Chester Grant

1. To describe the Mastermind concept, let me give you a quick analogy. Let’s say that you have an apple and I have an apple. If we trade apples, you still only have one apple and I still only have one apple. But, let’s say that you and I both have an idea. If we exchange ideas, then you have two ideas and I have two ideas. That is, you have your original idea plus my idea, and I will have your idea plus my original idea.

2. Hill stumbled upon this particular principle while researching the life of Henry Ford. He found that Ford met formally with a group of men who did not work at Ford Motor Company at least once per month with the intent of sharing ideas, solving problems, and identifying opportunities.

3. In this eclectic group, Ford found solace, like minds, and inspiration. When asked about the secret of his success, he said on several occasions that his monthly group meetings with these four men were pivotal in helping him reach the heights to which he arose.

4. Why You Should Join or Start a Mastermind Group:

• The Ability to Work “on” Your Business Instead of Just “in” Your Business

• Camaraderie and Understanding - I have long said entrepreneurs are some of the loneliest people on the planet.

• Unique Perspectives

• Motivation - When you surround yourself with business people who are excited, passionate, and energetic about the challenges they’re presented with, you can’t help but feel the same way.

• Accumulated Experience - No two people will ever see the same events the same way.

• Ability to Serve - I know it sounds cliché and it probably is, but it is still true: the more you give, the more you receive.

• Accountability

5. It is much easier to recruit potential members when limiting group membership to only one company per industry. Think about your own industry. If you were in a group with one or two of your biggest competitors, would you be as open when it comes to sharing ideas and strategies? Probably not. So, do your best to find members from different industries.

6. Commitment - For the group to be as effective as possible, individual members must be committed to it. If attendance is sporadic or inconsistent, there will be subpar results. Besides that, it’s not really fair to other members if one or two don’t attend regularly. The whole point is to have a collaboration of ideas. When people aren’t there, collaboration suffers.

7. Membership Dues One of the most effective ways to ensure group commitment is to charge membership dues. These can range from $25 up to $1,000 or more a month. There will be some costs involved in running a group such as food, beverages, handouts, printing costs, room rental, and marketing materials. Apart from having the funds to pay for these items, there is also a psychological reason for charging dues.

8. If someone is paying to be a part of your group, he or she is much more likely to stick with it and take it seriously. I currently charge $297 per month for members to join our Mastermind Group, and members rarely miss a meeting.

9. Charge whatever you want, but make sure it is enough to keep them committed.

10. Similar Situations - Although you should only have one person per industry in your group, you should also make sure that everyone is relatively similar in where they are in their business’s growth stage.

11. You don’t want a member who has a fifty-million-dollar, twenty-year-old company partnered with a company that has been in business for three years and is barely making five hundred thousand dollars annually.

12. Optimism and a Positive Attitude - It’s okay to plan for worst-case scenarios and create alternative plans, should your Plan A not work out, but there is no room for the eternal pessimist. Find members who have a generally positive outlook on life and business.

13. The pessimists of the world are fairly easy to spot, and you need to be on the lookout for them within your group. This is the guy (or gal) who complains about every little detail, from the venue to the food to the topics being presented.

14. Remember, one of the main benefits of the Mastermind Group is to be inspired and motivated by smart, sophisticated, passionate business owners. One bad apple can spoil the bunch, and nothing will make your group disintegrate faster than negativity.

15. If you encounter a pessimist in your group, you will need to take quick action to rectify the situation. I recommend first having a frank discussion with that person. If things do not improve, you may have to ask them to leave the group.

16. Absolute Discretion It is critically important that you instill a grave sense of discretion among your Mastermind members. This goes beyond the whole “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” concept. Your members (and you) are going to be sharing intimately personal details about themselves, their employees, their competitors, their business practices, and their trade secrets. It is absolutely imperative that the group members treat this with the utmost respect and care. Trust is mandatory.

17. My Mastermind members are required to sign nondisclosure agreements that have stiff violation penalties. Fortunately, I have never had to use any of the penalties against anyone, but the simple fact that I take it so seriously with my members goes a long way in fostering a culture of openness and trust. I strongly suggest you do something similar.

18. Finally, traditional Mastermind Groups consist of no more than six people, each from different industries.

19. Concentrate on keeping your group to a total of around four to six members, including you. Keep in mind that you can set up as many of these groups as you want, depending on the kind of time commitment you can make. My colleagues in other areas of the country are running anywhere from five to eight Mastermind meetings at once.

20. If you ask people to shell out $300 to $1,000 a month to attend your Mastermind Group, then you need to make it a GREAT event. Catered food is virtually mandatory.

21. The way you sell this thing to people is by making it an elite, exclusive club into which they are being invited. It’s not something just anyone can join. There is a screening process and possibly a waiting list. Reality is perception. Every little component—every little component—has to be congruent with this positioning, including the food. Maybe even especially the food.

22. There’s a time and a place for casual dining, but your Mastermind Group meeting is not one of those times or places.

23. Along with the food, make sure you provide plenty of drinks. I usually buy a few types of soda, juices, teas, and then also have plenty of bottled water on hand.

24. However, our traditional Mastermind Groups are held in a large conference room at a local credit union.

25. Venue layout is important to the overall flow of your meetings. For a smaller group (four to six members), a round-table-type layout tends to work well. You don’t want members sitting in rows where some sit behind others. For high group interaction, a layout like that is highly inconvenient. Members should sit in a circle or half circle where everyone is facing inward, towards everyone else, making group discussion much easier.

26. Any large room free from distractions will work. If in a large conference room, make sure you can close the doors to limit the amount of noise and distractions.

27. Other options for meeting rooms are hotel conference rooms, universities, public libraries, corporate offices, or executive suites. (Executive suites often provide a large conference room to its tenants, and these can sometimes be rented for less than one hundred dollars.) Look into various options, and you should be able to find an acceptable venue without too much trouble.

28. Depending on how many people are in the group, I will go over a marketing topic for the first thirty to forty-five minutes of the meeting. We then take a quick restroom break and start with the first group member. That group member then has about forty-five minutes to talk about three or four challenges they are having in their business. The whole group participates in making suggestions, giving ideas, or fleshing out concepts related to the particular challenges under discussion.

29. Someone, usually my assistant, will take notes of the interaction and create checklists, to-do lists, and action items for that member to complete during the next month. This gives that member something tangible to take home and implement in business during the next thirty days. These meetings are not just about theory or ideas. They are about action.

30. After the first member is finished, we move on to the second person and the cycle repeats itself.

31. A lot of the real growth in the group comes from hearing about a successful strategy in one business or industry and then applying it to another business or industry, with only minor modifications. In this way, we all get to have a chance at shortcutting the learning curve, and more importantly, we get to implement something in our own businesses that has already been proven in another business.

32. At the end of each meeting, I will usually take five to ten minutes to leave the group with a motivational or inspirational thought. This ends the meeting on a positive note and gets everyone excited to get back to work and start implementing their ideas through the next month until we meet again.

33. Every new member receives a copy of a welcome letter (a letter welcoming him or her to the group and providing the necessary contact information to get in touch with me), a copy of the nondisclosure agreement (which must be signed and turned in before the meeting starts), and a copy of the ground rules (which I will cover here).

34. Ground Rules for the Meeting:

• Attend Every Meeting - I am pretty firm about this one. If you can’t make a meeting, then you need to have a very good excuse. It’s just not fair to the rest of the group (or to you) to miss a meeting. I have actually instituted a “Two Strikes, You’re Out” policy, where if you miss two meetings during a calendar year, then you are gone.
• Stay for the Whole Meeting - The group is only as strong as the members’ willingness to give to one another.
• Silence/Turn Off Cell Phones - This is the one place where you give yourself permission not to be at the mercy of the daily distractions that plague you. The group needs everyone’s full attention, so turning off cell phones is a must.
• Actively Participate - If members just sit there without offering anything to the group, I will usually try to gently draw them into the discussion with a friendly, “Well we’ve heard from everyone so far except for you, Jack. What do you think about this problem?”
• Constructive Criticism Only/Be Positive
• Don’t Interrupt One Another
• Keep Your Comments Concise. Don’t Be a Time Hog.

35. A basic meeting agenda will look like this: 

• 9:00 a.m.–9:45 a.m. Presentation to Group 

• 9:45 a.m.–9:50 a.m. Break 

• 9:50 a.m.–10:30 a.m. Member 1 Speaks 

• 10:30 a.m.–11:10 a.m. Member 2 Speaks 

• 11:10 a.m.–11:15 a.m. Break 

• 11:15 a.m.–11:55 a.m. Member 3 Speaks 

• 11:55 a.m.–12:05 p.m. Lunch 

• 12:05 p.m.–12:45 p.m. Member 4 Speaks 

• 12:45 p.m.–1:00 p.m. Wrap Up/Q&A/Etc. 

36. This agenda assumes you have at least four members in your group. The times will have to be adjusted if there are more or fewer members.

37. Talk About During Their Allotted Time? The short answer is “whatever they want.”

38. In the event they need a little guidance to get started, ask them to come prepared with three challenges or opportunities they are facing right now.

39. Marketing generally isn’t sequential, but here is a basic process you can follow: identify, find, attract, and convert.

40. The biggest thing you want to look for are business owners who read a lot of self-help books, business books, and any other nonfiction works designed to help them improve their lives or business.

41. The second character trait you want to look for in a business owner is aggressive marketing. These entrepreneurs are the ones actively and aggressively trying to grow their business and aren’t afraid of spending money to do it.

42. Finally, you want to find those business owners who are somewhat established. Entrepreneurs involved with very young companies or startups are pinching every penny and may balk at spending money to join your group, even if it will benefit them.

43. Referrals: This is the best place to begin your efforts. Keep in mind that like attracts like. In other words, we tend to associate with and attract those who are similar to us. Even if you only have a few Mastermind members right now, you’ll want to start by getting them to refer their friends and colleagues to you.

44. Chances are, they are friends with and can positively influence potential members who would be a great fit for your group.

45. Members will come and members will go, so you will always need to keep your pipeline full of potential prospects.

46. Keep this in mind when recruiting members for your Mastermind Group. You want those individuals who have a great work ethic and will be master implementers. Their natural enthusiasm for work will spread to the other group members and everyone in turn will benefit.

2. If you plan a menu of limited courses, everything can be set out buffet style. That way you'll be able to enjoy the meal along with your guests, instead of running back and forth to serve.

3. Remember to keep non-alcoholic drinks- juices, soda, etc.-on hand for guests who don't drink alcohol.

4. An easy and pleasurable way to entertain is to invite friends to your home for a relaxing Sunday brunch.

5. Invite your friends to a make-a-pizza party and see how creative you all can be.

6. Don't try out a new recipe on guests. Prepare it first for family members or close friends.

7. Make your buffet convenient for you and your guests by wrapping place settings of silverware in napkins and placing them in a basket.

8. Ice will last longer for a party if you first freeze an inch of water in the bottom of the ice bucket.

9. Your guests will always remember your parties if you send them picture postcards of themselves. As each person enters the party, snap a photo. But only send flattering photographs.

10. For a festive holiday get-together, have a Christmas cookie exchange. Invite neighbors and friends and ask them to bring some of the favorite cookies.

11. Holiday shopping won't seem a hassle if you can schedule your shopping excursions at off hours: right after the stores open, in mid-afternoon (2:30-4:30 P.M.), or late enough in the evening to avoid the after-work crowd. Try to avoid the crowds on weekends and lunch hours.

