How to Coach Yourself and Others Techniques For Coaching | Page 463

Studies in mental imagery have shown that the brain cannot
distinguish from a real or an imaginary picture. The same
chemicals release and the same electrical activity displays in the
brain whether we are visualising something or actually doing it.
A repeated thought, or feeling, can actually become a belief over
time. Have you ever been constantly thinking about a particular
outcome in a positive sense that you actually felt good about it?
What I mean is that you can actually train your mind to be
confident.

It’s similar to the well known conditioning experiment, Pavlov’s
dogs, whereby every time they fed the dogs, the researchers rang
a bell at the same time. After repeated times of doing this, just
ringing the bell would make the dogs salivate. It was an
unconscious response to something that had been neurologically
linked in their mindset- the association between food and the
bell.

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