Have you ever bought a software program to simplify your life only to give up on it because it’s too complicated to use?  There are many things that are supposed to “simplify” our lives, but when you stop to think about it, all they do is add a higher level of sophistication.  This was a frustrating concept to me for quite some time.

I recently finished my book “The Habit Driven Human”, and it is based on exactly what this article is about, simplifying the sophisticated.  Those of you who have read the book, (if not, you’re missing something very powerful) you see how simple I made the concept of achieving one’s goals.  I did not reinvent the wheel; all I did was take some solid fundamental principles of goal setting and rearranged them to simplify the concept. After reading my book, some have commented to me that they had never looked at goal setting from that angle before.  I think the reason no one has noticed my interpretation before was because we all tend to overlook the obvious, most simplistic methods because we have somehow been conditioned to associate simplicity with ineffectiveness.  As a matter of fact, I believe the concept of simplicity to be completely the opposite. (Remember K.I.S.S., Keep It Simple Stupid!)

I have begun moving in that direction of simplicity and I am making it sort of my mantra…

“Seek simplicity within the complication, because we tend to be more productive and creative in that state of mind.” – Gerry Ayers

I think everyone could benefit from this idea, by seeking ways to simplify by taking a step back and looking at our daily lives, and really take notice of how abstract many things really can be.  Chip and Dan Heath talk about the difference between concrete and abstract ideas and why concrete ideas become more “sticky” to people in their book “Made To Stick”.  They compare two concepts, the word truth and the painting of the Mona Lisa.  Below is a paraphrased concept from the book, “Made To Stick”.

When asked to think about the Mona Lisa, the actual painting pops into your head.  When someone asks you to think about the definition of the word Truth, you have to develop that abstract word into a series of past experiences and try to develop a solid picture in your mind to describe your interpretation of the word.  Which way seems easier to remember, more “sticky”, the painting or a definition of a word? 

So how do we make our world easier to manage? How do we simplify the over-complicated?

First, step back and get the whole picture, the forest if you will.  What is the gist of it?  Can you describe it in 10 words or less?  Forget about details, what is the general idea of it?

“You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.”- Albert Einstein

Next, once you have the general idea and can explain it to grandma, try to associate it with something you already have mastered.  (Think Mona Lisa)

Example:  For a long time, I used the SMART method of goal setting and would spend hours planning my goals out.  It was extremely sophisticated and any engineer would be proud of the level of detail it showed.  It was a work of art, something to marvel at, the problem was, fundamentally is sucked! It was not very functional as the shear level of complication would hinder its true purpose; accomplishing my goals.

After several failed attempts and growing frustrations with the SMART goal setting routine, I realized there had to be a better way.  The SMART method proved to be rather dumb in my eyes and then it dawned on me that the focus was on the “system” rather than the results the system needed to deliver.  I was focusing on the means to the end rather than on the end itself.

“Don’t get bogged down in busywork. Don’t get caught up in activity.  Focus on accomplishment. It doesn’t matter what you do as much as it matters what you get done.”-Larry Winget

That very shift in view point spawned a whole new outlook on things for me. I began to focus more on what I want, and what is the simplest way to get there!

Another example ties into an article I wrote some time ago: Waiting for the Perfect Time.  The idea behind this article is to first get started and then figure out the details later.  That is plain and simple, and is extremely effective.  Waiting to create a plan and make sure the time is perfect is abstract, there is nothing to grasp a hold of and take off running.  If I was still in the abstract “waiting” mindset I would have never accomplished the “28 day challenge”, or started my “14 week challenge” and I would have never written my book.  Waiting for the perfect time is sophisticated, abstract, and hard for your mind to grasp and in turn hinders progress.

My simple method to eliminate sophistication in your life:

1. Always focus on the end results, what is it you want to accomplish?
2. What is the one action you can take right now to get started?
3. Take that action right now.
4. Develop and perfect the plan that “grandma can understand” only after you get started.
5. The end is all that matters, how we get there doesn’t.

Thanks again.

Gerry

Hello everyone, I am proud to announce my Ebook – “The Habit Driven Human” is finally complete.  I have decided to keep the cost down because I really want everyone to have the opportunity to utilize this powerful book. Visit “The Habit Driven Human” or click the picture for more details.

Many people these days feel stuck in a rut.  They would love to be able to change their lives, but they don’t know how.

What if there was a way to do this?  A simple method that could change their lives.

