Learning experiences
We all go through many learning experiences in our lives, with every one of us having different learning experiences. It's one of the things that make us different. Some will miss out on important experiences, and just like in school, some will simply learn better than others.
In 1981 I was teaching electronics at a RMIT technical college in Melbourne. In order to continue teaching there I had to obtain a teaching qualification and so I undertook a 12 month Graduate Diploma of Education course at a college just outside of Melbourne.
One of the subjects taught was psychology and in that class we were shown a British documentary called "Give me the child until he is seven, and I will show you the man". This documentary followed the lives of fourteen British children, starting in 1964, when they were all seven years old. The participants were filmed individually and as a group, answering questions about themselves and about life in general. The plan was to have follow-up filming sessions every 7 years. So In 1981 when I saw it, the participants were 24 years old, and there had been two follow-up interviews.
These children were selected to represent the range of different socio-economic backgrounds in Britain at that time, and I think the aim of the film was to research the hypothesis that each child's social class predetermines their future. In other words, the environment you are born in determines the person you will grow up to be.
I watched this film with a lot of interest, and thought that it provided very convincing support for the theory that your personality is formed by the time you are seven years old. You could see the same personality traits in nearly every one of the participants when they were young adults, as you could when they were seven. Whether this was determined by your socio-economic environment, or something else was the key issue for me. There was nothing in the documentary about how these children had been raised.
At the time I saw this documentary it had been ten years since I had left the Hawthorn Football Club. I left there without playing a single game in the senior, 'A', team. This was nothing short of failure for me, and failure at anything was not something I was used to. And after finishing University I had travelled around Australia playing football in the major competitions in most of the other states. In the jobs that I worked in, one thing became very clear, that being successful in the "real world" was a completely different ball game than being successful in school. It didn't really matter how smart you were. If your IQ puts you in the top 5% of the population, that just means that 95% of the population don't want to know that you are smarter than they are. It didn't take long for me to realise that what really counted was your ability to create rapport with and work with other people. It required people skills and life skills that I didn't have. And my impression was that having a good personality, that was attractive to other people, was almost a guarantee that you would be successful.
So I did one of the things I do best; I went "back to school". I set out to learn as much as I could about sports psychology, human behaviour and the psychology of personal improvement. The aim was to discover more about what made me tick; to find out why I had not been able to get the best out of myself as a footballer, and also to discover the "secrets to success".
I bought and read the book Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. This book is essential reading for everyone. The book was written in 1937 and was the result of more than twenty years of research based on Hill's close association with a large number of individuals who achieved great wealth during their lifetimes. But it is not just about creating wealth, the principles apply equally well to any area of personal achievement. It is one of the best selling books of all time. When Hill died in 1970, Think and Grow Rich had sold 20 million copies. If you haven't read it, you can get a free copy of the original book here.
I became a big fan of Anthony Robbins way back in his early days before he was the mega-star that he is today. Somewhere, I still have a cassette tape of his "Awaken the Giant Within" which I used to listen to regularly in the car going to work. more on that here
Brian Tracy was also a favourite. I first bought and read his book "Maximum Achievement: Strategies and Skills That Will Unlock Your Hidden Powers to Succeed". And over the next few years I also bought several of his DVDs on self improvement. more on that here
I thought the book "Sportsmind", written by an Australian, Jeffrey Hodges, was outstanding, and should be essential reading for anyone interested in improving their ability to control their own mind, not just sports people but everybody. In particular, the book had a section called the "Sportsmind 6 day Mental Mastery program" which was a simple course you could follow to gain control of your own thoughts. more on that here
Chris Howard was another favourite. His book "Your Personal Breakthrough: Breakthrough to Success in 7 Days" was a good read, and I attended a 3 Day "Breakthrough to Success" weekend where he did this amazing demonstration which was about leaving your personal baggage behind. He took a small suitcase out into the audience and tried to get through the rows of seats and even climbed over seats, showing how difficult it was to make your way through the crowd (life) if you were always going to take your personal baggage with you.
The message was loud and clear - leave all your personal baggage (problems) behind. This actually had an element of mass hypnosis to it, and I remember it had a profound impact on me at the time. more on that here
These people were all strong advocates of NLP, so I did some research into NLP. I bought a book that I think was written by the original developers of NLP – Richard Bandler and John Grinder. Personally I didn't get a lot out of this. While I thought it was very interesting, there were some things that I just could not master. For example I could not tie an emotional state to a "trigger" and I could not visualise the timeline in my life going backwards, and a few other things. But that doesn't mean it doesn't work; more likely I should have done a course in NLP rather than just reading this book.
These people all played a part in the personal development of my children, initially through me using what I had learnt from them in the way that I interacted with my children. Then, as soon as the kids became old enough to understand what I was talking about, I would talk to them about the concepts and principles I had learnt. From her mid teens and onwards my daughter became a keen follower of the same people, as well as selecting other personal trainers to follow. She came along to a few one day seminars with me, including one with Brian Tracey, and has also gone to other seminars on her own. She did a 3-day weekend with Tony Robbins, and followed that with a $5000, 5-day week with him, and also took courses in NLP to become an NLP Master Practitioner. Jeff Hodges, of Sportsmind, also graciously agreed to have coffee and a chat with us when he was in Melbourne one time. He is a very interesting person and there is a lot he can teach you about NLP, especially with regard to it's use in sport.