Your brain demands a demo, from YOU!

Wherever we look around, be it a renowned lawyer, a star footballer or a charismatic CEO of some multinational company; we find some similar traits. Evidently, they are somehow better at doing their jobs than most of their peers. They are always the ‘go-to’ persons of their respective teams. The most challenging & critical medical cases lead to an automatic demand for the special doctors, or when it comes down to the penalties, all the teammates automatically handover the ball to the special player and the most dynamic and challenging projects are handed over to the few dynamic CEOs or managers. 

What makes these few people so significant and the best in their business? And make no mistake, most of the times they deliver!

A very simplistic analysis would be that they train better & more than their peers. This is true in a way but some part of the puzzle seems to be missing. They trained from the same institutes as the rest, learned the same approaches & followed the same dogmas but yet, made the difference. 

And yet another aspect one might notice is that this difference only grows bigger between these few & the rest as the time passes along. What could possibly be the reason for this?

Let us try to decode with a small experiment. In fact, one could practically implement it & possibly ‘learn’ to learn the secret!

Take a small jar/bin & a paper bowl. Keep the jar about 2-3 meters away & stationary on the floor or a table. And start doing what you probably thought by now! Time for some basketball! But begin throwing the paper bowl, only 10 times per day.

Wait. What does this have to do with the star performers we were just talking about? Hold on, we will get there!

Note down every single day, the number of times you can ‘basket’ the bowl. Day in and day out, continue doing it & maintain your record book. It is totally fine if you couldn’t basket a single shot for days to come & fantastic if you could basket 10/10 within a week! But either way, continue doing it for 30 days. Contemplating what would happen is one thing but actually doing it is another. That is why it is important to actually do the action.

By the 20-25th day, you’d notice that you’ve actually become a professional paper-ball basketballer! Just like you can lift a cup of coffee without breaking a sweat, similarly, you can do it now. As you are ‘programmed’ to change your footwear as you arrive at your footstep, or to scratch where it itches; you are now ‘programmed’ to throw the ball into the bin. You have successfully created a habit!

Now, even if you change the position of the bin & attempt to shoot, you’d probably pull off a successful attempt than a failed one. Why? Because you trained AND you had a certain BELIEF developed over the last 30 days, which ensured you that you could do it! This belief is a perception of your mind. The perception that has successfully assimilated the demonstration, which your actions gave to your mind.

This demonstration forms the foundation stone, on which your mind finds its solace & confidence. These people who stand apart from the crowd, train incessantly no doubt; but while they do, they also set examples to their own minds. Creating new benchmarks for themselves & growing on these new ‘normals’. 

When Roger Bannister made it to the headlines in 1954 for being the first person to run a mile within 4 minutes, something changed all over the world. Within the next 2 years, 9 more runners broke the same record. And in the next 60 years, about 1500 runners achieved the same feat. Wait, did the human race evolve genetically so fast, that it began breeding faster athletes? Well, certainly NO! It became the new ‘norm’!

In your life, rather than waiting for some Roger Bannisters to demonstrate you the new norm, why not set an example, new benchmark to motivate yourself & build on it? 

It is also of prime importance, that the benchmarks are not wildly set, i.e. suddenly you wake up one day & set 500 pushups as your benchmark. Well, while it can be achieved, but it definitely won’t be on the first day of your exercise. You’ll probably breakdown within 50 pushups & then to matters worse, you’d criticize yourself; creating negative inroads within your mind, that you can never do it.

Incrementing in steps is the key. Every increment you do, you’d have the training & the belief of demonstration that would drive you closer to your goal. With this steady buildup, the improbable task at the beginning of the journey will magically look probable as the days pass by!