12. You'll always have little gifts on hand if you remember to buy doubles of things you need yourself. Such items as jellies and preserves, correspondence notes, and toiletries make suitable gifts. You can also take advantage of sale items and specials that look like suitable standby gifts.

13. Make a loaf of bread and wrap it up along with a jar of homemade preserves as a delicious and practical gift.

1. Results, not effort, is the name of the game. You are rewarded in life by the results you produce, not the effort and time you put in.

2. It can be easy to focus on How, especially for high achievers who want to control what they can control, which is themselves. It takes vulnerability and trust to expand your efforts and build a winning team. It takes wisdom to recognize that 1) other people are more than capable enough to handle much of the Hows, and 2) that your efforts and contribution (your “Hows”) should be focused exclusively where your greatest passion and impact are. Your attention and energy should not be spread thin, but purposefully directed where you can experience extreme flow and creativity.

3. If you’re ready to realize a much bigger and more powerful future, then you must stop asking yourself, “How can I accomplish this?” That question, although common, leads to mediocre results, frustration, and a life of regrets. A much better question is: “Who can help me achieve this?”

4. That’s what real leadership is: Creating and clarifying the vision (the “what”), and giving that vision greater context and importance (the “why”) for all Whos involved. Once the “what” and “why” have clearly been established, the specified “Who” or “Whos” have all they need to go about executing the “How.” All the leader needs to do at that point is support and encourage the Who(s) through the process.

5. You don’t get preferential treatment with Hows, but with Whos who know what they’re doing.

6. It is critically important to understand that Who Not How goes both ways. Yes, Tucker, Reid, and I are Dan’s Whos on this book. But Dan is also a Who to each of us.

7. Ultimately, Who Not How is about teaching you how to focus on what you can do, and then finding other Whos to do what they can do.

8. In every “Who” relationship, you will have Whos, and you will also be a Who. No Who is viewed as better or more important than the other. All Whos are essential to getting the project done. There is love and respect among Whos. Each member of the team views the other as a collaborator on a shared mission, and each member wants to be a hero to the others.

9. Not only must the Who fully own the How, but they must have complete permission to do so.

10. If you’re going to apply higher levels of teamwork in your life, you’ll need to relinquish control over how things get done.

11. A core aspect of leadership is being explicit about the vision. The more explicit you are in what you want, the faster you’ll attract the right Whos to help you achieve that vision. The leader explains the “What” and “Why” and then allows the “Who” to execute the “How.”

12. “How” is linear and slow. “Who” is non-linear, instantaneous, and exponential.

13. TIME - Today Is My Everything.

14. Your Whos manage themselves; they aren’t managed by you. They have full responsibility for how they handle themselves because you’ve made the vision abundantly clear and exciting. You’ve then given them full ownership over executing and achieving the vision in whatever way suits them.

15. As it turns out, this isn’t just a fancy idea. Research shows that only 16 percent of creative insight happens while you’re at work. Instead, ideas generally come while you’re at home or in transit, or during recreational activity.

16. You need time and space, and most important, relaxation and recovery, to allow ideas and solutions to ferment and form.

17. The point here is, as you engage in relationships, you expand your efficacy as a person. Your efficacy is your ability to produce results, and it is based on the resources you have to put toward those results. Resources can be financial, but they can also be so much more than that. Encouragement, time, and focus are just as essential as monetary support. Resources not only expand your ability to produce results, but can have a transformational effect on you as a person—on your identity, worldview, and skill level.

18. For example, if you want to improve your health, you could simply get a gym membership. Or you could hire a personal trainer. Yes, this would be an investment, one you may not think you have the capacity to make. However, by hiring a personal trainer, your capabilities and potential in your health and fitness will expand. You’ll be able to produce better results because you’ll get the coaching and support you need. Additionally, by being invested, you’ll be more motivated and focused, not semi-committed.

19. Again, getting Whos is how you get committed.

20. Meta-analytic research shows that confidence is the by-product of recent performance or recent progress toward your goals. By growing your confidence, your imagination and future will simultaneously grow as well.

21. Procrastination doesn’t only stop your confidence from growing. You also limit your imagination, preventing you from seeking out bigger and bigger goals. Your identity or self-concept becomes limited. You stop believing you can achieve big goals, because your identity is largely shaped by your behavior. And this pattern will cause you to assume the same for your future. Thus, procrastination leads to a small self-image and an increasingly smaller future for yourself. You stop trusting in yourself. You stop believing in yourself.

22. Paradoxically, procrastination is actually a form of wisdom. Procrastination is a psychological phenomenon that occurs when you really want something more for yourself, but you lack the knowledge and capability to do it.

23. Procrastination is a very powerful signal telling you that it’s time to get another Who involved. You’re stuck. You need help.

24. Applying Who Not How, and thus killing procrastination, requires two essential steps: 

• Be radically explicit about your goals. 

• Ask yourself: Who can help me accomplish this goal?

25. Dan has created a tool that helps to define the vision, what successful completion of the project looks like, and why it is so important. He calls this tool the Impact Filter.

26. The Impact Filter, as a one-page document, solves this most pervasive leadership conundrum, and is comprised of the following questions: 

• What is the project? 

• Purpose: What do you want to accomplish? 

• Importance: What’s the biggest difference this will make? 

• Ideal Outcome: What does the completed project look like? 

• Best Result: If you do take action? 

• Worst Result: If you don’t take action? 

• Success Criteria: What has to be true when this project is finished?

27. Now that you’ve clarified and become explicit about your goal, you must refrain from trying to figure out “How” to accomplish it.

28. You’ll try to convince yourself why other people may not want to get involved. You may think you can’t afford the right Whos, or that you’re not a great leader. All sorts of limiting beliefs will flood through your mind, trying to get you to focus on the Hows, not the Whos. Without question, it takes courage to tell people your vision. It takes courage and leadership to get other people involved.

29. Dan often says, “The purpose of the Impact Filter is first to sell yourself on the vision, because you can’t sell other people unless you’re sold yourself.”

30. There are plenty of incredible and capable people who want to and will help you. All you need to do is tell them your vision. Spell it out for them. The Impact Filter actually does that for you. Then ask yourself: “Who can help me accomplish this goal?”

31. Once you’ve identified the needed person to help you accomplish your goal, it’s time to get that person engaged and executing the needed Hows. In order to do so, you’ll need to ensure your vision also matches their vision for themselves, and that you can clearly become a powerful Who to them. If you can, and if helping you achieve your vision will help them simultaneously become who they want to be, then you’ve got your Who.

32.  Unless you’re brilliant at finding Whos, you should probably find a Who to find your Whos.

33. You can start small. Each small win builds confidence and an increased sense that you can create the life you want. Start by simply eliminating all tasks or distractions that are unnecessary to your future self. Often, we engage in tasks simply out of habit. If it can be eliminated altogether, then eliminate it. Your future self will thank you.

34. Challenge: Add at least one Who to your goals in the next 90 days in whatever area of your life you choose. By adding a Who, your commitment will increase and your behavior will improve.

35. By investing in Whos you not only utilize their time and resources, but also free yourself up to focus your time and attention on your most high-value activities.

36. Some people don’t invest in Whos like Connie because they don’t view them as an investment, but as a cost. They worry about the amount of money they’ll have to pay their Who, rather than thinking about how that Who could elevate their vision and free up their time.

37. The time I spend writing books and recording podcasts is worth at least 10X or even 100X the time I spent scheduling podcasts.

38. Escalation of Commitment: Every time you invest yourself in something, you become more committed to it.

39. Our culture has brainwashed us into avoiding costs rather than making powerful investments in ourselves and our futures.

40. You’re either in the “Time and Effort Economy” or the “Results Economy.”

41. Whos, when selected properly to fit within your vision, are never a cost. Whos are an investment.

42. “You can survive without a community, but you can’t thrive without one.”

43. First and foremost, when it comes to connecting with someone, you should want to be connected with them. It shouldn’t be a chore. There shouldn’t be any desire to avoid contact or escape from them.

44. “I don’t want to work on a relationship. I just want a relationship that works,”

45. The moral to the story: Don’t reach out to someone unless you have something meaningful to offer them. That “something” needs to be real and relevant, not just a compliment or flattery. True and real value.

46. It’s a back-and-forth process. Rather than sitting by yourself, trying to perfect the idea without feedback, it’s far more effective to throw your ideas out there fast, get feedback from your team, and then adjust as you go. The faster you get at throwing out incomplete work, the faster it will transform into something great. Dan calls this the 80 percent rule. You can get to 80 percent of a project very quickly, such as writing a rough draft. However, going from 80 percent to 90 percent is exponentially more work than going from 0 to 80 percent. Going from 90 to 100 percent is a mountain.

47. It all starts by setting a goal, a new and bigger version of your own future. Then your next step is to ask, “Who can help me do this?”

1. The 10-Minute Toughness program is simply about identifying and utilizing a handful of mental tools that are proven to help people perform more consistently.

2. Athletes using 10-MT spend approximately four to five minutes after each practice and competition to focus on strengths and goal-related thinking. They also spend five minutes a day completing a five-step mental workout prior to the next day's training and/or competition to help develop a pinpoint focus on what they are trying to improve and what it takes to make it happen.

3. The field of sport psychology has identified self-efficacy (self-confidence) as the most influential mental variable in controlling performance. This means that if you have a strong belief in your ability to perform well, then the chances of your actually performing well greatly improve. This program is specifically designed to help athletes improve self-confidence. The two most effective ways to develop self-confidence are to perform well and to physically and mentally prepare to perform well.

4. The program works because it has two primary strengths. First, it forces athletes to identify the "process of success." The process of success is a clear and concise assessment of what it takes for the athlete to perform well. This assessment is done daily after training and competition. Second, a mental workout provides a vehicle for mentally training the identified process of success. In addition, athletes visualize success outcomes to enhance self-confidence. They identify the most beneficial thoughts to have and then condition their minds to be able to maintain those thoughts more fully throughout training sessions and competition. It is certainly not rocket science, but it absolutely works!

5. There are three essential phases in the 10-MT mental-training program. Phase 1 is what I refer to as the mental workout. This individualized mental-training plan helps athletes identify and focus on their "control points," or what it takes for success.

6. 10-Minute Toughness Mental Workout:

a. The Centering Breath. A fifteen-second deep breath designed to control arousal states. 

b. The Performance Statement. A specifically tailored self-statement useful for increasing training and competitive focus. 

c. The Personal Highlight Reel. An advanced form of visualization allowing athletes to increase skill refinement and consistency. 

d. The Identity Statement. A concrete self-statement proven to enhance self-image and performance confidence. 

e. The Centering Breath. As in step one, a biologically established relaxation technique used to increase the potential to perform well under pressure.

7. Phase 2 comprises developing and utilizing an effective goal-setting program:

Vision clarity: Ultimate goal accomplishment associated with sport. 

Product goal: A result-oriented goal that is clearly measurable and is usually most effective if it emphasizes accomplishments in the next twelve months. 

Process goal: The daily action needed to accomplish both product-and vision-level goals. 

Success Log: Questions that encourage the identification of personal strengths and specific desires for improvement.

Personal Rewards Program Questionnaire: Questionnaire that identifies the athlete's motivational preferences. 

Personal incentive style: The motivational preferences of athletes that enhance training and competition intensity.

8. Phase 3 teaches individuals how to develop a relentless focus on solutions. 

9. Athletes and coaches are able to realize the small difference between good and great by asking, What is one thing I can do that could make this better?

