Expect Success
by: Josh Bryant
Have you ever heard of some ninnyhammer taking a vacation overseas and then faster than a sailor on two-hour leave, a witch doctor throws a “whammy” on this poor soul, suddenly, he has more bad luck than Carter has pills!
Seek and you will find.
The town known ne’er-do-well does have perpetual bad luck.
The point being, guard your heart from the “usual suspects” and the energy fields they operate in, because energy is contagious and you will metamorphosize into the five people you spend the most time with.
In the words of the great pugilist and street philosopher, Rocky Balboa,
“You hang out with coconuts, you get nowhere. They’re eleven, eleven. You hang out with nice people, you get nice friends, y’understand? You hang out with smart people, you get smart friends. You hang out with yo-yo people, you get yo-yo friends! Y’see, it’s simple mathematics.”
NOW, THE GOOD NEWS!
Everyone that has achieved success in one area of their life can very easily achieve success in another area of their life.
Why?
Because of the expectations of success!
The bottom line is, excellence seems to put people in the right place at the right time.
Learning our Mental Training Techniques:
A gridiron God in the Lone Star State is former UT football Coach Darryl Royal. Under the tutelage of Royal, UT won three national football championships.
A few years back I had lunch with legendary strength & conditioning coach, Al Vermeil. Coach Vermeil kept saying things like “winning is a culture”, “winning breeds winning” and then emphasized so does losing.
I learned from Coach Vermeil that Darryl Royal would not recruit football players from losing programs. Regardless of talent level, if a culture of losing had become the player’s norm, Royal avoided the player like the plague. On the surface it may be extreme! However, this strategy is a hell of a lot more logical than modern day recruiters going solely off body size, while ignoring brain and testicle size.
The take-home lesson here is how success breeds success, failure can breed failure. Ever wonder why some people think accidents happen in three? Expectancy! They wait, look and expect three tragedies to happen.
Steroid Example
A study published in 1972 compared the effects of taking anabolic steroids to taking a placebo subjects believed were steroids.
The results were astounding!
Below is a summary of the study.
Fifteen male varsity athletes were informed that some of them would be selected to receive an anabolic steroid (Dianabol). Instead, six selected subjects were given placebo pills. Taking the placebo apparently supplied the psychological inducement to increase strength gains above and beyond reasonable progression. Greater training gains were made during the placebo period in three out of four weightlifting exercises. The gains were statistically significant when comparing the two regression lines for the pre-placebo and placebo periods.
Basically, when people thought they were taking steroids but were really given a sugar pill, they made steroid-like gains.
Obviously, steroids work beyond a placebo but in small amounts over the short term, belief was literally as powerful as drugs. People expected to get stronger, and they did!
Expect success and you will literally receive a pharmacological boost!
Final Thoughts
Believing and expecting success before you have achieved it is not make-believe. It is catalyzing a real physiological response.
Expectations and beliefs augment the placebo effect; expecting success makes you a success-finding machine.
A belief and expectation of success literally causes your brain to release chemicals that will act like drugs but without receiving negative side effects, just the side effect of success.
What if you took an attitude of success and expectancy to achieving your goals? I promise you will be more successful; your mind and body are an interrelated link, science proves this.
Even if you think this is unrealistic, do you think a pessimistic world view that attracts failure is more realistic? I would rather error to the side of expecting success.
Program your mindset!