Listen to the full podcast episode to learn the science-backed practice that not only changed my life, but also the lives of countless people over the last two decades. This is something you can’t ignore if you want to achieve that great goal you identified for this year and write your new future.
There are a handful of days in my life that stand out in my memory because of their mind-blowing impact on me. One, in particular, was the day I was given a life-changing practice that taught me how to overcome what was keeping me from making the necessary changes in my life so that I could enjoy more happiness and success. I doubted it when I first received it, but then I saw its effects on my life and the lives of people just like you over the last two decades.
Today, we’re continuing our 3-part series where you will get just what you need to do your most satisfying work and create meaningful change and the life you really want.
In Part 1, Get Your Great Goal Down, we talked about overcoming the #1 mistake high achievers make when setting goals and how to overcome it.
In Part 2, The #1 Ability You Need to Elevate Your Life in 2023, we covered what self-aware, high-performers understand and do to raise their performance and satisfaction at work and in life.
In Part 3, I’m teaching you something you absolutely cannot ignore if you want to do the best work of your career — the simple, science-backed practice used by some of the greatest change-makers in history to create things that have never before existed. It doesn’t take hours to do, but without a doubt, because it works with the brain in the way the brain works, it will create and allow for the change that you desire.
If you think about the great leaders in history – Gandhi, Thomas Edison, Martin Luther King, Jr. – they all shared one common thing: they each believed so strongly in a future that was so real in their minds that they began to live as if it was already happening, regardless of their circumstances.
Those who have achieved great things in life once became so possessed with a future vision that, although it could not yet be seen in their current reality, they behaved as if that vision was already happening. When they did that, their environment bent to their behavior.
The key to writing your new future and creating the life of happiness that you desire is to become unconditionally committed to your vision regardless of your current circumstances.
While coaching a CEO the other day, I challenged her to put this practice into action. Whereas her company had always been the manufacturer of an automotive line, in her vision, she created products for an entirely new industry: medical. But, her current reality didn’t reflect evidence that that was even possible. Regardless, she became completely immersed in the reality of her vision getting her to the future reality in advance. I know that the same has happened to you, you probably haven’t recognized it yet.
How often have you stopped working on a goal or an objective because your environment didn’t show evidence that you need to stay the course?
Perhaps you were waiting for your work environment to reflect leadership that publicly endorses your special project. Perhaps you are waiting for employees to like coming to work before you make any changes in your leadership style.
Oftentimes, we are waiting for some type of evidence in our environments before we actually begin to believe in this new vision and take action. But, it’s in these moments when we let our environment control us instead of communicating with our brains to take action that will then change our environment. We think the environment should lead with change and then we will follow suit, but that’s absolutely backward. This is the #1 reason why so many of us in this overstretched and the unfocused world won’t get the change we want this year.
Greatness, however you define it, requires you to hold onto your dream, your vision, or your goal regardless of the circumstances in front of you.
So, how do you do this when the reality is staring you in the face and your brain has given you 100 pounds of evidence that it’s not going to work out? You mentally rehearse it.
Those great leaders often reminded themselves of the reality they were envisioning and to do this, they had to have mental rehearsals. Having a mental rehearsal means stepping into the state of being of your future vision. This state of coming from your thoughts, your feelings, and your behaviors. Stepping into this state of being means understanding how you would think, how you would feel, and how you would behave in this ideal future and then –and here’s the key – leading your present life in that way.
Does this sound at all complicated? Well, here’s the truth for you: we are all mentally rehearsing something.
We’re mentally rehearsing whatever is ruminating in our minds all day long:
- I never have enough time
- I’m in trouble
- This isn’t going to work
- These people are all the same
- It’s never going to change
What brain science demonstrates is that what we mentally rehearse, we create. Oftentimes, we are mentally rehearsing an unwanted past or a dreaded future. That alone is why we may continue to repeat the limited reality we have come to know and dream to change.
The good news is that we can change our brains, and in order to live a life of happiness and success, we have to change our brains. We have to create a new way of being for ourselves and we can do this just by thinking differently.
If we repeatedly think about something to the exclusion of everything else, we will encounter a moment when the thought becomes the experience.
When this occurs, neurons fire together and start rewiring your brain. Your rewired programming then creates the results you want. Let’s face it. Your existing hardware is not going to take you to that new reality. If it could, it already would have happened.
The best way to begin your mental rehearsal practice and write your new future is with these two questions:
- What would it be like to live in that reality?
- What if I was the person living in that reality?
Once you begin to immerse yourself in these answers, you will feel it. Then behave like that in the present time. In time, you will see that your environment bends to you and your success.
Your Call To Action for this week is to practice mental rehearsal daily.
It doesn’t need to take long, perhaps just 2-4 minutes, and it’s best done in the morning or right before bed. This is when your brain is most receptive to suggested thoughts. You can either write something down and read it to yourself each day or envision it in the silent moment. During this process, understand that emotion is the ultimate conductor to fire those neurons and to really get your brain to change.
I’d love to hear from you when you’ve done this practice. Commit yourself to mentally rehearsing like the leader who simply saw their idea as so, before it ever came to be. Become obsessed.
Share what you find with me below or over on Instagram at @ritahyland.
In this episode I share:
- The simple, science-backed practice I once resisted but provided a massive desired change in my life once I accepted and implemented it
- An example of this practice in action with a client and how it can elicit a completely different future reality
- What really keeps you stuck in a limited reality (that should have been taught in school) and what you can do to more easily create life-changing work and a life guided by your design
Resources and related episodes:
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About Rita Hyland
With over 20 years of experience as an executive and leadership coach, Rita helps leaders — emerging and established — excel in corporate and entrepreneurial environments.
Rita believes if leaders were more clear about how transformation really works and more intentional about creating what they want, their impact, success, and influence in the world would be unstoppable.
Through her coaching programs, private coaching, and masterminds, Rita shows leaders how to win consistently and create the impact and legacy they desire.
Central to Rita’s work is the understanding that you will never outperform your current programming, no matter how strong your willpower.
When you learn to use Rita’s proprietary Neuroleadership Growth Code, a technology that uses the best of neuroscience and transformational psychology to hit the brain’s buttons for change, YOU become both the solution and the strategy.
Her mission is to end talented, hard-working, and self-aware leaders spending another day stuck in self-doubt or confusion and not contributing their brilliant work and talent the world so desperately needs.
