Mind Magic

Nope, Alan realised, the truth was even more astounding: if we IMAGINE ourselves achieving something, then our brains begin to believe that we have already done it and believe we can do it again!
MICHAEL PHELPS is currently the most decorated Olympian OF ALL TIME. He has spoken countless times about the power of his IMAGINATION – how, the night before a race, he played a movie of his swim over and over again in his head – IMAGINING what it would be like to WIN again, to SMASH another world record.
‘I VISUALISED TO THE POINT THAT I KNEW EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED TO DO: DIVE, GLIDE, STROKE, FLIP, REACH THE WALL … THEN SWIM BACK AGAIN FOR AS MANY TIMES AS I NEEDED TO FINISH THE RACE.’
MICHAEL PHELPS

The second group were told to simply IMAGINE throwing the ball every day. Alan

asked them to concentrate on making their imagination as vivid as possible. He wanted them to see the court and feel the weight of the ball in their hands. He asked them to hear the swoosh of the ball as it dropped neatly through the net.
The third group were told NOT TO PLAY basketball for a whole month.
At the end of the month, Alan got the team back together and recorded their accuracy again, just as he had done before.
The results were astounding.
The third group (who had done absolutely nothing) showed no signs of improvement. That makes sense – as we know, you won’t get better at something if you don’t practise.
The first group, who had practised for an hour every day, had improved – in fact, they scored around 24% more. For example, if a player had scored 16 baskets the first time around, one month later they scored 20 baskets.
Again, nothing very unusual about that – Alan expected the group that practised to get better at throwing, and that’s exactly what happened.
But what about the second group? That’s where the big surprise came.
That group had done nothing but IMAGINE themselves throwing the ball into the basket – but they had improved too! In fact, they had improved ALMOST AS MUCH as the group that had practised every day!