If you could see thoughts what would change for you? How much would you be able to improve your own thinking by? Would you be able to prevent bad thought patterns from developing? Would you steal other people’s thoughts and have them as your own? Would the thought patterns you saw transcribed inside their heads allow you to determine how successful people think and emulate them? Would your path through life suddenly become clearer as a result? Would it be better? Would you?
This is more than a fancy. We live in a world made up of data. Everything we see and everything we do is part of a larger overall flow of information which most times we have no access to. To access it, to understand it, we need a binary combination of the right tools and the right mindset. It’s like using an X-Ray machine to look at fractured bones. The machine’s high energy, short wavelength electromagnetic waves pass through flesh to reveal the bones hidden beneath but unless someone is trained to understand what the X-rays show, all we see are shadows. Meaninglessness made up of possibilities.
It is the same with thoughts and thinking. We can see the effects but we are not usually able to see the process. In a purely inductive way we may manage to get a little smarter but the real quantum leap of performance, the real leveling up of our skillset eludes us because we cannot directly see how thinking works. We cannot retrace the pathways of thought processes or recreate mental states. All of this remains, usually hidden behind the eyes of those we observe, protected by some of the hardest bones in the body and buried deep within the folds of the three pound mass of grey matter that is the brain.
But what if we could? What if there was a way to actually see how the best performers in any field think before they act? What if we could visibly trace exactly the complex neurophysiological processes that enabled them to be as good as they are and then recreate them for ourselves? Would that not change everything?
Human beings are complex things. Most times our thoughts are hidden even from ourselves. Our thinking, the way those thoughts are formed is a mystery that defies science and challenges logic. When viewed through the eyes of aliens from another world we are mysteries that defy understanding and barely even acknowledge the inner workings of our beings. But we are making progress.
New scientific breakthroughs are helping us see the thinking mind at work. We can, at last, begin to see the processes our brains undergo as they perform complex critical tasks. More than that, we are actually beginning to understand what the neural activity we witness means and how we can apply what we learn from it. In many ways it’s like using an X-Ray machine to look at fractured bones. The machine’s high energy, short wavelength electromagnetic waves pass through flesh to reveal the bones hidden beneath but unless someone is trained to understand what the X-rays show, all we see are shadows. Meaninglessness made up of possibilities.
I spent almost two years talking to snipers from different militaries. People who had gone through extremely tough physical training and had learnt to overcome the difficulties they were presented with not with their bodies but with their minds. What made them different from the average person wasn’t what they had learnt to do but how they had learnt to think.
I took that ability and filtered it through the latest discoveries in the fields of neuroscience, team activities like baseball and basketball and extreme sports. What I discovered is what became The Sniper Mind – eliminate fears, deal with uncertainty, develop mental toughness and make better decisions.
Through the explanation of advanced military training techniques and cutting-edge neuroscience, this book provides concrete strategies and real-world skills that can help us be better:
- At our jobs
- In our relationships
- In our executive decision making
- In the paths we choose to take through life
By learning how snipers teach their minds to eliminate fears and deal with uncertainty we can also develop the mental toughness we need to achieve the goals that seem to elude us in business as well as in life.
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