Wednesday, May 20, 2009

"Victorious warriors win first, then go to war..."




I wonder which bright spark thought to couple Major Nesbeths story with Sun Tzu's The Art of War and create the NLP phenomenon?  Sorry, I'm talking to myself again.

I am competitive.  Tonight I was due to play at TopGolf (a golf driving range with bowling type scoring) with a friend.  I always win, which is how I like it.  Trouble is, since we last went, he's bought his own set of fancy clubs and has been several times, and has started edging closer and closer to my highest ever score.

Starting to feel slightly anxious at the prospect of not winning, I remembered the story of Major James Nesbeth of the US Army who, probably unwittingly, utilised visualisation techniques.

He was a POW during the Vietnam war, and spent four years of his life in a cell about five foot square, routinely tortured by his captors.  To preserve his sanity, every single day, he would visualise his local golf course.   The sights, the sounds, the smells and he would spend about four hours a day, working his way around the eighteen holes, all in his head, in as much detail as possible.

Eventually he was freed, ended up back home and on his favourite golf course.  The story varies at this point, but what is generally agreed, is that he achieved an almost identical score to his best ever, thanks to the mental pictures that he had been creating during his captivity.  

So, I knew what I had to do, trouble is, I didn't have four years (or even hours) to do it!

That's when my trusty friend, the internet sailed to the rescue on the information super-highway!

In just ten minutes whilst having lunch, I perfected my swing thanks to videojug and how to hold the damn club correctly in the first place thanks to 5min.  

I haven't had enough time to go through videojug and 5min properly, but they seem fantastic concepts... short little instructional videos on how to do anything from juggling through to finding your seven chi spots... now that video I'm looking forward to!


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