There is, and it is quite simple.  By learning to control their minds to change their actions they could eliminate:

• Eliminate fear of the unknown
• Gain confidence in themselves
• Tune out the naysayers
• Stop sabotaging themselves

Sign up below to get FREE information about resources that will aid in creating the life you desire, not the one you dread.

I am in the middle of reworking my site and have added a resource page to help people obtain tools to aid in their quest for greatness.  These tools will help everyone who visits this site, athletes, entrepreneurs, and even the stay at home mom!  So click here to check it out!  I have also edited my mission page to help newcomers understand what my real mission is on this planet!

Enjoy!!

Gerry

There are four distinct attributes that every single champion athlete possesses that put them over the edge in their respective sport and can be carried over into Mixed Martial Arts and other combat sports.  Granted, many great athletes possess natural talent which is a gift, but everyone possesses the ability to gain the skills needed to compete at high levels of competition.  One skill is mental toughness.

Talent and physical skills will only get you so far because they are physical attributes which only make up 50% of our body wholes.  We need to incorporate the other half of ourselves which is our mental game.  The following four attributes are a necessity if you want to become a champion.

1. Be flexible: This means that you must be able to “role with the punches” before, during and after competition.  Being able to change gears mentally and remain poised, positive, and focused.  Being flexible is having the ability to bend with the situations that are out of your control.  Such things as injury, illness, bad officiating, blown game plans, or whatever bad scenario you can imagine can and do happen, but choosing to move forward in the direction that will help your situation, rather than focus on the problem itself is a good indicator of a mentally tough athlete.
2. Be responsive: This is the ability to remain charged, focused, intense and highly connected in moments of extreme pressure.  As the battle heads to the next level, responsive athletes step up their game as the game itself, steps up.  These types of athletes are coined “clutch” players, or “the go to guys”.  They do not withdraw from the challenge and become unresponsive.  This is another indicator of a mentally tough athlete.
3. Be Strong: Mentally and emotionally strong athletes retain the ability to impose and resist immense emotional force while under great pressures which help them sustain their “fighter” mindset.  They are not swayed by “momentum swings” or “bad calls” or mistakes.  They retain the aggression from the beginning to the end, regardless of pain, fatigue, or even the scoreboard.  They keep fighting because it’s putting up the good fight that is important to them.
4. Be resilient: Resilient athletes are able to absorb mishaps and mistakes and bounce back quickly while simultaneously becoming stronger.  They put the unfortunate situations behind them and refocus on the task at hand.  They understand that focusing on the problem only creates more problems, so becoming a solution oriented athlete gives them more options for success.

These four attributes can be consciously made into habits by any athlete.  You do not need to be a superstar to become a superstar.  Just like the physical side of sports, one gets better with “perfect” practice, so does the mental aspect.  One way to develop these four attributes is to recite them over and over again, and consciously try to catch yourself whenever you are not acting within the boundaries.  By consciously conditioning yourself within these four attributes, they will eventually become habitual, and move you toward greatness.

1.  Setting the Tone

Many coaches preach this principle but I believe many athletes rarely embrace it.  By going out and letting your opponent know what he is in for is probably the most crucial aspect of consistent victories.

• In the martial arts the style of Krav Maga, every offensive encounter is defended using natural human instincts.  Typically someone throws a punch at you, your hands instinctively go up to block.  Couple instinct with short precise movements, defense becomes very quick.  The second part of this principle is to counter attack at the same time or immediately after the defense with ferocity at a pin point location.  This immediate action will most certainly put your opponent in a compromising position.

In the following video take notice how each defender does not wait for the attacker to approach them.  They initiate a counter attack at the same time their opponent attacks.

In a lot of combat sports I have witnessed, many coaches and trainers do not stress the counter attack enough.  I do not know if maybe they are unaware of the importance of it, or they do not deem it important.  In wrestling I notice a lot of energy is spent on “set ups” and positioning, almost as if a chess game were taking place.   I could never understand this concept and I wrestled a majority of my life.  What I did understand was recognizing an opportunity and capitalizing immediately, not waiting for the “perfect” setup.

• The life lesson to this principle:  My opinion on a life lesson here is to approach any problem head on with ferocious energy to neurtalize it, all the while capitalizing on carrying through with the momentum.  Whenever a small problem is not immediately addressed – it is allowed to grow.  As the problem grows it gets tougher to tackle.  So the life lesson here is to “kill a monster when it’s small” by defending, countering and finishing it as soon as it happens.