10. Centering Breath = Diaphragm Breathing - I have tried to simplify diaphragm breathing by qualifying a good centering breath as one that lasts fifteen seconds. The formula is 6-2-7: breathe in for six seconds, hold for two, and breathe out for seven seconds. Individuals under the age of twelve should try to have the centering breath last eleven seconds (4-2-5).

11. One core aspect of training is known as arousal control. The heart rate is a primary control of a person's arousal state. It is important to control heart rate because using the mind effectively becomes increasingly more difficult as the heart rate rises. Once the rate gets to 120 beats per minute, the mind will not be nearly as sharp (unless proper conditioning and mental training has occurred), and at about 150 beats per minute, the mind will essentially shut down and go into survival mode. (In this state, even the best athletes will lose the ability to maintain mental acuity.)

12. A performance statement is a specifically designed form of self-talk. Self-talk is the conversation that goes on in a person's head throughout the day. It is said that the average person has up to sixty thousand thoughts per day—that's a lot of self-talk. The unfortunate thing about those thoughts is that the majority tend to embody self-doubt or negativity. If we do not choose our thoughts carefully, they can (and many times do) have a negative impact on performance.

13. From a mental standpoint, the most tried-and-true way to increase performance is to improve confidence. Self-talk is one of the most influential agents for honing self-confidence.

14. Extensive research in the sport psychology world confirms that an athlete's internal dialogue significantly influences performance. Athletes who have negative self-talk will generally experience poor performance; conversely, when athletes keep their minds focused on positive performance cues, they are more likely to experience success.

15. A performance statement is a type of self-talk designed to help athletes zoom in on one specific thought to enhance performance consistency. It is a simple, yet concrete, thought that specifically identifies the process of success, or what it takes to perform at your best.

16. For the baseball player, there may be a performance statement to emphasize hitting (track the ball, smooth and easy) and defense (set, stay down, watch it into the glove). A basketball player may choose to combine both offense and defense into one performance statement (hustle every possession; attack every rebound; drive, drive, drive), while the gymnast may have a performance statement for every event she competes on (floor: quick hands, tight legs, squeeze; vault: top speed, feet in front; bars: hollow handstands and elbows locked).

17. In my opinion, the essence of mental toughness is the ability to replace negative thinking with thoughts that are centered on performance cues or that contribute to improved self-confidence.

18. The more often negative thoughts are replaced with positive self-talk, the more successful and mentally tough a person will be.

19. The most helpful method to stop self-doubt and negative thinking is thought replacement. Effective thought replacement occurs when you decide what you want to have happen and then think more often about what it will take to make it happen. Whenever unproductive thoughts ("don't" thinking or mental clutter) infringe, replace them with productive ones.

20. The performance statement serves two principal purposes. First, it is a way to avoid self-doubt, negativity, or mental clutter(thought replacement). Second, it helps you perform at your best by directing your thoughts toward targeted areas of strength.

21. A client trying to prioritize exercise had this as his performance statement: "Three days on, one day off; dedicated and committed; I clear my own path." His highlights aren't as much about the technical aspects of doing it right as they are about his desire and ability to be healthy.

22. The personal highlight reel is an advanced form of visualization in which you create your own mental "SportsCenter" highlight reel.

23. People learn faster by visualizing success rather than by watching it on tape. Of course, there is considerable value in watching success on tape. In fact, during film sessions, Bear Bryant, the famous football coach at Alabama, showed his players only footage of themselves playing well.

24. Coach Bryant contended that showing his players what they did well helped them repeat the performance, whereas showing them what they did wrong would only increase the likelihood of their exhibiting more poor play in the future.

25. According to some studies, in fact, every minute of visualization is worth seven minutes of physical practice.

26. Visualizing is the act of watching something in your mind before actually doing it.

27. There are eight essential guidelines for visualization success:

Choose One of Three Camera Angles - whether 1. as if the camera is in the stands recording someone other than you performing the skill; 2. you are watching the mental video as if the camera is in the stands filming as you perform the skill and 3. you watch the mental video as if your eyes are the camera lens (or as if you're wearing a helmet camera). From this perspective, you would see whatever you actually see while you are performing the skill.

Pay Attention to Detail - Try to pay attention to three of the five senses while performing the skill: sight (What do you see on the surrounding field, court, or arena?); sound (Do you hear crowd noise, coaches, teammates?); and feel (What does the ball, bat, racket, club, etc., feel like? Also, what does your body feel like as it performs successfully?).

Frequent and Brief Is the Ticket - Visualizing many times for short stints is far more effective than visualizing for extended periods.

Visualize from Beginning to End - Make sure to view the skill or action in its entirety. Creating a comprehensive mental video helps to reduce distraction and eliminate potential problems with emotional control.

Emotionally Feel the Way You Want to Feel - Be aware of how you want to feel before and during competition, and then train yourself to feel just that way.

Replay Until You Get It Right

Give Credit Where Credit Is Due - Upon finishing each successful visualization, take a brief time-out to congratulate yourself on a job well done. A mental pat on the back or a few kind words to yourself after visualizing success will help keep you on an even keel.

Operate at Game Speed - Finally, watch the mental clip at the desired speed. While it is helpful sometimes to slow the mental video down to figure out some of the more complex skills, you should always visualize at the desired speed prior to the physical performance, or else the timing of the action may be off.

28. Camera angle number three is the most beneficial, because with this approach, your muscles can actually get stronger and muscle memory can develop. Many athletes refer to muscle memory as the ability to perform successfully while on autopilot.

29. Although I just told you that all three camera angles are helpful, I do not want you to use more than one camera angle when you visualize. Pick one angle to employ, trusting your instincts on which of the three is most appropriate for you.

30. The personal highlight reel is made up of three parts. The first part emphasizes a successful performance from your past, and the second and third parts address how you want to perform in the future.

31. Part 1: Sixty-Second Mental Video Clip of Excellent Past Performance - There are two options to consider when creating the first part of your personal highlight reel. The first option is to identify the best performance or game you have had in the past (the more recent the better). Imagine that the entire performance was videotaped; select three to five personal highlights from the videotaped performance, each lasting from ten to twenty seconds. The second option is to identify a few of your best performances and choose a combination of your best highlights from those performances. Choose the three to five best personal highlights, each lasting between ten to twenty seconds.

32. Parts 2 and 3: Sixty-Second Mental Video Clips of Upcoming Big Games or Competitions - The second and third parts are also sixty-second mental video clips, but instead of re-creating the past, you imagine what you want to have happen in your future.

33. Be sure to really hone in on what it physically feels like to emphasize your performance statement and emotionally focus on your ideal arousal state as you go through parts two and three of your personal highlight reel. By doing so, you will dramatically increase the effectiveness of your visualization.

34. Sean Townsend's Personal Highlight Reel 

Part 1 (Successful Past Performance): World Championships '02  

Good training leading up to World Championships  

Felt calm and confident in warm-ups; everything was smooth and fluid  

Hit four solid routines on the first day of competition

Superhit P-bars to win the gold  

Personal greatest moment in sport: gold medal ceremony (freeze frame: standing at the top of the podium) 

Part 2 (Next Elevated-Pressure Competition): USA Championships '08  

Good, solid warm-up, feeling calm and confident and taking one skill at a time, one routine at a time  

Hit all six routines on day one while feeling calm and confident and taking one skill at a time, one routine at a time  

Hit all six routines in finals while feeling calm and confident and taking one skill at a time, one routine at a time

Part 3 (Next Competition): WOGA Invitational  

Good, solid warm-up, feeling calm and confident and taking one skill at a time, one routine at a time  

Hit all six routines on day one while feeling calm and confident and taking one skill at a time, one routine at a time 

 Hit all six routines in finals while feeling calm and confident and taking one skill at a time, one routine at a time

35. An identity statement is a self-statement designed to improve self-image. Your self-image is essentially how you view yourself—what strengths and weaknesses you believe you possess. It has been demonstrated that what people believe they are capable of accomplishing largely determines how much they will actually accomplish.

36. Self-image is a proven agent of behavior control.

37. The effect of self-image is one reason why 80 percent of lottery winners file for bankruptcy within five years of winning. Even though their financial situation has dramatically changed, typically the self-image hasn't. For people who see themselves as not good with money, no matter how much money is given to them, they will generally find a way to lose it.

38. As pointed out previously, largely what determines people's self-image is the things they continually say to themselves, and unfortunately, much of our inner dialogue regards what we can't do rather than what we can do.

39. The key is to create the self-image desired—decide who you want to be and how you want to live—and then continuously tell yourself that you have what it takes to be that person. The self-image will guide and direct actions and behaviors until the self-image becomes the reality.

40. In the words of Maxwell Maltz, "You will act like the sort of person you conceive yourself to be. More important, you literally cannot act otherwise, in spite of all your conscious efforts or willpower. This is why trying to achieve something difficult with teeth gritted is a losing battle. Willpower is not the answer. Self-image management is."

41. I encourage athletes to create a two-part identity statement. The first part indicates a strength you currently have or want to have. Be sure the strength you choose to accentuate makes achieving success more likely. For example, your strength might be that you are a really hard worker. Whether it is already true or is something that you want to be true, the first part of your identity statement might be "I am the hardest worker on the team."

42. The second part of your identity statement addresses what you want to accomplish. It is OK to stretch a bit here. According to research on affirmations, the more imposing the desired task, the more impact it will have on the self-image. Frame both parts of your identity statement as though the objectives have already been achieved.

43. My own personal identity statement is "I am more motivated than my competition; I am the most effective sport psychology consultant in the world."

44. Examples of Identity Statements  

Baseball. I am the hardest worker on the team; I am a dominant major-league hitter.  

Basketball. I am intelligent and I know this game better than anyone; I am the most prolific scorer on the court.

45. Remember: the centering breath is a deep breath used to physiologically control heart rate and arousal. Taking a centering breath at the end of the mental workout is necessary for athletes because completing the personal highlight reel may cause the heart rate and arousal state to elevate.

46. I tell athletes that doing the mental workout one time a day is great. Some clients prefer to do it a couple of times a day, and that is OK, but there is no need to do it more than twice a day.

47. Give it a try. Complete the mental workout for two weeks, and judge for yourself if it helps you to improve focus, ability, and consistency.

48. The three levels, or types, of goals that I discuss with clients are ultimate goals, product goals, and process goals

49. Ultimate goals. Ultimate goals are the culmination of what you want to accomplish and how you want to accomplish it. When identifying your ultimate goals, imagine being able to look into the future and witness your retirement dinner. What accomplishments do you want to hang on the wall, and what would you like the speaker to say about you regarding how you played the game and how you conducted yourself?

50. Product goals. Product goals are result-oriented goals. They are clearly measurable and usually are most effective if they emphasize accomplishments in the next twelve months. I have found that the best formula is to assign yourself up to three product goals for the next competitive season in which you will participate and, again, up to three product goals for the upcoming off-season. For example, a basketball player may have the following three product goals for the season:

1. Score at least ten points per game 

2. Have a free-throw percentage of 80 percent or better 

3. Grab at least six rebounds every game

51. Process goals. Process goals are the "what it takes" to achieve the product goals you set. Process goals also must be specific enough to be measurable. For example, the same basketball player may believe that two of the best ways for her to score ten points per game are by being mentally prepared for each game and by aggressively driving to the hoop (within five feet) at least four times per game.

52.It is important to write your goals down and let others know of your intentions. Writing and talking about your goals will also increase your accountability and motivation for achieving them.

53. "What does Coach Wooden say about excuses?" He replied, "Never make excuses. Your friends won't need them, and your foes won't believe them."

