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When I was 16, I signed up for a lifeguarding course because I wanted to work as a lifeguard at sleepaway camp the next summer.
I was always awful at sports (my fear of getting hit by a ball has never dissipated). But the pool was my domain. And I was excited to use my love of swimming as a way to earn money for spending more time at the pool.
The course was moving nicely along - until we learned how to retrieve an unconscious person with no spinal injury from the bottom of the deep end of the pool. I just couldn't do it. I kept dropping the victim or stopping mid-rescue because I ran out of breath.
It was strange. I was able to do the rescue of a spinal injury from the deep, which is arguably more complex. But for some odd reason, I just couldn’t get the non-spinal submerged rescue done, no matter how many times I practiced.
The night before the final pre-certification test, I was in a panic. Would my summer plans go up in smoke simply because I couldn’t do this one rescue properly? I sat there, mentally reviewing the steps. Over and over, I envisioned myself diving down to the bottom, looping my arms around the victim, pulling myself up by the strap of the lifeguard tube, and pulling the tube between myself and the victim so I could swim back to the pool exit.
I knew exactly HOW to do it. But I just couldn't manage to get it done in real life. I was sure there was no point in even trying again. After all, I had not been able to do it previously - why would things be different in the future?
I showed up at the pool the next day. Easily got through most of the test. And then came the moment of truth - non-spinal submerged rescue. But when I started the rescue, the strangest feeling came over me. It was as if I was in a trance! My body just did the things it needed to do.
I emerged from the water, tremendously relieved to know my summer plans would work out, but immensely confused about how it had even happened.
Years later, I came across an article describing the use of self-hypnosis and imagery in sports. And I finally understood what had taken place that day. Research shows that when you imagine yourself performing a physical task, it causes electromyographical activity in the muscles similar to what would happen if you actually do the task! For example, if you imagine yourself flexing your arm, someone monitoring your muscular activity would "see" activity in the biceps even though your weren't actually physically doing the movement.
Really astounding stuff, no?
So the night before my lifeguarding test, when I’d envisioned myself doing the rescue over and over again, I had unknowingly done some self-hypnosis! Simply by imagining myself doing the steps, I had trained my muscles to go through the motions without even knowing I was doing it.
There are so often times we are so certain that if we’d tried and tried and tried to do something in the past, we will never be able to do it. But the truth is (unless you’re some kind of secret prophet), there really is no way to predict the future. What failed in the past really could work in the future - especially since we don’t always realize that things have changed, and the circumstances or steps you’re taking aren’t really the same.
In the case of my lifeguarding course, my fears about the future didn’t come to reality because I’d unknowingly hypnotized myself.
But if you have an email list through which you try to sell a product or offer, and you don’t make many sales through the emails you send, there is something you can knowingly do to change that reality.
If you like what I’ve been doing with my own daily emails, and want me to do something like that for your brand, hit reply and I'll tell you how it works.