Constantly I am reminded of the power of the mind and the importance of putting your mind in the “best” place.
It’s not just about getting your mind out of a “bad” place, but to make your life better and better.
Much, if not all, of what we think and feel is habitual, so the more we choose to focus on good things, the more habitually our mind elevates.
While we all know this intuitively, it helps to have reminders.
Back To The Future
Last week I was back in Vail, Colorado.
After living in the mountains for a few ski seasons I hadn’t been back for a couple of years, and last week I got to relive some of my best memories from Vail.
Some of them of course relate to skiing, but most of my great memories come back to the joy of living in the mountains. Waking up to the snow. Looking out on the mountain. Wandering through town. Eating at my favorite restaurants. Hanging with the locals. My time with friends who came to stay with me.
Just being in Vail these memories came flooding back to me and I realized that I want to keep reliving them.
A Daily Practice
If you’ve read my Limitless Mind book or these newsletters you’ve seen me talk about running mental movies.
In re-watching mental movies of the greatest times in your life, not only do you get a chance to keep reliving these times, but you can also use these movies to “pull” state.
As part of my Daily Exercises, for years I have been reliving a memory from Vail of skiing one of the bowls down to Chair 5. It’s not a particularly steep descent but it’s steep enough to pick up speed. And as you ski down into the bowl you’re engulfed by the vista of the mountains around you.
This day it had been dumping and there was a lot of snow on the ground. I was skiing with one of my local buddies, snaking turns all the way down, throwing off snow meters behind us.
This memory is so deeply in my brain that just thinking about it puts me there and gets me into an amazing state, but being back in Vail I saw I can do better…
A Daily Journey
Even though every day as part of my Daily Exercises I run mental movies like this, I saw I can be indulging them much more.
It’s one thing to use a memory to spark a thought or drive an emotion but I saw that I could much more fully relive my days and trigger more memories and emotions.
This idea led me to create a new audio recording for myself to fully experience days, weeks, months, seasons of being in Vail, so that I can keep reliving my best times there.
Here’s how you can do this for yourself.
1. Build Your Anticipation
Rather than just starting to watch mental movies, get yourself really feeling it. As soon as you go deeper into this process you’ll really be inside your memories, but at the outset you really want to remind yourself of why you’re going there.
You might be reliving times in your childhood. Or with your family. Or sports, vacations, accomplishments in your business. Whatever it is, really tap into why you’re doing it and what you expect to get out of going back there in your mind.
2. Watch Yourself In Your Movie
As I wrote about skiing off the lift down to chair 5, you might have been imagining me doing it.
Just watching movies of yourself you can’t help but get pulled into the spirit of it, and here you want to watch your event from beginning to end.
In the past I had watched a much shorter movie of that ski run down to chair 5, but being in Vail I saw I wanted to keep reliving a much fuller memory.
I wanted to savor every moment from sitting on the lift with my buddy yucking it up, to pushing off from the chair, to entering the run and building momentum, to the powder stash all the way down to the lift, and us reloading on Chair 5 laughing and smiling at what we’d just done.
Similarly, I built a process to see that movie in the context of my entire time in the mountains, so I could watch the days and weeks around it, and really bathe my mind in being there.
I suggest doing the same, not only, say watching a wedding ceremony and reception, but backing your movie all the way up to meeting that special someone through to the life you’re loving together now.
3. Step Into Your Movie
I’ve been meaning to write about the tool of visualization, and although I’m covering it somewhat here, I want to come back to it more specifically.
For now I would simply say, as I’ve said before, I believe reality to be “coded” visually, and the more you can deeply feel these great times in your life, the more of these types of experiences and feelings you “attract” today.
You do this by deeply engaging yourself in your movies by stepping into them. Whereas in Step 2 you were watching a movie of yourself in your experience, here you’re imagining being there.
See what you saw. Hear what you heard. Really, truly, deeply feel what it was like to be there.
It can take time to build up strong skills of visualization but just doing this a little nearly all of us can get an incredible feeling of being there.
Now, depending on how much time you want to take, you want to walk yourself through your movie, really reliving this time again.
The Vail recording I made for myself runs for about an hour because I’m capturing my best memories from over 300 days there, and you could do this in 5 minutes or 5 hours depending on how much you want to indulge.
4. Project It
It’s one thing to relive a memory, and it’s another to use this process to keep building great future memories.
You might not imagine reliving this memory again (I don’t plan on having that time in Vail again) but you can most certainly use the state you’re creating from reliving your memory to “seed” new experiences in the future.
For instance, my Vail recording ends with me taking these amazing feelings from Vail and projecting a handful of future memories that my brain links to these types of experiences.
Sometimes this leads to movies of adventure. Other times it is being deeply connected to the earth and to people. Sometimes it’s having that quiet space to sit with my thoughts and deeply evolve my mind.
Whatever it is for you, having “primed” your brain reliving your past memories, allow your mind to “drift” into creating more amazing future memories.
Love Training
The trick to creating new habits, and new patterns in the brain is…
Repetition.
To really squeeze the most juice out of your greatest moments relive them as deeply and as often as you enjoy.
And really deeply indoctrinate that Step 4 of not only reliving your amazing memories but using this imprint to “pre-live” your greatest future too.