54. For goals to work, they must become a part of daily training.

55. After practices and games, you will take about three to four minutes to fill out a Success Log. The Success Logs ask athletes to answer the following questions:  

What three things did I do well today?  

Based on today's performance, what do I want to improve?  

What is one thing I can do differently that could lead to the desired improvement?

56. Just before doing your mental workout, you will take one minute to review your Success Log entries from the previous day.

57. In my experience, athletes who establish a "personal rewards" system find it easier and more enjoyable to make the sacrifices necessary to achieve their goals.

58. Research strongly suggests that pushing to reach a goal provides more happiness than actually reaching the goal.

59. It is also important to set new goals once a goal is achieved. Remember that you stand to experience more joy and satisfaction from striving to reach your goals than from actually achieving them. So, keep replacing achieved goals with bright, shiny new ones.

60. Edwin Locke and Gary Latham, discovered after years of research on thousands of people is that the most successful men and women in the world use goals as their primary method of motivation.

61. Being solution focused means keeping your thoughts centered on what you want from life and what it takes to achieve what you want, as opposed to allowing thoughts of self-doubt and concern to occupy the mind.

62. "Every time I catch myself feeling angry or scared or depressed it is because I am thinking about what I don't have in my life or about something that is wrong with me. The instant I catch myself feeling uncomfortable I ask, 'What is one thing I can do right now that could make my situation better?,'

63. Bolster yourself. Surround yourself with people who want to scale the same heights. If your training companions are always complaining and wallowing in their problems, your solution focus is sure to waver.

64. Attitudes are contagious; people tend to take on the attitudes and actions of the individuals in their circle. A good attitude is just as contractible as a bad one. If you habitually conduct yourself with a solution focus, those around you will start to follow your model.

65. I consider an individual to be mentally tough when the mind is in control of thoughts that help the body accomplish what is wanted.

66. Let's review how the three phases of 10-MT can help you choose the right mental attitude.

Phase 1: The Mental Workout

Step 1: Centering Breath The centering breath is a fifteen-second breath in which you breathe in for six seconds, hold for two, and then breathe out for seven.

Step 2: Performance Statement After taking your centering breath, repeat to yourself the statement that most effectively focuses you on what it takes for you to be successful in competition.

Step 3: Personal Highlight Reel After reciting your performance statement, spend about three minutes visualizing what it looks like to be successful.

Step 4: Identity Statement Upon completing your personal highlight reel, repeat to yourself your identity statement to help mold your self-image.

Step 5: Centering Breath The mental workout ends the way it begins, with a fifteen-second deep breath. This breath resets your heart rate to a level of controlled arousal and increased mental focus. Use success logs to keep your daily training focused and precise. As best as you can, try to identify just one thing you want to improve prior to each training day.

Phase 2: Goal Setting for Greatness - When you know what you want to accomplish, write it down, and spread the word. Talking about your goals will spring them from your subconscious into your consciousness.

Phase 3: Adopt a Relentless Solution Focus - Anytime you are in the presence of adversity ask yourself, "What is one thing I can do that could make this better?"

1. The main obstacle to achieving “the impossible” may be a self-limiting mind-set.

2. You can’t stay at the top if you aren’t comfortable in high-stress situations. Indeed, the ability to remain cool under fire is the one trait of elite performers that is most often thought of as inborn. But in fact you can learn to love the pressure—for driving you to perform better than you ever thought you could. To do that, however, you have to first make a choice to devote yourself passionately to self-improvement.

3. People who are as self-motivated as Jack or Darren Clarke rarely indulge in self-flagellation. That’s not to say that elite performers aren’t hard on themselves; they would not have gotten so far without being hard on themselves. But when things go awry, business and sports superstars dust themselves off and move on.

4. Much of star athletes’ ability to rebound from defeat comes from an intense focus on long-term goals and aspirations.

5. The trick here is to meticulously plan short-term goals so that performance will peak at major, rather than minor, events.

6. Use the Competition - It’s common in track-and-field sports for two elite athletes from different countries to train together.

7. If you hope to make it to the very top, like Murray, you too will need to make sure you “train” with the people who will push you the hardest.

8. Smart companies consciously create situations in which their elite performers push one another to levels they would never reach if they were working with less-accomplished colleagues. Talent development programs that bring together a company’s stars for intensive training often serve precisely such a purpose. If you want to become a world-class executive, getting into such a program should be one of your first goals.

9. Shotton had an insatiable appetite for feedback—a quality I have seen in all the top business performers I have worked with. They have a particularly strong need for instant, in the moment feedback.

10. Celebrate the Victories - Elite performers know how to party—indeed, they put almost as much effort into their celebrations as they do into their accomplishments.

11.  I once worked with a professional golfer who, as he worked his way up the ranks to the top of his sport, would reward himself with something he had prized as a young player—an expensive watch, a fancy car, a new home. These were reminders of his achievements and symbolized to him the hard work, commitment, and dedication he had put into golf for so many years.

12. Indeed, our recent research has led us to conclude that one of the most reliable indicators and predictors of true leadership is an individual’s ability to find meaning in negative events and to learn from even the most trying circumstances.

13. In the late 1960s I was part of the team that discovered “learned helplessness.” We found that dogs, rats, mice, and even cockroaches that experienced mildly painful shock over which they had no control would eventually just accept it, with no attempt to escape. It was next shown that human beings do the same thing.

14. Strangely, however, about a third of the animals and people who experience inescapable shocks or noise never become helpless. What is it about them that makes this so? Over 15 years of study, my colleagues and I discovered that the answer is optimism.

15. We discovered that people who don’t give up have a habit of interpreting setbacks as temporary, local, and changeable. (“It’s going away quickly; it’s just this one situation, and I can do something about it.”)

16. That suggested how we might immunize people against learned helplessness, against depression and anxiety, and against giving up after failure: by teaching them to think like optimists.

17. In the living laboratory of sports, we learned that the real enemy of high performance is not stress, which, paradoxical as it may seem, is actually the stimulus for growth. Rather, the problem is the absence of disciplined, intermittent recovery. Chronic stress without recovery depletes energy reserves, leads to burnout and breakdown, and ultimately undermines performance.

18. Body language also influences emotions. In one well-known experiment, actors were asked to portray anger and then were subjected to numerous physiological tests, including heart rate, blood pressure, core temperature, galvanic skin response, and hormone levels. Next, the actors were exposed to a situation that made them genuinely angry, and the same measurements were taken. There were virtually no differences in the two profiles. Effective acting produces precisely the same physiology that real emotions do.

19. All great athletes understand this instinctively. If they carry themselves confidently, they will eventually start to feel confident, even in highly stressful situations.

20. That’s why we train our corporate clients to “act as if”—consciously creating the look on the outside that they want to feel on the inside. “You are what you repeatedly do,” said Aristotle. “Excellence is not a singular act but a habit.”

21. We have found that individuals who adopt a “stress is enhancing” mind-set in their lives show greater work performance and fewer negative health symptoms than those who adopt a “stress-is-debilitating” lens.

22. We’ve identified four lenses through which managers can view adverse events to make this shift effectively.

23. Control. When a crisis hits, do you look for what you can improve now rather than trying to identify all the factors—even those beyond your control—that caused it in the first place? 

24. Impact. Can you sidestep the temptation to find the origins of the problem in yourself or others and focus instead on identifying what positive effects your personal actions might have? 

25. Breadth. Do you assume that the underlying cause of the crisis is specific and can be contained, or do you worry that it might cast a long shadow over all aspects of your life? 

26. Duration. How long do you believe that the crisis and its repercussions will last?

27. The first two lenses characterize an individual’s personal reaction to adversity, and the second two capture his or her impressions of the adversity’s magnitude.

28. Control Questions : 

• Specifying: What aspects of the situation can I directly influence to change the course of this adverse event? 
• Visualizing: What would the manager I most admire do in this situation? 
• Collaborating: Who on my team can help me, and what’s the best way to engage that person or those people?

29. Impact Questions:

• Specifying: How can I step up to make the most immediate, positive impact on this situation? 
• Visualizing: What positive effect might my efforts have on those around me? 
• Collaborating: How can I mobilize the efforts of those who are hanging back?

30. Breath Questions:

• Specifying: What can I do to reduce the potential downside of this adverse event—by even 10%? What can I do to maximize the potential upside—by even 10%? 
• Visualizing: What strengths and resources will my team and I develop by addressing this event?
• Collaborating: What can each of us do on our own, and what can we do collectively, to contain the damage and transform the situation into an opportunity?

31. Duration Question:

• Visualizing: What do I want life to look like on the other side of this adversity? 
• Specifying: What can I do in the next few minutes, or hours, to move in that direction? 
• Collaborating: What sequence of steps can we put together as a team, and what processes can we develop and adopt, to see us through to the other side of this hardship?

32. You won’t become more resilient simply because you’ve read this far and have made a mental note to pull out these questions the next time a destabilizing difficulty strikes. To strengthen your capacity for resilience, you need to internalize the questions by following two simple precepts:

33. Various studies on stress and coping with trauma demonstrate that the act of writing about difficult episodes can enhance an individual’s emotional and physical well-being. Indeed, writing offers people command over an adverse situation in a way that merely thinking about it does not. It’s best to treat the resilience regimen as a timed exercise: Give yourself at least 15 minutes, uninterrupted, to write down your responses to the 12 questions.

34. When you’re learning any new skill, repetition is critical. The resilience regimen is a long-term fitness plan, not a crash diet. You must ask and answer these questions daily if they are to become second nature.

1. So I sought out pain, fell in love with suffering, and eventually transformed myself from the weakest piece of shit on the planet into the hardest man God ever created, or so I tell myself.

2. That night, after taking a shower, I wiped the steam away from our corroded bathroom mirror and took a good look. I didn’t like who I saw staring back. I was a low-budget thug with no purpose and no future. I felt so disgusted I wanted to punch that motherfucker in the face and shatter glass. Instead, I lectured him. It was time to get real.

3. “Look at you,” I said. “Why do you think the Air Force wants your punk ass? You stand for nothing. You are an embarrassment.”

4. “You are one dumb motherfucker. You read like a third grader. You’re a fucking joke! You’ve never tried hard at anything in your life besides basketball, and you have goals? That’s fucking hilarious.”

5. “You don’t see people in the military sagging their pants. You need to stop talking like a wanna-be-gangster. None of this shit is gonna cut it! No more taking the easy way out! It’s time to grow the fuck up!”

6. The Accountability Mirror kept me on point from then on, and though I was still young when this strategy came through me, since then I’ve found it useful for people at any stage in life.

7. The Accountability Mirror kept me on point from then on, and though I was still young when this strategy came through me, since then I’ve found it useful for people at any stage in life.

8. From then on, I brainwashed myself into craving discomfort. If it was raining, I would go run. Whenever it started snowing, my mind would say, Get your fucking running shoes on. Sometimes I wussed out and had to deal with it at the Accountability Mirror. But facing that mirror, facing myself, motivated me to fight through uncomfortable experiences, and, as a result, I became tougher. And being tough and resilient helped me meet my goals.

9. That’s when I first realized that not all physical and mental limitations are real, and that I had a habit of giving up way too soon.

10. Everything in life is a mind game! Whenever we get swept under by life’s dramas, large and small, we are forgetting that no matter how bad the pain gets, no matter how harrowing the torture, all bad things end.

11. Taking someone’s soul means you’ve gained a tactical advantage. Life is all about looking for tactical advantages, which is why we stole the Hell Week schedule, why we nipped Psycho’s heels on that run, and why I made a show of myself in the surf, humming the Platoon theme song. Each of those incidents was an act of defiance that empowered us.

