because then when the activation happens you have some pathways that are built ahead of time. And imagination is a very
powerful neuroplastic agent. We talk about rewiring the nervous system. Neuroplasticity is one of the things that is most contributing factor to the rewiring is a neuroplasticity. Now you can rewire your nervous system to be more depressed. You can also rewire your nervous system to be happier. So neuroplasticity goes both ways. Now, imagination, the definition of imagination, is the act or power of forming mental images of what is not present or has never been directly
experienced. So what this means is, whatever your next level is, y'all, you've never had it before. Let's pause on that for a second. You've never had your next level. it has not existed yet. You're trying to create something that's never happened. That's an important thing to understand. Imagination is the ability to imagine or visualize what's never been. That is a very unique human trait that we can literally imagine something
that's never been before. Now you can imagine something who here has imagined a lot of shit that's never happened before that never also happened that stressed you out. You use your imagination to beat yourself up. So we can also use your imagination to create things. So perception is a model in the brain. So what you perceive the world to be versus what it is are different. Your perception of the world is a model in your brain. How the world is, is not always your
perception. Who here has ever made a decision about something and you realized, oh what you decided about that situation wasn't actually true. That person really wasn't being that way or maybe I I trusted them and they were being a different way. Who's ever had their perception not match reality before? So here's the deal about perception. Perception is not passive. It's an imaginative construct of possible perceptions which are tested against input.
What this means is you are constantly using your history to imagine what could be based on what you've been through. Let me say that again. We are constantly using our history to run potential outcomes of what could be based on what's happening. That's an important function in the brain because it keeps us safe. And when we get triggered, guess what? Triggers happen so fast in the nervous system, they've been so rehearsed.
It's your body's most efficient way of responding to something based on your history, but it's probably not the best way for you to respond now. Okay, so you have a rehearsal, okay, of all this stuff you're imagine, who here has ever just really easy to be like imagine the worst, for example, or to imagine something not happening. That's because you're using your data from your history to look at what's happening and then run outcomes based on your history. That's the process. And if
you do that enough it becomes hardwired and reflexive. It's a reflex versus a process you you have to think about because your nervous systems and your body's always trying to conserve energy. Triggers are your body's way of conserving energy to say this is the most, this is the best response to have in this situation. Overwhelm. We've done it so many times. Boom. Overwhelm. And it can feel so reactive in that way. Now there is a tight linkage between remembering the past
and imagining the future we see in the brain. And what this means is one of the key functions of memory is to provide a basis for predicting the future versus imagined scenarios. So memory and imagination are tied together in the brain because our brain can imagine what it's been through without our intervention. And what that means is our brain looks at our past experiences and recombines them into novel or new potential future events.
Your brain says look at all the shit that happened, let's reconstruct it and imagine what could happen. Now, depending on if that's a conscious or unconscious response and process, you can either use your imagination to like depress yourself into oblivion, or you could use your imagination to build a life. Because you could also look at your history and go, "Well, I survived that." It's what you focus on.
That's really important to understand. Now, this next slide could be highly liberating for some of you. Okay, neuroscience shows your brain cannot distinguish between imagination and reality. The brain can't tell the difference. When you have a thought, it triggers the same cascade of neurochemicals regardless of whether you're thinking about the past, the present, or the future. Your brain is stimulated the same way whether you're physically performing an action
or visualizing it in your mind's eye. So whether it's the past, the present, or the future, whether it's happening or imagined, the same pathways in the brain are being fired. What that means is when you rehearse an implementation intention, you're rehearsing it as if it's happening now, your brain thinks it's happening now. When you rehearse what you're worried about, your brain thinks it's happening now. When you remember what you've been through, your brain thinks it's happening now.
It's all the same wiring in the brain. And that's why part of our process is going to help us to be with things not in things because when you can realize, "Oh, that's not now, that was then." When you can realize, "Oh, that's a potential future, but that's not predictive. My past is not to be predictive of my future." When you realize when you're in a regulated state that you can visualize what you want to do to either start doing something or stop doing something,
now we get into the process of emotional fitness. Does that make sense? You all with me? Because there is no difference in your brain between past, present, and future in your imagination. Your brain thinks it's all happening right now. Does that make sense? Who here has had to be reminded when you're triggered that it's today, not then? Who here has to be reminded when you worry about the future that it's today?
Because when you're in your worry, when you're in your visualizations of positive or negative, your brain thinks it's all happening right now. So emotional factors play a role in the well-established finding that repeatedly simulating a future event makes it seem more probable. So if you're sitting here rehearsing, catastrophizing the future, it's gonna seem more possible to you than a better future. If you're repeatedly imagining a future where you're doing what you say you're gonna
do, where you're moving yourself forward, it will seem more probable. Okay, what that means is what you rehearse seems more real and you're either consciously or unconsciously rehearsing stuff. And our unconscious nervous system is rehearsing all kinds of trauma from our history. And that is why we want to avoid feelings like anger, or grief, or abandonment. We don't want to express our excitement because we've rehearsed that so many
times with negative outcome. Versus, I'm going to rehearse expressing myself and seeing people welcome me in. I'm going to rehearse sharing my grief and surviving it and actually bringing somebody in closer. What you rehearse seems more probable emotionally. So we want to be very careful what we're rehearsing. And every time you say something, when people say every thought you think, every word you say, I look at it as a rehearsal. It's like you're practicing. You're practicing.
There's different ways to say it. Your word is your wand. I like to think of it as you're just rehearsing emotions and you're rehearsing outcomes all the time. And what we realize in this way is that most of us when we're triggered certainly are rehearsing the worst. Because what you went through was the worst. You're rehearsing something that already happened. Which seems a little strange. Okay. So there's a thing called temporal discounting.
And what this means is we will devalue a future reward based on how far away it seems. So when you think about the life that you want to live, how far away does it seem? Does it seem like impossibly far away? Does it seem super close? Does it seem somewhere in the middle? Put it in the chat. Where does it seem for you? What does the life that you want to live seem? How far away or how close is it? Right? Really far away. Can't even imagine it. So far away. Okay. So, here's the thing.
Okay. If you think, if your brain thinks what you want is so far away, okay, then we devalue the things that can get us there. Because what you'll value is what can give you a reward right now, aka addiction, aka old habits, aka the things you used to do to keep you safe, aka the things that we're trying to restructure in this program. If you feel like what you want is so far away, this entire training will not seem valuable to you because what's the point? When really you don't
have any clue how far away it is because you've never gone this far before. Does that make sense? So don't discount the value of something because your patterns say something's far away. You don't know how far away it is yet. And what we want to focus on, I'll tell you what, if you keep doing things the way you've been doing it, it's super far away. So who here would be willing to try something new as a new approach to be able to get what you want? Let me see by show of hands. Even
and especially if things seem far away. Because what's not far away is your breath. What's not far away is your next step. A billion dollars, the love of your life, a child being 18 that you've you've never even conceived of yet. I mean, some things could be super far away. Right. And yet we want to understand that we want to focus on the here and now. We want to make it easier to reward yourself. Okay. We'll make it easier to reward yourself. [music]