Mental Preparation

Two-time Olympic pentathlete Marilyn King said, "If you can't imagine it, you can't ever do it. In my experience the image always precedes the reality." She provides a very moving example of how powerful the conscious use of picturing what you want can be.

When King was preparing for the 1980 Olympic trials, she suffered a severe back injury and was confined to bed just nine months before the trials. Determined not to let this injury keep her from performing, she spent the next four months doing nothing but watching films of the best performers in the pentathlon events and visualizing herself going through the same events.

After she placed second at the Olympic trials despite her lack of physical preparation, she stated that it was her psychological state, not her physical condition, that gained her victory.

Thomas Edison once said, "Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with preparation."

Lee Milteer
Success Is an Inside Job
Hampton Road Publishing Company, Inc.