Dr. Michael Gervais

Eight minutes of mental imagery, that'd be an interesting play to start.

And each one of those are uniquely different.

And so let me just hit on imagery so we're on the same page.

I know you've had tons of gurus about meditation and something I think is very apparent in elite sport, but less apparent for the rest of us

is that elite athletes use their imagination to see themselves performing and being their very best at a later state.

Imagination is the thing that allows us to predict and muse about the future.

If left unchecked, if left undisciplined, it's supposed to try to sort out survival.

And so our brain's mandatory algorithm is to survive.

That means it's going to scan the world and find danger.

That means when left to its own devices, the imagination is to muse about things that could go wrong to prevent us from being eaten by the wildebeest.

So left unchecked, our imagination goes to bad situations.

Dangerous situations.

That's totally good.

I want to make sure my mind does not lose that bias, okay?

Naive optimism, thinking about the future in a naive way is very dangerous.

Grounded optimism is awesome.

So mental imagery is literally closing your eyes.

It's a little bit easier because we're visual creatures.

To close my eyes and to see a compelling future and to see me being my very best in it.

And it's like creating.