2.  Train Individual Techniques that will Solve a Multitude of Problems.

I have noticed in combat sports that athletes are focused on learning a lot of moves, rather that perfecting the few they really need.  It seems everyone wants to be fancy rather that effective.  I am a firm believer that the only techniques that should ever be learned are the few that can resolve a multitude of scenarios.  I believe this because of how many times it takes to train a manuever before it is dedicated to muscle memory.  Whenever our physical body does something new for the first time we have to consciously think it through.  Only through repetition will that maneuver become an automatic response of our subconscious mind, hence “muscle memory”.  It only makes sense to me that by limiting our library of moves to the most effective ones will only shorten our training time.

• Life Lesson: We wear many hats during our daily lives.  Some of us are bosses, employees, wives, husbands, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, soldiers, doctors, teacher, the list goes on.  The key to success, I believe is to discover effective skills in each of our “hats” that are cross-combatible and help each personality rather keep changing our “hats” a hundred times a day.

3.  Choices

No matter the situation we all have a choice in what our internal environment will be in any situation.  I have witnessed many combat athletes, wrestlers in general, that expend a lot of energy focusing on what their opponent is capable of.  I’ve heard such things as, “Man he’s tough”, or “I don’t know if I can stop his takedowns.”, or “He’s .” (insert your own thought).  I have noticed that the top athletes share one commonality and that is they focus on themselves and what they are capable of.  This might be a result of conceit, or they may be the lucky one’s who get it, I do not why, I just know it works every time.

Ounce for ounce it takes the same amount of mental energy to focus on our opponents as it does to focus on ourselves.  The major difference is focusing on things we cannot control (our opponents attributes) creates an exponential amount of energy loss because of working out of fear.

• Life lesson:  Many people stress about their lives and focus on how difficult life can be.  Like I mentioned before, you do not have control of your environment, even if you think you do.  The only absolute control we have is our internal environment and how we react to our outside environment.  Always remember to make the choice that is going to best benefit YOU today, tomorrow, and the rest of your life.  Once you start living like that, life will ease up on you, and some of the pressures will dissipate.

4.  Using Fear and Anxiety as a Driving Force

We all have fear, it is a vital part of our psyche.  Fear is uncomfortable to us and it is so for a reason.  Fear’s discomfort is meant to get us to take action.  For example, when you sit in a chair and you become uncomfortable, what do you do?  You move. You wiggle around until you find that comfortable spot again.  If you were always comfortable you wouldn’t move would you?

Image via Wikipedia

When an athlete focuses more on fear as a tool, rather than a weakness that should be banned, they automatically gain an edge.  Fear is your subconscious mind asking you to check if you have properly prepared.  Georges St. Pierre of the UFC has stated that before a fight he is always at peace with himself because he has listened to his fear mechanism throughout his pre-fight training.  He uses his fear to push beyond his limits in training to properly prepare.

Athletes who succomb to fear are usually not entirely willing to do whatever it takes to prepare.  They only do the minimum to get by.  Dan Gable was another athlete who was the complete opposite of doing only the minimum.  He was an olympic wrestler who competed in the 1972 Munich games and mowed through the entire tournament without getting scored on.  Dan was highly fear motivated, and I am not entirely sure why, which does not matter.  He has an innate fear of being outworked by anyone.  His fear motivated him so much before the Munich Games he would wake up in the middle of the night and train because he had a brief thought that the Russians might be training as well.  As an athlete, start listening to your fears and anxieties and take action what’s causing them.

• Life Lesson:  Our daily lives are indeed hectic.  We process way too much information for way too long.  We are overloaded at work, home, play, even rest.  We live in constant anxiety and it has had a major health impact on us.  Our natural “fight or flight” mechanism has been replaced with “anxiety or depression”.  This is where choice ties into this lesson.  If you choose to not do what is necessary of yourself, either privately (internally) or publicly (externally) it WILL create anxiety or depression.  When you tune into your emotions and LISTEN your subconscious will give clues on what actions to take.
• Anxiety = Fight = Take Action to eliminate Anxiety.  If you suffer from anxiety you have either not done something you should be doing or you are doing too much.
• Depression = Flight = Run.  If you are depressed than you are running from something in your mind.  Listen to the cues the depression gives you.
• Both Anxiety and Depression can be substantially minimized with Lesson #1 – Set the Tone and Lesson #2 – Train Individual Techniques that will Solve a Multitude of Problems.

So to wrap it up here is my summation of this article:

Hit your problems head on and hit ‘em hard once.  Choose the actions and reactions that will benefit you today, tomorrow and for the rest of your lives.

