Bernie Zilbergeld - Mind Power: Getting What You Want Through Mental Training

isbn o-aom-oaai-H

A magnificent achievement. While others talk about harnessing the powers of the mind, Zilbergeld and Lazarus demonstrate exactly how to do it.

Charles Garfield, Ph.D.

Author of Peak Performers

The writing is clear, the suggestions easy to follow, the examples relevant and motivating. Ive used many of the techniques in MIND POWER and can guarantee they work.

Lonnie Barbach, Ph.D.

Author of For Yourself

Very practical down-to-earth techniques for undercutting emotional pain and achieving more of your human potential.

Albert Ellis, Ph.D.

Director, Institute for

Rational-Emotive Therapy

I cant think of anyone in business who wouldnt benefit from reading the book and applying the methods. There is no better way to harness personal potential.

James H. Robinson,

The James H. Robinson Company

Other Books by Dr. Bernie Zilbergeld:

HYPNOSIS: QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS (edited with G. Edelstein and D. Araoz)

MALE SEXUALITY

THE SHRINKING AMERICA

Other Books by Dr. Arnold Lazarus:

MARITAL MYTHS

BEHAVIOR THERAPY AND BEYOND

IN THE MINDS EYE

BEHAVIOR THERAPY TECHNIQUES (with J. Wolpe, M.D.)

ADVANCES IN BEHAVIOR THERAPY (edited with R.D. Rubin, H. Fensterheim, and C.M. Franks)

CLINICAL BEHAVIOR THERAPY (edited)

I CAN IF I WANT TO (with A. Fay, M.D.)

MULTIMODAL BEHAVIOR THERAPY

CASE BOOK OF MULTIMODAL THERAPY (edited)

Getting What You Want

Through Mental Training

IVY BOOKS NEW YORK

Ivy Books

Published by Ballantine Books

Copyright 1987 by Bernie Zilbergeld and Arnold A. Lazarus

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 87-4149

ISBN 0-8041-0289-9

This edition reprinted by arrangement with Little, Brown and Company, Inc.

For reasons of privacy, many of the names in this book have been changed.

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Ballantine Books Edition: July 1988

To the memory of our parents, Clara and Sam Zilbergeld, Rachael and Benjamin Lazarus

Contents

vii

viii Contents

Acknowledgments

We are grateful for the support and comments of a number of colleagues and friends, including Lonnie Barbach, Carol Ellison, Jackie Hackel (who claims she never would have gotten her middle-aged body up Mount Kilimanjaro without the mental training she did after reading an early draft of this book), Cory Hammond, Howard LaGardd, Carolyn Saami, Ann Schifter, Sandy Yogi, and Robyn Young. Special thanks are due to Gerald Edelstien and Dianne Morri-sette, who went through all of the many drafts and always gave wonderful advice, some of which we even followed. We are indebted to Daphne Ann Lazarus for suggesting the title and to two excellent advisers, editor Bill Phillips and copy editor Michael Brandon.

It is the mind that maketh good or ill, That maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor.

Edmund Spenser

CHAPTER 1

We all have minds but most of us dont do much with them. We put in a lot of information about external tasks driving, typing, selling, taking inventoryand not much else. Most of us assume theres not much that can be done about the mind. If it shows us lots of depressing pictures, we go around feeling depressed. If it keeps telling us about inadequacies and faults, we go around feeling powerless and bad. If it keeps repeating that we cant do this and wont do that, we assume thats just how it is.

It doesnt occur to us that we can change the images and thoughts. It seems natural to accept what our minds provide. Thats just the way I am, we say. We dont understand that it has nothing to do with whats natural. It has to do only with whos in charge.

Minds do what they are programmed to do, though much of the programming is unintended. If you were belittled as a child, chances are good that your mind will have recorded all those humiliations and will play them back at every opportunity. If your parents* relationship was cold and distant, chances are that your mind will arrange internal images and phrases guiding you in that same direction. If you once had a bad experience with arithmetic, your mind may have decided to keep you away from anything having to do with numbers by evoking anxiety whenever you approach the subject. So here you are, ten, twenty, thirty or more years later, still telling yourself that you cant do math and making it impossible to give it a chance. Much of the minds natural programming consists of such self-imposed limitations that keep you from realizing your potential and from feeling good about yourself.

But you dont have to be stuck with how your mind has been programmed. If your Bergman-like mental movies are too depressing, you can have the Marx Brothers, Ghostbusters, Chariots of Fire, or something else. If youre tired of hearing what a dolt you are or all the things you should fear, you can have your mind play back the most loving and supportive internal tapes you want, and with the kind of music you intentionally choose. Youve heard enough of limitations and inabilities; you can now hear of strengths and possibilities. Youve seen enough gloomy prospects; you can now have brightly lit vistas. You can now take control of your mind instead of letting it control you. You can become your own programmer and manage your minds productions, running movies and playing tapes that please and empower you.

A great deal of what we have learned about the powers of the mind comes from an unexpected sourcechampion athletes. The 1984 Olympics demonstrated over and over the effectiveness of mental training. We saw bobsled teams sway as they practiced visualizing before each event. We heard gymnast Mary Lou Retton tell how she mind-scripted every move the night before winning her gold medal. We read how Greg Louganis, another gold medalist and the only diver ever to score a perfect 10 in international competition, employed as much mental preparation as physical training. He visualized each dive as he wanted it to be, step by step, forty times before mounting the platform. Similar stories about the value of mental training were told by skiers, weight lifters, hurdlers, boxers, and just about everyone else.

It isnt only Olympic champions who have been using their heads. It seems that almost every great athlete and coach has been saying something good about using the mind. Basketball star Bill Russell and golfer Jack Nicklaus wrote persuasively of the importance of mental training to their play. Psychologist Charles Garfield wrote that the great athletes he studied acknowledge that 60 to 90 percent of success in sports is due to mental factors. Dallas Cowboy coach Tom Landry noted, However you think determines how you play, and Billie Jean King warned, If you believe you will fail, you will find some way to fail. And from a sport where some people expect to hear nothing at all about the mind, bodybuilding, came the voice of Arnold Schwarzenegger, the greatest bodybuilder of all time. He called the mind a dynamo, a source of vital energy. That energy can be negative and work against you, he wrote, or you can harness it to give yourself unbelievable workouts and build a physique that lives up to your wildest expectations. The athlete advocates of mental training have included such past and present standouts as Fran Tarkenton, Bruce Jenner, Marilyn King, John Brody, Jim Brown, O. J. Simpson, Chris Evert Lloyd, Martina Navratilova, Jean-Claude Killy, Pele, Bill Walton, Steve Carlton, and Maty Decker.