Behind the Mirror: Breaking Invisible Barriers

When your eyes are open, you see the world that lies outside yourself. You see the items of the room you’re in, the people, and the view of the landscape through the window. You take for granted that the objects are real and separate from yourself. However, successful individuals see the act of achieving in advance—vivid, multidimensional, and clear. Champions know that “What you see is who you’ll be.”

When you close your eyes, images and thoughts flow through your mind. You may review memories of past events or preview future possibilities. You can daydream about what may be or what might have been, and your imagination will take you beyond the limits of space and time. Most people attach little importance to these inner visions.

They may seem pleasantly irrelevant or uncomfortably at odds with the accepted external reality. If you’re like most people, you grew up with the idea that “Seeing is believing.” In other words, you need to physically see something with your own eyes to believe that it’s real. I know many successful individuals who live this way.

But there’s an attitude that suggests, “Before you can see it, you have to believe it.” This premise holds that our belief system is so powerful that thoughts can actually cause things to happen in the physical world. I also know many successful individuals who live according to this notion of reality.

?So which concept is nearer the truth? Do you have to see it before you believe it, or believe before you can see it? The answer is that both are basically true. If you can see something in your mind’s eye, and you imagine it over and over again, you will begin to believe it is really there in substance. As a result, your actions, both physical and mental, will move to bring about in reality the image you are visualizing.

During my university years at the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis—before I became a naval pilot—I underwent training in aircraft recognition. All of us sat at one end of a hall while silhouettes of American and foreign military aircraft were flashed on a screen at speeds similar to combat situations.

We were supposed to write down the numerical designations and names of the planes, such as A-4 Skyhawk, F-11-F Tiger, MIG-21, and so forth. But the task became more difficult each week because they kept adding more planes, scrambling the order, and speeding up the projection.

Finally, it got ridiculous because the images were going by faster than an MTV music video, so most of us saw only a blur, and some didn’t see anything. I began to see planes that weren’t even invented yet.

When it came time for the final exam, I didn’t know for certain which planes I was seeing. I wrote down hunches, intuitions, and reflex responses. But when the test results were announced, virtually everyone had scored a perfect 100 percent.

We had seen the planes, even if we didn’t necessarily believe it. For me, that test proved that images can be stored and retained unconsciously at incredible speeds. And those stored images, when recalled, can enhance performance.

What about the thousands of flickering images we see on a TV, computer, or movie screen? What about commercials? Do we have to believe the products really do all those amazing things before we buy them? Do viewers have to think that violent scenes in movies and TV are actually occurring in real life for there to be a negative effect on their behavior?

Many people believe that violent fantasy has no impact on their lives whatsoever because they think they’re too intelligent to be swayed by it. Well, I’ve got news for them. Whatever you see or experience, real or imagined, consciously or subliminally, when repeated vividly over and over, does affect your behavior, and definitely can influence you to buy a product or buy into a lifestyle, good or bad.

Your attitude and beliefs are, quite simply, functions of what you see day in and day out. Information can be taken in almost unnoticed. You won’t react to it until later, and you still won’t be aware of what lies behind your response. In other words, what you see really is what you get, regardless of whether you know it or not.

You don’t need to be watching images of airplanes, or TV shows, or music videos, video games, or commercials. You can be just lying down, or commuting to work, or walking through a park, and by seeing from within, in your mind’s eye, you can change your life.

By rehashing fears and problems, you can make yourself depressed. As a result, you can botch a business deal, hurt a relationship, or lower your performance. By forecasting a gloomy outcome in your mind’s eye, you can act as your own witch doctor and practice a modern-day kind of voodoo that will fulfill your negative prediction with uncanny accuracy.

On the other hand, by replaying in your mind’s eye the best game you ever played, you can repeat that best game again when the stakes are even higher and the pressure is on. And by mentally pre-playing the best game you’ve ever imagined, you can set the stage for a world-class performance. This “instant replay” and “instant pre-play” applies to anything from a successful sales call or athletic event to the effective motivation of your teammates and children.

Your attitudes and beliefs are the software programs driving you every day on life’s journey. Breakthroughs in neuroscience have confirmed that neural pathways in your brain—physical highways loaded with electrochemical messages called “traffic”—can be rewired to create new images of achievement. New habits of excellence can be internalized, and virtual reality becomes reality. Thoughts do become things. Observation, imitation, repetition, and internalization lead to realization. The Law of Attraction takes action over time to gain permanent traction!

“Know yourself” is one of the fundamental ideas of modern philosophy, with its origins in ancient civilizations. It stands to reason that before we can understand others and their motivations, we need intimate insights into our own mental, physical, and emotional assets and liabilities.

In order to gain the respect of others, we must first earn it. We must be respectable. In order to be a role model, we must first set a positive example. In order to lead others, we must first lead ourselves. In order to give others counsel, we must first counsel ourselves. We must look in the mirror when we ask who is responsible for our success or failure. We need to challenge our time-worn assumptions and prejudices and reflect on the vast potential within. If we lived a thousand years, we couldn’t discover more than a fraction of our creative capabilities.

The acquisition of knowledge is a lifelong experience, not a collection of facts or skills. In decades past, what you learned in school was largely all you needed to learn. You could rely on that knowledge for the rest of your life. With knowledge expanding exponentially, this is no longer true. Hundreds of scientific papers are published daily.

Every 30 seconds some new high-tech company produces yet another new innovation or application. Your formal education has a very short shelf life. A shared belief emerged from a recent round-table discussion among a group of some of the world’s most successful business leaders. All these leaders, while innovating in their businesses, were doing the same in other spheres of their lives.

They agreed that their organizations’ ability to sustain a competitive advantage depended on the personal growth of their team leaders and team members and that those who believed they had completed their educations were on a fast track to personal obsolescence. Lifelong learning, once a luxury, has become absolutely vital to continued success. Winners understand that yesterday’s world records are today’s entry-level requirements.

Question: Do you have to see it before you believe it, or believe before you can see it? (In other words, do you need hard evidence to support your beliefs, or do you put more emphasis on faith?)

Action: Think of something you believe to be true based on what others have told you. And think of something very important to you that you have seen with your own eyes or experienced that others may see differently. This will help you understand how each of us looks at life through a filter based both on belief and experience. Discuss your responses with your colleagues.