12. When the water was chest high I began humming Adagio in Strings once more. Louder this time. Loud enough for that motherfucker to hear me over the crash of the surf. That song gave me life!

13. Physical training is the perfect crucible to learn how to manage your thought process because when you’re working out, your focus is more likely to be single pointed, and your response to stress and pain is immediate and measurable. Do you hammer hard and snag that personal best like you said you would, or do you crumble? That decision rarely comes down to physical ability, it’s almost always a test of how well you are managing your own mind.

14. The reason it’s important to push hardest when you want to quit the most is because it helps you callous your mind. It’s the same reason why you have to do your best work when you are the least motivated. That’s why I loved PT in BUD/S and why I still love it today. Physical challenges strengthen my mind so I’m ready for whatever life throws at me, and it will do the same for you.

15. Failure is a part of life and now we all had to press on.

16. I felt it viscerally, and I used that concept to stuff a new kind of Cookie Jar. Inside it were all my past victories.

17. Like the time when I had to study three times as hard as anybody else during my senior year in high school just to graduate. That was a cookie. Or when I passed the ASVAB test as a senior and then again to get into BUD/S. Two more cookies. I remembered dropping over a hundred pounds in under three months, conquering my fear of water, graduating BUD/S at the top of my class, and being named Enlisted Honor Man in Army Ranger School (more on that soon). All those were cookies loaded with chocolate chunks.

18. I actually tapped into the emotional state I felt during those victories, and in so doing accessed my sympathetic nervous system once again. My adrenaline took over, the pain started to fade just enough, and my pace picked up. I began swinging my arms and lengthening my stride. My fractured feet were still a bloody mess, full of blisters, the toenails peeling off almost every toe, but I kept pounding, and soon it was me who was slaloming runners with pained expressions as I raced the clock.

19. The engine in a rocket ship does not fire without a small spark first. We all need small sparks, small accomplishments in our lives to fuel the big ones. Think of your small accomplishments as kindling. When you want a bonfire, you don’t start by lighting a big log. You collect some witch’s hair—a small pile of hay or some dry, dead grass. You light that, and then add small sticks and bigger sticks before you feed your tree stump into the blaze. Because it’s the small sparks, which start small fires, that eventually build enough heat to burn the whole fucking forest down.

20. I’m talking about utilizing past successes to fuel you to new and bigger ones. Because in the heat of battle, when shit gets real, we need to draw inspiration to push through our own exhaustion, depression, pain, and misery. We need to spark a bunch of small fires to become the motherfucking inferno.

21. By now, I’m sure you can tell that it doesn’t take much for me to become obsessed. Some criticize my level of passion, but I’m not down with the prevailing mentalities that tend to dominate American society these days; the ones that tell us to go with the flow or invite us to learn how to get more with less effort. Fuck that shortcut bullshit.

22. Sadly, most of us give up when we’ve only given around 40 percent of our maximum effort. Even when we feel like we’ve reached our absolute limit, we still have 60 percent more to give!

23. But nobody taps their reserve 60 percent right away or all at once. The first step is to remember that your initial blast of pain and fatigue is your governor talking. Once you do that, you are in control of the dialogue in your mind, and you can remind yourself that you are not as drained as you think. That you haven’t given it your all. Not even close. Buying into that will keep you in the fight, and that’s worth an extra 5 percent. Of course, that’s easier read than done.

24. Most of us are motivated as hell to do anything to pursue our dreams until those around us remind us of the danger, the downside, our own limitations, and all the people before us that didn’t make it. Sometimes the advice comes from a well-intentioned place. They really believe they are doing it for our own good but if you let them, these same people will talk you out of your dreams, and your governor will help them do it.

25. That’s one reason I invented the Cookie Jar. We must create a system that constantly reminds us who the fuck we are when we are at our best, because life is not going to pick us up when we fall.

26. From this point forward, accept the following as Goggins’s laws of nature: 

• You will be made fun of. 
• You will feel insecure. 
• You may not be the best all the time. 
• You may be the only black, white, Asian, Latino, female, male [fill in your identity here] in a given situation. 
• There will be times when you feel alone. 

Get over it!

27. In the military we always say we don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.

28. First, a quick reminder of how this process works. In 1999, when I weighed 297 pounds, my first run was a quarter mile. Fast forward to 2007, I ran 205 miles in thirty-nine hours, nonstop. I didn’t get there overnight, and I don’t expect you to either. Your job is to push past your normal stopping point.

29. Whether you are running on a treadmill or doing a set of push-ups, get to the point where you are so tired and in pain that your mind is begging you to stop. Then push just 5 to 10 percent further. If the most push-ups you have ever done is one hundred in a workout, do 105 or 110. If you normally run thirty miles each week, run 10 percent more next week.

30. This gradual ramp-up will help prevent injury and allow your body and mind to slowly adapt to your new workload. It also resets your baseline, which is important because you’re about to increase your workload another 5 to 10 percent the following week, and the week after that.

31. If you want to master the mind and remove your governor, you’ll have to become addicted to hard work. Because passion and obsession, even talent, are only useful tools if you have the work ethic to back them up.

32. For years I’ve lived like a monk. I don’t see or spend time with a lot of people. My circle is very tight. I post on social media once or twice a week and I never check anybody else’s feeds because I don’t follow anyone. That’s just me. I’m not saying you need to be that unforgiving, because you and I probably don’t share the same goals. But I know you have goals too, and room for improvement, or you wouldn’t be reading my book, and I guarantee that if you audited your schedule you’d find time for more work and less bullshit.

33. A lot of us surround ourselves with people who speak to our desire for comfort. People who would rather treat the pain of our wounds and prevent further injury than help us callous over them and try again. We need to surround ourselves with people who will tell us what we need to hear, not what we want to hear, but at the same time not make us feel we’re up against the impossible. My mother was my biggest fan. Whenever I failed in life she was always asking me when and where I would go after it again. She never said, Well, maybe it isn’t meant to be.

34. In life, there is no gift as overlooked or inevitable as failure. I’ve had quite a few and have learned to relish them, because if you do the forensics you’ll find clues about where to make adjustments and how to eventually accomplish your task.

35. If I was going to be the next athlete to smash popular perception, I’d need to stop listening to doubt, whether it streamed in from the outside or bubbled up from within, and the best way to do that was to decide that the pull-up record was already mine.

1.When psychologists isolate the personal qualities that predict “positive outcomes” in life, they consistently find two traits: intelligence and self-control. So far researchers still haven’t learned how to permanently increase intelligence. But they have discovered, or at least rediscovered, how to improve self-control.

2. As Charles Darwin wrote in The Descent of Man, “The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.”

3. The researchers concluded that people spend at least a fifth of their waking hours resisting desires—between three and four hours per day.

4. To ward off temptation, people reported using various strategies. The most popular was to look for a distraction or to undertake a new activity, although sometimes they tried suppressing it directly or simply toughing their way through it.

5. Overall, they succumbed to about a sixth of the temptations. They were relatively good at avoiding naps, sex, and the urge to spend money, but only mediocre at passing up food and soft drinks.

6. When they tried resisting the lure of television the Web, and other media sirens, they failed nearly half the time.

7. When researchers compared students’ grades with nearly three dozen personality traits, self-control turned out to be the only trait that predicted a college student’s grade-point average better than chance. Self-control also proved to be a better predictor of college grades than the student’s IQ or SAT score.

8. Although raw intelligence was obviously an advantage, the study showed that self-control was more important because it helped the students show up more reliably for classes, start their homework earlier, and spend more time working and less time watching television.

9. Thus was born “ego depletion,” Baumeister’s term for describing people’s diminished capacity to regulate their thoughts, feelings, and actions. 

10. People can sometimes overcome mental fatigue, but Baumeister found that if they had used up energy by exerting willpower (or by making decisions, another form of ego depletion that we’ll discuss later), they would eventually succumb.

11. The results showed that ego depletion causes a slowdown in the anterior cingulate cortex, the brain area that’s crucial to self-control. As the brain slows down and its error-detection ability deteriorates, people have trouble controlling their reactions. They must struggle to accomplish tasks that would get done much more easily if the ego weren’t depleted.

12. In these experiments, while depleted persons (once again) didn’t show any single telltale emotion, they did react more strongly to all kinds of things. A sad movie made them extra sad. Joyous pictures made them happier, and disturbing pictures made them more frightened and upset. Ice-cold water felt more painful to them than it did to people who were not ego-depleted. Desires intensified along with feelings. After eating a cookie, the people reported a stronger craving to eat another cookie—and they did in fact eat more cookies when given a chance.

13. So if you’d like some advance warning of trouble, look not for a single symptom but rather for a change in the overall intensity of your feelings.

14. Ego depletion thus creates a double whammy: Your willpower is diminished and your cravings feel stronger than ever. The problem can be particularly acute for people struggling with addiction. Researchers have long noticed that cravings are especially strong during withdrawal.

15. What stress really does, though, is deplete willpower, which diminishes your ability to control those emotions.

16. You have a finite amount of willpower that becomes depleted as you use it.

17. You use the same stock of willpower for all manner of tasks.

18. You might think you have one reservoir of self-control for work, another for dieting, another for exercise, and another for being nice to your family. But the radish experiment showed that two completely unrelated activities—resisting chocolate and working on geometry puzzles—drew on the same source of energy, and this phenomenon has been demonstrated over and over.

19. Ego depletion affects even your heartbeat. When people in laboratory experiments exercise mental self-control, their pulse becomes more erratic; conversely, people whose normal pulse is relatively variable seem to have more inner energy available for self-control, because they do better on laboratory tests of perseverance than do people with steadier heartbeats.

20. Focus on one project at a time. If you set more than one self-improvement goal, you may succeed for a while by drawing on reserves to power through, but that just leaves you more depleted and more prone to serious mistakes later.

21. The link between glucose and self-control appeared in studies of people with hypoglycemia, the tendency to have low blood sugar. Researchers noted that hypoglycemics were more likely than the average person to have trouble concentrating and controlling their negative emotions when provoked. Overall, they tended to be more anxious and less happy than average. Hypoglycemia was also reported to be unusually prevalent among criminals and other violent persons, and some creative defense attorneys brought the low-blood-sugar research into court.

22. No glucose, no willpower: The pattern showed up time and again as researchers tested more people in more situations.

23. When you’re tired, sleep. Adults routinely shortchange themselves on sleep, and the result is less self-control. By resting, we reduce the body’s demands for glucose, and we also improve its overall ability to make use of the glucose in the bloodstream.

24. For decades, psychologists have been debating the merits of proximal goals (which are short-term objectives) versus distal goals (which are long-term objectives).

25. The group with the proximal goals outperformed everyone else when the program was over and competence was tested. They succeeded, apparently, because meeting these daily goals gradually built their confidence and self-efficacy. With their focus on a specific goal for each session, they learned better and faster than the others. Even though they spent less time per session, they got more done, thus progressing through all the material faster.

26. It turned out that the distal goals were no better than having no goals at all. Only the proximal goals produced improvements in learning, self-efficacy, and performance.

27. Psychologists distinguish two main types of mental processes, automatic and controlled. Automatic processes, processes, like multiplying 4 times 7, can be done without exertion. If someone says “4 times 7,” 28 probably pops into your head whether you want it to or not—that’s why the process is called automatic. In contrast, computing 26 times 30 requires mental effort as you go through the steps of multiplying to come up with 780.

