Visualize Your Olympic Gold Medal Future
🎧 🎧 Listen to Sunday Sunshine Here 🎧 🎧
It's remarkable how much mental energy we invest in monitoring and worrying about the weather—something completely beyond our influence -- Me included after weeks of rain and this week's impressive heat wave.
We spend more time thinking about things we can't control than things we can.
I have this snow globe filled with gold glitter that sits on my desk next to my computer. Throughout the day, when my mind feels like that swirling mess, I reach for it. Not because I'm fidgety, but because I want to feel grounded and focused on what I want for my future.
I read somewhere about using environmental triggers to remind yourself of what's important.
When the glitter in my mind is swirling, this globe reminds me I don't need to be in the chase. I shake it, pause, breathe. I watch the storm settle. Then I choose one word to anchor me back to center—a word that focuses me on my future.
One word. That's all it takes sometimes.
My environmental trigger reminds me of the future I'm creating for myself.
Most of us succumb to the numbness of the day.
I refuse to be numb.
I refuse to use my past as the reason I can’t have what I want.
I refuse to default to the magnetic bad habits.
It takes a lot of work, but nothing good is easy. It's the most important work because it makes all of your other work actually work with compounding impact.
Most people lack clarity about their future. Dr. Benjamin Hardy taught me: if you want your present to be better, you must make your future bigger.
When I'm stuck or I’m having a bad day, I remind myself of the future I've visualized in detail and ask—what decision or action can I take right now to take another step towards it?
Michael Phelps understood this at the age of 13. The most decorated Olympian of all time didn't just train his body—he trained his mind with the same intensity.
His mental practice was rooted in visualizing dream goals. Michael posted his future list on his refrigerator (environmental trigger) to see them several times a day. His coach also required him to envision the perfect race in his mind like a movie playing on repeat.
The feel of the water. The smell of chlorine. Nineteen strokes to the flip. The count of kicks. The breathing.
Simply imagining a behavior can train your mind as if you've actually done it.
Visualization recruits the same brain circuits as real events. Studies have proven your brain can't tell the difference between something you've imagined and what actually happens.
In Michael's first 200-meter butterfly Olympic final, he knew what to do. This movie had played in his mind since he was a young teenager.
As he hit the water, his goggles filled up with water.
Michael was swimming blind. Literally and figuratively.
As a kid, Michael had gotten bored with always envisioning the perfect race. So, he started training his mind through a different lens—visualizing the worst-case scenarios. He imagined how he'd react to all sorts of challenges.
That day in the Olympic pool, goggles full of water, Michael closed his eyes and focused on what he'd run through his head so many times. Swimming blind, counting the nineteen strokes to hit the wall, the turn, another nineteen strokes. He swam blind to a gold medal AND a world record.
What’s your Olympic Gold Medal future?
Visualize it - smell it, taste it, touch it, see it.
Work through ‘if then’ scenarios so that no matter what you are hit with, you have the muscle memory to handle it like a champion.
Write your vision for your extraordinary future and post it where you see it every day.
Creating an environmental trigger - your version of the snow globe - to remind you to settle your mind to bring you back to that future you are creating.
If your life were a movie, what would the audience be screaming at you to do?
They'd probably tell you to stop worrying about the weather and start building the future you actually want.
📓 Journal Prompts for the Week Ahead
I create my future when I’m...
If everybody wins when I play big, then…
I have my own back when I...
If living in a breakthrough means creating new beliefs, what new beliefs am I willing to create?
P.S. If you're curious about coaching but have questions about ROI or what actually happens, I put together a Coaching Case Study showing real client results.
In a recent interview I was asked what was is the one thing I'd want to share with people. It was an easy answer: work with a coach. While that sounds self-serving, I wish I had known earlier the power of having a thought partner and co-pilot to overcome my challenges of the day, strengthen my belief in myself and hold me accountable. Check it out the Case Study, and then we can chat about your biggest challenge.
