The Art of Mental Training - a Guide to Performance Excellence (Classic Edition) Read Online Free PDF Page B

minutes, maybe a little more.  Drift
in this sea of healthy relaxation and during this time, while in this deeply
relaxed state, watch yourself as in a movie, and project images in your mind’s
eye of you achieving what you desire.  See it as being true.  Feel it.  Show
your mind through images and feelings what you will accomplish.  See it clearly. 
Watch yourself accomplishing it.  Experience it inwardly as if it were already
true.
    Remember, that now, through
deep relaxation, you’ve opened a direct channel to your subconscious mind. 
Feed it images and feelings of success in your “movies” that it will then set
out to help you accomplish.  With this practice you are setting a powerful
force in motion from deep inside that will help propel you towards the success
you envision.
    After twenty minutes or so of
deep relaxation and “success conditioning” through your use of your mental
images and feelings, it’s time to either bring yourself back to a state of full
awareness—or else time to simply allow yourself to slip into restful sleep. 
That’s up to you.
    If it’s time to sleep, just let
yourself doze off.  However, if you need to bring yourself back to a state of
full awareness, then this is an easy way to do it.  Imagine a staircase with
five steps going up.  See yourself slowly climbing up the steps, and tell
yourself that with each step you take that you feel more refreshed, more alert,
and more aware.  And, that when you reach the top step, you’ll feel relaxed,
refreshed, and rejuvenated, completely alert, and ready to carry on with your
day.
    When you reach the last step,
let your eyelids open, inhale completely, and stretch. (Of course, if you are
practicing your relaxation during the day within a busy schedule - there's no
harm in using an alarm clock just to help ensure that you get back to your
schedule on time in case the deep relaxation ever leads to an unscheduled nap.)
    That’s how the Mental Warrior
uses breathing, relaxation and success imagery.  He doesn’t do it once. 
Instead he incorporates them into his training routine using repetition over
several weeks and months, so that the success conditioning has a chance to
actually be absorbed by the subconscious mind and to take root, thus helping to
improve self-belief, self-confidence, and performance.  Through practice like
this, the Mental Warrior is able to engage and use the power of his subconscious
mind in order to help him achieve his goals.
     
    Remember what Leo-tai told
me:  "The Mental Warrior learns about focused breathing, relaxation, and
imagery—and then he sets off to actually use them."
     
    The
Art of Mental Training

Chapter 8:  Understanding the Mental Warrior
     
    I saw a flash of silver as he
drew his gun from behind the small of his back. My gun already drawn, I was
behind cover.  He was stuck out in the open; I had a clear line of fire.  He
looked about forty years old, with dark, deep-sunken eyes—he looked every bit
the criminal he was.  I had tracked and chased him down. With my team not far
behind he was now cornered.  The adrenalin surged inside my body.  Twenty feet
away was a fugitive felon with a gun in his hand thinking about using it on me.
    “Drop it,” I told him firmly,
without for one instant ceasing to bear my gaze straight down my pistol sight.
    Out drawn, and out positioned,
there wasn’t that much for him to think about.  Either he wanted to live or he
wanted to die, that’s really all he had to decide. The eyes said it all. He
lowered his weapon.  Once we had him in cuffs and sped off to our location, it
hit me.  At last, the murderous drug lord who had cost the life of one of our
agents was finally in custody.
    To this day, I credit Leo-tai’s
training as the one thing that most helped me keep the hair-trigger on my
government-issued 9mm from engaging, and sending five or six black talon law
enforcement rounds straight into their target – center mass.
    What a