28. Once decision fatigue set in, people tended to settle for the recommended option.

29. A quick dose of glucose can counteract this short-term thinking, as researchers demonstrated by giving people a soft drink just before asking them to make choices between quick-but-small versus larger-but-later rewards.

30. Advertising agencies figured out long ago that men are more likely to splurge on a luxury product if it’s shown next to a beautiful woman.

31. I have never known a man who was too idle to attend to his affairs & accounts, who did not get into difficulties; & he who habitually is in money difficulties, very rarely keeps scrupulously honourable, & God forbid that this should ever be your fate. —Charles Darwin, in a letter to his son accompanying a check to pay off the young man’s debts

32. Those who focused on what they had already done did not seem eager to move on to more difficult and challenging tasks. They were reasonably content with where they were and what they were currently doing. For contentment, apparently, it pays to look at how far you’ve come. To stoke motivation and ambition, focus instead on the road ahead.

33. Exercising self-control in one area seemed to improve all areas of life.

34. We’ve said that willpower is humans’ greatest strength, but the best strategy is not to rely on it in all situations. Save it for emergencies. As Stanley discovered, there are mental tricks that enable you to conserve willpower for those moments when it’s indispensable.

35. Precommitment. The essence of this strategy is to lock yourself into a virtuous path. You recognize that you’ll face terrible temptations to stray from the path, and that your willpower will weaken. So you make it impossible—or somehow unthinkably disgraceful or sinful—to leave the path. Precommitment is what Odysseus and his men used to get past the deadly songs of the Sirens. He had himself lashed to the mast with orders not to be untied no matter how much he pleaded to be freed to go to the Sirens. His men used a different form of precommitment by plugging their ears so they couldn’t hear the Sirens’ songs. They prevented themselves from being tempted at all, which is generally the safer of the two approaches.

36. What began as a precommitment turned into something permanent and more valuable: a habit.

37. The behaviors they had coded as automatic tended to be linked to habits, whereas the more controlled sorts of behaviors tended to be unusual or one-time-only actions. Self-control turned out to be most effective when people used it to establish good habits and break bad ones.

38. Some would collect information until they were ready and then write a manuscript in a burst of intense energy, over perhaps a week or two, possibly including some long days and very late nights. Others plodded along at a steadier pace, trying to write a page or two every day. Others were in between. When Boice followed up on the group some years later, he found that their paths had diverged sharply. The page-a-day folks had done well and generally gotten tenure. The so-called “binge writers” fared far less well, and many had had their careers cut short. The clear implication was that the best advice for young writers and aspiring professors is: Write every day. Use your self-control to form a daily habit, and you’ll produce more with less effort in the long run.

39. We know that self-control starts with setting standards or goals, and we can see that AA helps people set a clear and attainable goal: Do not have a drink today. (AA’s mantra is “One day at a time.”)

40. Self-control depends on monitoring, and AA offers help there, too. Members get chips for remaining sober for certain numbers of consecutive days, and when they get up to speak, they often start by saying how many days they have been sober. Members also choose a sponsor, with whom they are supposed to remain in regular, even daily, contact—and that, too, is a powerful boost for monitoring.

41. “bright lines,” a term that Ainslie borrows from lawyers. These are clear, simple, unambiguous rules. You can’t help but notice when you cross a bright line.

42. Zero tolerance is a bright line: total abstinence with no exceptions anytime. It’s not practical for all self-control problems—a dieter cannot stop eating all food—but it works well in many situations. Once you’re committed to following a bright-line rule, your present self can feel confident that your future self will observe it, too.

43. Mischel found some support for the ethnic stereotypes, but in the process he stumbled on a much bigger and more meaningful effect. Children who had a father in the home were far more willing than others to choose the delayed reward. Most of the racial and ethnic variation could be explained by this difference, because the Indian children generally lived with both parents, whereas a fair number of the African children lived with a single mother. The value of fatherhood was also evident when Mischel analyzed just the African homes: About half of the children living with fathers chose the delayed reward, but none of the children in fatherless homes were willing to wait. Similarly, none of the Indian children living without a father were willing to wait.

44. Even after researchers control for socioeconomic factors and other variables, it turns out that children from two-parent homes get better grades in school. They’re healthier and better-adjusted emotionally. They have more satisfying social lives and engage in less antisocial behavior. They’re more likely to attend an elite university and less likely to go to prison.

45. Lack of adult supervision during the teenage years turned out to be one of the strongest predictors of criminal behavior.

46. A simple commitment strategy for avoiding late-night snacking is to brush your teeth early in the evening, while you’re still full from dinner and before the late-night-snacking temptation sets in. Although it won’t physically prevent you from eating, brushing your teeth is such an ingrained pre-bedtime habit that it unconsciously cues you not to eat anymore.

47. You can also try a strategy that psychologists call an “implementation intention,” which is a way to reduce the amount of time and effort you spend controlling your thoughts. Instead of making general plans to reduce calories, you make highly specific plans for automatic behavior in certain situations, like what to do when you’re tempted by fattening food at a party. An implementation intention takes the form of if-then: If x happens, I will do y. The more you use this technique to transfer the control of your behavior to automatic processes, the less effort you will expend.

48. Successful people don’t use their willpower as a last-ditch defense to stop themselves from disaster, at least not as a regular strategy, as Baumeister and his colleagues have observed recently on both sides of the Atlantic.

49. The researchers were surprised to find that people with strong self-control spent less time resisting desires than other people did.

50. These people have less need to use willpower because they’re beset by fewer temptations and inner conflicts. They’re better at arranging their lives so that they avoid problem situations.

51. Baumeister, showing that people with good self-control mainly use it not for rescue in emergencies but rather to develop effective habits and routines in school and at work.

52. “The secret of my incredible energy and efficiency in getting work done is a simple one,” Benchley wrote. “The psychological principle is this: anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn’t the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment.” 

53. Benchley recognized a phenomenon that Baumeister and Tice also documented in their term-paper study: Procrastinators typically avoid one task by doing something else, and rarely do they sit there doing nothing at all. But there’s a better way to exploit that tendency, as Raymond Chandler recognized.

1. This growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts, your strategies, and help from others. Although people may differ in every which way—in their initial talents and aptitudes, interests, or temperaments—everyone can change and grow through application and experience.

2. The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.

3. The fixed mindset makes you concerned with how you’ll be judged; the growth mindset makes you concerned with improving.

4. Not long ago I was interested to read about Marina Semyonova, a great Russian dancer and teacher, who devised a novel way of selecting her students. It was a clever test for mindset. As a former student tells it, “Her students first have to survive a trial period while she watches to see how you react to praise and to correction. Those more responsive to the correction are deemed worthy.”

5. Is there another way to judge potential? NASA thought so. When they were soliciting applications for astronauts, they rejected people with pure histories of success and instead selected people who had had significant failures and bounced back from them.

6. As a New York Times article points out, failure has been transformed from an action (I failed) to an identity (I am a failure). This is especially true in the fixed mindset.

7. Even in the growth mindset, failure can be a painful experience. But it doesn’t define you. It’s a problem to be faced, dealt with, and learned from.

8. John Wooden, the legendary basketball coach, says you aren’t a failure until you start to blame. What he means is that you can still be in the process of learning from your mistakes until you deny them.

9. People with the fixed mindset tell us, “If you have to work at something, you must not be good at it.” They add, “Things come easily to people who are true geniuses.”

10. It’s also important to realize that even if people have a fixed mindset, they’re not always in that mindset. In fact, in many of our studies, we put people into a growth mindset. We tell them that an ability can be learned and that the task will give them a chance to do that.

11. These experiences make our research participants into growth-minded thinkers, at least for the moment—and they act like growth-minded thinkers, too.

12. Since this was a kind of IQ test, you might say that praising ability lowered the students’ IQs. And that praising their effort raised them.

13. Andrew Carnegie once said, “I wish to have as my epitaph: ‘Here lies a man who was wise enough to bring into his service men who knew more than he.’ ”

14. Jack Welch, Lou Gerstner, and Anne Mulcahy are also fascinating because they transformed their companies. They did this by rooting out the fixed mindset and putting a culture of growth and teamwork in its place.

15. First, it means that our best bet is not simply to hire the most talented managers we can find and turn them loose, but to look for managers who also embody a growth mindset: a zest for teaching and learning, an openness to giving and receiving feedback, and an ability to confront and surmount obstacles.

16. One problem is that people with the fixed mindset expect everything good to happen automatically.

17. Remember the fixed-mindset idea that if you have ability, you shouldn’t have to work hard? This is the same belief applied to relationships: If you’re compatible, everything should just come naturally.

18. When people with a fixed mindset talk about their conflicts, they assign blame. Sometimes they blame themselves, but often they blame their partner. And they assign blame to a trait—a character flaw.

19. Many educators think that lowering their standards will give students success experiences, boost their self-esteem, and raise their achievement. It comes from the same philosophy as the overpraising of students’ intelligence. Well, it doesn’t work. Lowering standards just leads to poorly educated students who feel entitled to easy work and lavish praise.

20. He didn’t ask for mistake-free games. He didn’t demand that his players never lose. He asked for full preparation and full effort from them. “Did I win? Did I lose? Those are the wrong questions. The correct question is: Did I make my best effort?” If so, he says, “You may be outscored but you will never lose.”

21. A growth mindset is about believing people can develop their abilities.

22. These concrete plans—plans you can visualize—about when, where, and how you are going to do something lead to really high levels of follow-through, which, of course, ups the chances of success. So the idea is not only to make a growth-mindset plan, but also to visualize, in a concrete way, how you’re going to carry it out.

1. If something requires a large investment of time—or looks like it will—it’s less likely to be used.

2. If something is usable—whether it’s a Web site, a remote control, or a revolving door—it means that A person of average (or even below average) ability and experience can figure out how to use the thing to accomplish something without it being more trouble than it’s worth.

3. As far as is humanly possible, when I look at a Web page it should be self-evident. Obvious. Self-explanatory. Don't make me think.

4. All kinds of things on a Web page can make us stop and think unnecessarily. Take names, for example. Typical culprits are cute or clever names, marketing-induced names, company-specific names, and unfamiliar technical names.

5. FACT OF LIFE #1: We don’t read pages. We scan them. One of the very few well-documented facts about Web use is that people tend to spend very little time reading most Web pages. Instead, we scan (or skim) them, looking for words or phrases that catch our eye.

6. FACT OF LIFE #2: We don’t make optimal choices. We satisfice. In reality, though, most of the time we don’t choose the best option—we choose the first reasonable option, a strategy known as satisficing.

7. FACT OF LIFE #3: We don’t figure out how things work. We muddle through. Faced with any sort of technology, very few people take the time to read instructions. Instead, we forge ahead and muddle through, making up our own vaguely plausible stories about what we’re doing and why it works.

8. Design for scanning :

• Take advantage of conventions  - One of the best ways to make almost anything easier to grasp in a hurry is to follow the existing conventions 
• Create effective visual hierarchies  - A good visual hierarchy saves us work by preprocessing the page for us, organizing and prioritizing its contents in a way that we can grasp almost instantly.
• Break pages up into clearly defined areas  - Dividing the page into clearly defined areas is important because it allows users to decide quickly which areas of the page to focus on and which areas they can safely ignore.
• Make it obvious what’s clickable  
• Eliminate distractions  
• Format content to support scanning - Use plenty of headings. Keep paragraphs short. Use bulleted lists.  Highlight key terms.