I am reviewing a product that will help anyone who struggles with controlling their own mind.  If you have ever had the following problems then Renegade Mindset is for you…

• You train like an animal and no one can keep up with you.  Your a gym rat, investing countless hours at the sport you love.  The problem?  Everything falls apart in competition.  Your brain sabotages you and you don’t know why…
• Before your match your nausea is out of control.  You feel like the butterflies are going to burst out of your stomach.  You can’t quite seem to control the adrenaline rushes and when the fight starts you get winded too quickly…
• You have a nagging injury that just won’t go away.  It’s frustrating you because it hinders your training and you just need it to just go away…
• The heavy metal music that used to jack you up just doesn’t work any more…
• You feel like something is missing in your training but you have no one who knows how to help you with mental training and your afraid what people might think if you ask…

This product utilizes the following techniques to quickly gain control of your mind. (directly from the Renegade Mindset site).

1. Neuro-Linguistic Programming or NLP: Brother, don’t sniff your nose at this. NLP is the real deal and I guarantee that the top guys are masters of using it to dominate the bitches that roll into the ring against them. NLP literally hacks your brain to squeeze our mind-bending performance.

2. Energy Mechanics: As you read this, enough energy to light 2 light bulbs is coursing through your body. This bio-mechanical energy is the secret to the supernatural power exhibited by lifetime students of the martial arts. It’s chi. I’ll show you how to tap into this energy and use it to recover from injury, sap your opponents fighting will, and enhance your power, focus, and stamina.

3. Hypnosis: Dude, I’m not talking about swinging a watch in front of your face. I AM talking about training your subconscious to create a lethal fighting machine from the INSIDE OUT.

So if your a wrestler, MMA fighter, a grappler, or any other combat athlete, this program is geared for you.  I believe this product will also work for virtually any athlete who needs to obtain a certain mindset to achieve the highest level of competition.  But I believe this program will even help those who are not athletes.  Business owners, Entrepreneurs, Career driven people can benefit from this program as the context doesn’t matter.

“Give Me 2 Hours – And I will Give You the Secret to Crippling Your Opponent’s Focus with a Glance, Glacial Calm in Fights and the Underground Techniques for Triggering Match-Dominating Aggression at Will” – Renegade Mindset

Your Mind Is Out To Sabotage You And You Don’t Even Know It!

I have created this site in hopes of getting the message out about the importance of mental training and conditioning for anyone who wants to achieve greatness.  This site may feel like it’s intended for athletes in general, but virtually anyone can utilize this site to succeed.  Everyone from MMA athletes to Football players to Entrepreneurs to the Stay At Home Mom.  Everyone understands how to condition their bodies and the importance of a healthy body, but the mind/body connection has been lost.  There are numerous fat loss programs, at home weight loss routines, and gimmick after gimmick after gimmick.  The one key component that people forget is that if the mind is not on board, then the body has no choice but to quit.  Every single physical program could be highly successful IF the mind agrees with it and chooses to do it.  The key problem is most people do not realize their own mind is the problem.  That is where I have come to help, and am offering a way to condition your mind to achieve whatever you desire. Sign up below to receive information for free on how to improve yourself so you can live the life you imagine!

I Am Not An Expert Psychologist or Psychiatrist, I’m Just A Guy Who Got Sick Of My Self-Sabotage!

I have spent the last 15 years of my life trying to figure it out, hoping the answer would fall in my lap.  I realized one day that in order for my situation to get better I had to get better.  It was quite a sobering revelation.  I spent a lot of energy figuring out myself, and what made me tick.  I discovered a lot of really cool ways of thinking from some really interesting people on my journey and I would like to share them with you.  Inside the pages of this site you will find a multitude of strategies to aid you in gaining control of your mind forever.  You will change the way you think, and strive to be better.
Sign up below to receive information for free on how to improve yourself so you can live the life you imagine!

Now I Know Many View Mental Conditioning And Training As A Sign Of Weakness, A View That Is Outdated And Of The Past.

Well my belief is that the more you understand HOW your brain works and be able to control what goes in and what comes out will only enhance your performance and your life experiences.

So if mental training is so unimportant, why do the athletes in the top 5% of their fields, when asked the question, “What is the most important attribute in your sport?”, always answer “MENTAL TOUGHNESS”?  Do you think they say it for the hell of it?  No.  They say it because it is the truth.

Mental conditioning WILL give you the edge over your opponents and your life because most people are not doing it.  So be part of the elite 5% and incorporate mental conditioning today by participating in this website.
Sign up below to receive information for free on how to improve yourself so you can live the life you imagine!

Thanks again,

Gerry