I recently met 3 young men in our community who are Cage Fighters and a friend asked me to write them some 'Mental Coaching' ideas to assist with their training

1. Let's start with Will Smith, the enormously successful actor. He is a
great champion for the idea that belief is the most powerful force in
all of nature. There is a YouTube video of an interview Will gave in
April 2013 where he talks about this and says “I don't want to be an
'icon' I want to be an 'idea' about the possibility” of what you can
achieve if you put your mind to work.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2owLHEuFhiI
Will talks about a book, The Alchemist, a novel by Paulo Coelho
i rst published in 1988, which he says inf uenced his thinking. It is
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the story of a young man in search of his dream or his Personal
Legend. Your Personal Legend "is what you have always wanted to
accomplish. Everyone, when they are young, knows what their
Personal Legend is. He adds that "when you want something, all
the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it". This is the core
theme of the book.
There is scientific evidence that this symbolic statement is true.
People who simply Decide, are 90% more likely to Achieve than
people who are wishy-washy and only 'Thinking About it'. This
applies to whatever you personally are making a decision to do with
your life, from small things to big things it doesn't matter. Simply
Deciding and saying 'Yes, I want this' puts you on a path toward
doing what it takes to get it done. And more importantly, as if the
universe is conspiring to help you, allies and resources will appear
to help you move toward your goal.

2. Scientists have a long word for this and numerous studies have
been done on this function in our brain. They can it the Reticular
Activating System (RAS) and I'm going to talk about it in more
descriptive way. This is the filtering mechanism of our mind. As a
quick example your eyes see everything around you, all the color,
light, shapes of everything. However when you step into a fight, you
need to filter out all of those distractions so you can focus on your
opponent. You can't be looking at some shiny distraction in the
audience or you'll get clobbered while you're looking away.
But like any filter, it can be tightly focused, mostly closed to input
when you need to concentrate or it can be wide open and letting in
everything that your senses can receive.
All of us are highly skilled at closing the filter; intentionally and
consciously blocking external inputs, as in the fight example. Very
few of us are skilled at opening the filter. Why would we bother?
Imagine an rich man making a bet in which he says “I can offer to
give away a million dollars and people won't even take my money.”
To prove he is right he goes to a cage fight, sits in the middle of the
crowd and as you walk into the cage, he holds up simple sign that
says “Wave at me and I'll give you a million dollars”. What he knows
is that your RAS will already be closed from him because you don't
see anything but your opponent. That's the power. There are things
all around you to help you, if you've prepared yourself to see them.

3. What Will Smith knows is that your brain works both consciously
and subconsciously. While you're reading this, who is telling your
heart to beat or your lungs to breathe? Those things happen on
the subconscious level. And here's a secret.
That filtering mechanism, we talked about, works on BOTH levels.
You can consciously decide to concentrate now or sit down and
daydream awhile. But behind the scenes, even while you are
sleeping, your subconscious minds filters what it allows you to
see, what it allows you to think about, what it allows you to believe,
based on the instructions you've given it, most often without even
even knowing you have done so.
We act on the 'Truth' as we believe it to be. Not on the truth as it is,
but as we believe it to be.
If you say ”I'm no good at art, I don't do art”, how do you know that?
There are a million variations in ways to do art. Have you tried all of
them? What has happened is that someone who you thought was
an 'Authority Figure' told you you were no good at art and you
believed them. Of course when you're 3 years old, an authority
figure could be someone who is 6 years old. But it is in our earliest
years when most of our beliefs about ourselves are formed. And
even if the authority, who told us something, was just a stupid 1st
grade kid, once we accept their statement about who we
are and what we can do, we will live our entire lives with that belief
about ourself and we will filter out any evidence to the contrary.

4. Your Personal Legend is a dream today but in 100 years it will be
the true history of what you did achieve and what you did
accomplish. Here's how you maximize you chances of success.
Decide. As Will Smith says, just decide without a doubt that you
want this Personal Legend. You deserve this Personal Legend.
Let nature and science start to work for you through your brain as
you turn over responsibility equally to your conscious and your
subconscious mind. In your conscious mind, if you know you need
to do 100 sit ups today, then you do them.
To stimulate your subconscious mind you force yourself to take time
- to dream in an awake state.
Literally you close your eyes and visualize all the details of your
Personal Legend coming true. How does it look? How does it feel?
How much money will come to you? How much fame will come?
What will the experience be like as you succeed and then come
face to face with all the people from your past? Who are the people
you want to be in your future? Make these visualizations be so real
you can taste them, hear them, feel them happening right now.
And become aware of how you talk to yourself inside your head.
From now on you will never say the words “I can't, I don't, I'm not”.
These negative phrases become unintentional instructions to your
Filter on the subconscious level. Change you self talk to positive
words. And when confronted with a set back, you acknowledge “Yes
That happened, but the next time … I will... do it this way” and fill in
the details of the success you expect. Begin to Expect Success.