9. Don’t make me think! KRUG’S FIRST LAW OF USABILITY

10. It doesn’t matter how many times I have to click, as long as each click is a mindless, unambiguous choice. —KRUG’S SECOND LAW OF USABILITY

11. Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what’s left. —KRUG’S THIRD LAW OF USABILITY

12. The one thing you can’t afford to lose in the shuffle—and the thing that most often gets lost—is conveying the big picture. As quickly and clearly as possible, the Home page needs to answer the four questions I have in my head when I enter a new site for the first time:

• What is this?
• What do they have here?
• What can I do here?
• Why should I be here and not somewhere else?

13. Nothing beats a good tagline!™ A tagline is a pithy phrase that characterizes the whole enterprise, summing up what it is and what makes it great.

14. Usability tests are about watching one person at a time try to use something (whether it’s a Web site, a prototype, or some sketches of a new design) to do typical tasks so you can detect and fix the things that confuse or frustrate them.

15. Do-It-Yourself Testing:

• Primary purpose is to identify the most serious issues. You can find more problems in half a day than you can fix in a month.
• One morning a month includes testing, debriefing and deciding what to fix 
• Three participants - And three users are very likely to encounter many of the most significant problems related to the tasks that you’re testing.
• Recruit loosely, if necessary. Doing frequent testing is more important than testing actual users
• A 1-2 page summarising decisions made during team's debriefing.

16. After each test session, list the three most serious usability problems you noticed.

17. What happens during a typical one-hour testing:

• Welcome (4 mins) - You begin by explaining how the test work so the participants knows what to expect.
• The questions (2 mins). Next you ask the participant a few questions about themselves. This helps put them at ease and gives an idea of how computer-savvy they are.
• The Home page tour (3 mins). Then you open the Home page of the site you’re testing and ask the participant to look around and tell you what they make of it. This will give you an idea of how easy it is to understand your Home page and how much the participant already knows your domain.
• The tasks (35 mins). This is the heart of the test: watching the participant try to perform a series of tasks (or in some cases, just one long task). Again, your job is to make sure the participant stays focused on the tasks and keeps thinking aloud. If the participant stops saying what they’re thinking, prompt them by saying—wait for it—“What are you thinking?” (For variety, you can also say things like “What are you looking at?” and “What are you doing now?”)
• Probing (5 mins). After the tasks, you can ask the participant questions
• Wrapping up (5 mins). Finally, you thank them for their help, pay them, and show them to the door.

1. We aim to shift the conversation with a radical reinterpretation of what the actual benefits of meditation are—and are not—and what the true aim of practice has always been

2. We had a big idea: beyond the pleasant states meditation can produce, the real payoffs are the lasting traits that can result. An altered trait—a new characteristic that arises from a meditation practice —endures apart from meditation itself. Altered traits shape how we behave in our daily lives, not just during or immediately after we meditate

3. Meditation is a catch-all word for myriad varieties of contemplative practice, just as sports refers to a wide range of athletic activities. For both sports and meditation, the end results vary depending on what you actually do.

4. Some practical advice: for those about to start a meditation practice, or who have been grazing among several, keep in mind that as with gaining skill in a given sport, finding a meditation practice that appeals to you and sticking with it will have the greatest benefits. Just find one to try, decide on the amount of time each day you can realistically practice daily—even as short as a few minutes— try it for a month, and see how you feel after those thirty days.

5. Just as regular workouts give you better physical fitness, most any type of meditation will enhance mental fitness to some degree.

6. We offer a clear-eyed view based on hard science, sifting out results that are not nearly as compelling as the claims made for them.

7. With mindfulness, the meditator simply notes without reactivity whatever comes into mind, such as thoughts or sensory impressions like sounds—and lets them go. The operative word here is go. If we think much of anything about what just arose, or let it trigger any reactivity at all, we have lost our mindful stance—unless that reaction or thought in turn becomes the object of mindfulness.

8. Neuroplasticity, he explained, shows that repeated experience can change the brain, shaping it. We don’t have to choose between nature or nurture. They interact, each molding the other.

9. Try this. Look straight ahead and hold up a finger with your arm outstretched. Still looking straight ahead, slowly shift that finger until it is about two feet to the right of your nose. When you move your finger far to the right, but stay focused straight ahead, it lands in your peripheral vision, the outer edge of what your visual system takes in.  

10.Most people lose sight of their finger as it moves to the far right or left of their nose. But one group does not: people who are deaf. While this unusual visual advantage in the deaf has long been known, the brain basis has only recently been shown. And the mechanism is, again, neuroplasticity.

11. The chunk of neural real estate that usually operates as the primary auditory cortex (known as Heschl’s gyrus) receives no sensory inputs in deaf people. The brains of deaf people, Neville discovered, had morphed so that what is ordinarily a part of the auditory system was now working with the visual circuitry.

12. Such findings illustrate how radically the brain can rewire itself in response to repeated experiences.

13. Altered traits map along a spectrum starting at the negative end, with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a case in point. The amygdala acts as the neural radar for threat. Overwhelming trauma resets to a hair trigger the amygdala’s threshold for hijacking the rest of the brain to respond to what it perceives as an emergency.

14. Moving along the trait spectrum toward the positive range, there are the beneficial neural impacts of being a secure child, whose brain gets molded by empathic, concerned, and nurturing parenting. This childhood brain shaping builds in adulthood, for example, into being able to calm down well when upset.

15. Our interest in altered traits looks beyond the merely healthy spectrum to an.even more beneficial range, wholesome traits of being. These extremely positive altered traits, like equanimity and compassion, are a goal of mind training in contemplative traditions. We use the term altered trait as shorthand for this highly positive range.

16. Viktor Frankl has written about how a sense of meaning and purpose allowed him and select others to survive years in a Nazi concentration camp while thousands were dying around them. For Frankl, continuing his work as a psychotherapist with other prisoners in the camp lent purpose to his life; for another man there, it was having a child who was on the outside; yet another found purpose in the book he wanted to write.

17. Frankl’s sentiment resonates with a finding that after a three-month meditation retreat (about 540 hours total), those practitioners who had strengthened a sense of purpose in life during that time also showed a simultaneous increase in the activity of telomerase in their immune cells, even five months later. 24 This enzyme protects the length of telomeres, the caps at the ends of DNA strands that reflect how long a cell will live.

18. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, had novices practice daily for a few months three different types of meditation: focusing on breathing; generating loving-kindness; and monitoring thoughts without getting swept away by them. 

19. Breath focus, they found, was calming—seeming to confirm a widespread assumption about meditation’s usefulness as a means to relax. But in contradiction to that stereotype, neither the loving-kindness practice nor monitoring thoughts made the body more relaxed, apparently because each demands mental effort:

20. The loving-kindness practice, where you wish yourself and others well, understandably created a positive mood, while the other two methods did not.

21. So, differing types of meditation produce unique results—a fact that should make it a routine move to identify the specific type being studied.

22. In sum, “meditation” is not a single activity but a wide range of practices, all acting in their own particular ways in the mind and brain.

23. As we will see, there sometimes is a dose-response relationship when it comes to the brain and behavioral benefits from meditation: the more you do it, the better the payoff.

24. Richie and his colleagues developed a Health Enhancement Program (HEP) as a comparison condition for studies of mindfulness-based stress reduction. HEP consists of music therapy with relaxation; nutritional education; and movement exercises like posture improvement, balance, core strengthening, stretching, and walking or jogging.

25. In the labs’ studies, the instructors who taught HEP believed it would help, just as much as did those who taught meditation. Such an “active control” can neutralize factors like enthusiasm, and so better identify the unique benefits of any intervention—in this case, meditation—to see what it adds over and above the Hawthorne edge.

26. Richie’s group randomly assigned volunteers to either HEP or mindfulness based stress reduction (MBSR) and then before and after the training had them fill out questionnaires that in earlier research had reflected improvements from meditation. But in this study, both groups reported comparable improvement on these subjective measures of general distress, anxiety, and medical symptoms. 

27. This led Richie’s group to conclude that much of the stress relief improvements beginners credit to meditation do not seem to be that unique.  Moreover, on a questionnaire that was specifically developed to measure mindfulness, absolutely no difference was found in the level of improvement from MBSR or HEP.

28. This led Richie’s lab to conclude that for this variety of mindfulness, and likely for any other meditation, many of the reported benefits in the early stages of practice can be chalked up to expectation, social bonding in the group, instructor enthusiasm, or other “demand characteristics.” Rather than being from meditation per se, any reported benefits may simply be signs that people have positive hopes and expectations. 

29. Such data are a warning to anyone looking for a meditation practice to be wary of exaggerated claims about its benefits. 

30. As these stressful thoughts were presented, the patients used either of two different attentional stances: mindful awareness of their breath or distraction by doing mental arithmetic. Only mindfulness of their breath both lowered activity in the amygdala—mainly via a faster recovery—and strengthened it in the brain’s attentional networks, while the patients reported less stress reactivity. The same beneficial pattern emerged when the patients who had done MBSR were compared with some who had trained in aerobics.

31. About the same time as Alan’s findings that mindfulness calms the amygdala, other researchers had volunteers who had never meditated before practice mindfulness for just twenty minutes a day over one week, and then have an fMRI scan. During the scan they saw images ranging from gruesome burn victims to cute bunnies. They watched these images in their everyday state of mind, and then while practicing mindfulness. 

32. During mindful attention their amygdala response was significantly lower (compared to nonmeditators) to all the images. This sign of being less disturbed, tellingly, was greatest in the amygdala on the brain’s right side (there are amygdalae in both right and left hemispheres), which often has a stronger response to whatever upsets us than the one on the left.

33. If you give the back of your hand a hard pinch, different brain systems mobilize, some for the pure sensation of pain and others for our dislike of that pain. The brain unifies them into a visceral, instant Ouch! But that unity falls apart when we practice mindfulness of the body, spending hours noticing our bodily sensations in great detail. As we sustain this focus, our awareness morphs.

34. What had been a painful pinch transforms, breaking down into its constituents: the intensity of the pinch and the painful sensation, and the emotional feeling tone—we don’t want the pain; we urgently want the pain to stop.

35. The more experienced among the Zen students not only were able to bear more pain than could controls, they also displayed little activity in executive, evaluative, and emotion areas during the pain—all regions that ordinarily flare into activity when we are under such intense stress.

36. In short, the Zen meditators seemed to respond to pain as though it was a more neutral sensation. In more technical language, their brains showed a “functional decoupling” of the higher and lower brain regions that register pain —while their sensory circuitry felt the pain, their thoughts and emotions did not react to it.

37. The ability to manage distress (which depends upon the connectivity between the prefrontal cortex and amygdala) will be greater in long-term meditators compared to those who have only done the MBSR training.

38. Technically, “loving-kindness” refers to wishing that other people be happy; its near cousin “compassion” entails the wish that people be relieved of suffering.

39. In the format for loving-kindness that Sharon helped bring to the West, you silently repeat phrases like “May I be safe,” “May I be healthy,” and “May my life unfold with ease,” first wishing this for yourself, then for people you love, then for neutral people, and finally for all beings—even those whom you find difficult or who have harmed you. In one version or another, this has become the most well-studied format of compassion meditation.

40. How soon? Maybe in mere minutes—at least when it comes to mood. One study found that just seven minutes of loving-kindness practice boosts a person’s good feelings and sense of social connection, if only temporarily.

41. And the Davidson group had found that after eight or so hours of training in loving kindness, volunteers showed strong echoes of those brain patterns found in more experienced meditators.

42. These various mind training methods drive the brain in different ways. During compassion practice, the amygdala is turned up in volume, while in focused attention on something like the breath, the amygdala is turned down. focused attention on something like the breath, the amygdala is turned down. Meditators are learning how to change their relationship to their emotions with different practices.

43. The neural changes from loving-kindness practice (the emerging signs of which are found even among beginners) align with those found in the brains of the super-Samaritan kidney donors.

44. Whatever specific form it takes, most every kind of meditation entails retraining attention.

45. Science now tells us the concept refers not just to one ability but to many. Among them: 

• Selective attention, the capacity to focus on one element and ignore others. 
• Vigilance, maintaining a constant level of attention as time goes on. 
• Allocating attention so we notice small or rapid shifts in what we experience. 
• Goal focus, or “cognitive control,” keeping a specific goal or task in mind despite distractions.
•  Meta-awareness, being able to track the quality of one’s own awareness—for example, noticing when your mind wanders or you’ve made a mistake.

46. A strengthening of selective attention was found in vipassana meditators at the Insight Meditation Society who were tested before and after a three-month retreat.  After three months the retreatants’ selective attention was markedly more accurate, showing more than a 20 percent gain.

47. A surprise: mindfulness also improved working memory—the holding in mind of information so it can transfer into long-term memory. Attention is crucial for working memory; if we aren’t paying attention, those digits won’t register in the first place. This training in mindfulness occurred while the students in the study were still in school. 

48. The boost to their attention and working memory may help account for the even bigger surprise: mindfulness upped their scores by more than 30 percent on the GRE, the entrance exam for grad school. 

49. About ten hours of mindfulness over a two-week period strengthened attention and working memory—and led to substantial improved scores on the graduate school entrance exam. While meditation boosts many aspects of attention, these are short-term gains; more lasting benefits no doubt require ongoing practice.

50. The brain, it seems, stays just as busy when we are relaxed as when we are under some mental strain.

51. Raichle identified a swath of areas, mainly the mPFC (short for midline of the prefrontal cortex) and the PCC (postcingulate cortex), a node connecting to the limbic system. He dubbed this circuitry the brain’s “default mode network.”

52. While the brain engages in an active task, whether math or meditating, the default areas calm down as those essential for that task gear up, and ramp up again when that mental task finishes. This solved the problem of how the brain could maintain its activity level while “nothing” was going on

53. The default mode turns on while we chill out, not doing anything that requires focus and effort; it blossoms during the mind’s downtime. Conversely, as we focus on some challenge, like grappling with what’s happened to your Wi-Fi signal, the default mode quiets.

54. With nothing much else to capture our attention, our mind wanders, very often to what’s troubling us—a root cause of everyday angst. “A wandering mind is an unhappy mind.”

55. One of the great appeals of high-risk sports like rock climbing seems to be just that— the danger of the sport demands a full focus on where to put your hand or foot next. More mundane worries take backstage in the mind. 

56. The same applies to “flow,” the state where people perform at their best. Paying full attention to what’s at hand, flow research tells us, rates high on the list of what puts us into—and sustains—a joyous state. The self, in its form as mind-wandering, becomes a distraction, suppressed for the time being.

57. A basic instruction in almost all forms of meditation urges us to notice when our mind has wandered and then return our focus to the chosen target, say, a mantra or our breathing. This moment has universal familiarity on contemplative paths. 

58. This simple mental move has a neural correlate: activating the connection between the dorsolateral PFC and the default mode—a connection found to be stronger in long-term meditators than in beginners. The stronger this connection, the more likely regulatory circuits in the prefrontal cortex inhibit the default areas, quieting the monkey mind—the incessant self-focused chatter that so often fills our minds when nothing else is pressing.

59. Those who engaged in their MBSR practices for thirty-five minutes or more at home daily, compared to those doing HEP, showed a greater decrease in pro-inflammatory cytokines, the proteins that trigger the red patch. 

60. This, intriguingly, supports an early finding by Jon Kabat-Zinn and some skin specialists that MBSR can help speed healing from psoriasis, a condition worsened by inflammatory cytokines (but some thirty years on, this remains a study not yet replicated by dermatology researchers).

61. To get a better idea of how meditation practice might heal such inflammatory conditions, Richie’s lab repeated the stress study using highly experienced (around 9,000 lifetime hours of practice) vipassana meditators. Result: the meditators not only found the dreaded Trier test less stressful than did a matched cohort of novices (as we saw in chapter five), but they also had smaller patches of inflammation afterward. Most significant, their levels of the stress hormone cortisol were 13 percent lower than in the controls, a substantial difference that is likely clinically meaningful. Important: these seasoned practitioners were not meditating when these measures were taken—this was a trait effect.

62. Take, for example, a well-designed study of African American men, who are at particularly high risk for hypertension, cardiac and kidney disease. Just fourteen minutes of mindfulness practice in a group who already suffered from kidney disease lowered the metabolic patterns that, if sustained year after year, lead to these diseases.

63.  After genetic scientists mapped the entire human genome, they realized it wasn’t enough to just know if we had a given gene or not. The real questions: Is that gene expressed? Is it manufacturing the protein for which it is designed? And how much? Where is the “volume control” on the gene set?

64. This meant there was another important step: finding what turns our genes on or off. If we’ve inherited a gene that gives us a susceptibility to a disease like diabetes, we may never develop the malady if, for example, we have a lifelong habit of getting regular exercise and not eating sugar.

65. Sugar turns on the genes for diabetes; exercise turns them off. Sugar and exercise are “epigenetic” influencers, among the many, many factors that control whether or not a gene expresses itself.

66. And Richie thought meditation just might have epigenetic impacts, “down-regulating” the genes responsible for the inflammatory response. As we’ve seen, meditation seems to do this—but the genetic mechanism for the effect was a complete mystery.

67. Undeterred by the skeptics, his lab went ahead, assaying changes in the expression of key genes before and after a day of meditation in a group of long-term vipassana practitioners (average of about 6,000 lifetime hours). They followed a fixed eight-hour schedule of practice sessions throughout the day, and listened to tapes of some inspiring talks and guided practices by Joseph Goldstein.

68. After the day of practice the meditators had a marked “down-regulation” of inflammatory genes—something that had never been seen before in response to inflammatory genes—something that had never been seen before in response to a purely mental practice. Such a drop, if sustained over a lifetime, might help combat diseases with onsets marked by chronic low-grade inflammation. As we’ve said, these include many of the world’s major health problems, ranging from cardiovascular disorders, arthritis, and diabetes to cancer.

69. Though these were pilot studies, an epigenetic boost was found in research with two other meditation methods. One is Herb Benson’s “relaxation response,” which has a person silently repeat a chosen word like peace as if it were a mantra. 16 The other is “yogic meditation,” where the meditator recites a Sanskrit mantra, at first aloud and then in a whisper, and finally silently, ending with a short deep-breathing relaxation technique

70. The sounder studies, we found, focus on lessening our psychological distress rather than on curing medical syndromes or looking for underlying biological mechanisms. So, when it comes to a better quality of life for those with chronic diseases, yes to meditation. Such palliative care gets ignored too often in medicine, but it matters enormously to patients.

71. All the yogis had elevated gamma oscillations, not just during the meditation practice periods for open presence and compassion but also during the very first measurement, before any meditation was performed. This electrifying pattern was in the EEG frequency known as “high-amplitude” gamma, the strongest, most intense form. These waves lasted the full minute of the baseline measurement before they started the meditation

72. Gamma, the very fastest brain wave, occurs during moments when differing brain regions fire in harmony, like moments of insight when different elements of a mental puzzle “click” together. 

73.To get a sense of this “click,” try this: What single word can turn each of these into a compound word: sauce, pine, crab?*

74. The instant your mind comes up with the answer, your brain signal momentarily produces that distinctive gamma flare. 

75. In the yogis, gamma oscillations are a far more prominent feature of their brain activity than in other people. Our usual gamma waves are not nearly as strong as that seen by Richie’s team in yogis like Mingyur. The contrast between the yogis and controls in the intensity of gamma was immense: on average the yogis had twenty-five times greater amplitude gamma oscillations during baseline compared with the control group.

76. But there’s another surprise here: the yogis’ remarkable talent at entering a specific meditative state on cue, within a second or two, itself signals an altered trait. This mental feat stands in stark contrast to most of us meditators who, relative to the yogis, are more like beginners: when we meditate, it takes us a while to settle our minds, let go of distracting thoughts that overwhelm our focus, and get some momentum in our meditation.

77. In contemplative science, an “altered state” refers to changes that occur only during meditation. An altered trait indicates that the practice of meditation transformed the brain and biology so that meditation-induced changes are seen before beginning to meditate.

78. Among meditators with the greatest amount of lifetime practice hours—an average of 44,000 lifetime hours (the equivalent of twelve hours a day for ten years) the amygdala hardly responded to the emotional sounds. But for those with less practice, (though still a high number—19,000 hours) the amygdala also showed a robust response. There was a staggering 400 percent difference in the size of the amygdala response between these groups!

79. What’s more, this means traits continue to alter even at the highest level of practice. The dose-response relationship does not seem to end even up to 50,000 hours of practice.

80. The studies of beginners typically look at the impacts from under 100 total hours of practice—and as few as 7. The long-term group, mainly vipassana meditators, had a mean of 9,000 lifetime hours (the range ran from 1,000 to 10,000 hours and more). And the yogis studied in Richie’s lab, had all done at least one Tibetan-style three-year retreat, with lifetime hours up to Mingyur’s 62,000. Yogis, on average had three times more lifetime hours than did long-term meditators—9,000 hours versus 27,000

81. Compassion meditation shows stronger benefits from the get-go; as few as seven total hours over the course of two weeks leads to increased connectivity in circuits important for empathy and positive feelings, strong enough to show up outside the meditation state per se.

82. Beginners also find improvements in attention very early on, including less mind-wandering after just eight minutes of mindfulness practice—a short-lived benefit, to be sure. But even as little as two weeks of practice is sufficient to produce less mind-wandering and better focus and working memory, enough for a significant boost in scores on the GRE, the entrance exam for graduate school.

83. Loving-kindness and compassion practice over the long term(1000hrs -10,000hrs) enhance neural resonance with another person’s suffering, along with concern and a greater likelihood of actually helping. Attention, too, strengthens in many aspects with long-term practice: selective attention sharpens, the attentional blink diminishes, sustained attention becomes easier, and an alert readiness to respond increases

84. Shifts in very basic biological processes, such as a slower breath rate, occur only after several thousand hours of practice. Some of these impacts seem more strongly enhanced by intensive practice on retreat than by daily practice.

85. At this world-class level (roughly 12,000 to 62,000 lifetime hours of practice, including many years in deep retreat), truly remarkable effects emerge. Practice in part revolves around converting meditative states to traits—the Tibetan term for this translates as “getting familiar” with the meditative mind-set. Meditation states merge with daily activities, as altered states stabilize into altered traits and become enduring characteristic.

86.  Perhaps the strongest evidence comes from the yogis’ response to physical pain during simple mindfulness-type practice: a sharp “inverted V,” with little brain activity during anticipation of the pain, an intense but very short peak during the pain, followed by very rapid recovery

87. Several labs—including Richie’s and Judson Brewer’s—have noticed that more advanced meditators can show a brain pattern while merely resting that resembles that of a meditative state like mindfulness or loving-kindness, while beginners do not. 2 That comparison of the expert meditator’s baseline with someone new to practice stands as a hallmark of the way altered traits show up in research, though it offers just a snapshot.

88. For now, as the Brewer group conjectured, meditation seems to transform the resting state—the brain’s default mode—to resemble the meditative state.

*Answer : apple