How hungry are you?

No, I don’t mean physical hunger. And I’m not asking you when you had your last meal.

I asking you about your level of desire. Do you have enough to get what you want out of life? Or do you have so much that you’re causing interference?

You may not realize it, but you can put too much pressure on yourself. You can take a burning desire and turn it into a deadly volcano, spewing lava and destruction everywhere.

You can also have too little desire. Yes, you want to achieve your goals, but you’re not hungry enough to do what it takes to make it happen.

You may even think you’ve got enough talent to succeed without putting in sufficient practice, focus and concentration. If you fall into this camp, you’re probably in for a rude slap across the face. I’d call it a rude “awakening” – but that would pay disrespect to the term.

One of my favorite sayings comes from Herb Brooks, the coach of the 1980 USA Olympic hockey team, who did the unthinkable, winning the gold medal after knocking off the supposedly unstoppable Soviet team.

“You think you can win on talent alone?” Brooks said to his team. “Gentlemen, you don’t have enough talent to win on talent alone.”

Translation: You men better do more than show up for practice. You better show me how hungry you are to win. And if you don’t show enough hunger, I’m going to replace you with someone who will.

Around that same time period, I had a coach who took me to the side and explained how success works in very similar terms.

“Furey,” he said, “I have something important to tell you. Right now you’re a leader in the room. You’re much better than most of the people you’re training with. And there’s a danger when that happens.”

I nodded, sort of understanding where my coach was going with this.

He continued: “So I have something I want you to make sure you follow to the  letter. Each day in practice, no matter who you’re training with, no matter how much better you may be, you MUST beat them as badly as you can. You must make sure you never let up one bit BECAUSE IF YOU DO – YOU WILL GET  WORSE.”

My eyes bulged. I didn’t like the idea of getting worse.

My coach then added: “If you don’t give it all you’ve got – not only will you get worse – but you’re not helping your teammates become as good as they can be. If we want them to get better, if you want them to eventually push you and make you better, then they need to be pushed by you right now. Doing so will make you and them better.”

I realize the above may seem heartless to some people, but it’s a reality that all great athletes must contend with at some point in their careers.

When no one in practice is pushing you – you’ve got to find ways to push yourself. You’ve got to make yourself your biggest competition.

If you don’t do this, you’ll get worse. And when that happens, you won’t understand why.

Being the best in a small pond can be dangerous because you may start thinking that your small pond is reflective of the whole world. It’s not. There are people all over the world – in other ponds – and they’re not resting on their laurels. They’re training and practicing and working. And they’re very, very HUNGRY.

So to stay sharp, get sharper and keep on improving – you better emblazon the following two words into your consciousness:

STAY HUNGRY.

It’s a different way of saying you need a burning desire. It’s also a way to FEEL the message in the pit of your stomach – in your solar plex, in your heart and in your head.

Stay hungry.

In good times and bad.

Stay hungry.

Then…

Be Still – and Flow,

Matt Furey

P.S. I’ll be announcing the time and date for the Neg Busters/Theatre of the Mind teleseminar very soon. When I do there will be a registration page. Stay tuned so that you’re on this powerful, life-changing hook-up.

You might be wondering what I mean when I use the term “de-hypnosis.”

De-hypnosis is a term coined by Dr. Maxwell Maltz, author of the 30-million copy best-seller, Psycho-Cybernetics. Below is an excerpt from another Maltz book that I believe you’ll find of great value:

“I’ve come back from Europe where I have studied plastic surgery for a year or more. I have opened up an office on lower Fifth Avenue near Eleventh Street and I wait for my first patient.

A week passes and there isn’t a telephone call – except the one from my mother who asks me how I’m doing. The second week is the same as the first.

At the beginning of the third week I’m sitting near the window biting my nails. I’m watching a new apartment house going up across the street.

A young husky man is carrying bricks on the fourth floor. I watch. He almost trips. And now I begin to imagine that sooner or later he will lose his balance and fall, and his face will be disfigured from this fall. I see myself rushing across the street and taking care of him on the spot. I see a big write-up in the newspapers and suddenly I am known.

I watch this young man every day high up above the street but nothing happens….

Not even a telephone call, except the one from Mother.

One more week and I have to pay the rent. The five-room suite now looks like a hundred rooms to me. Worry, fear suddenly overpower me. I see in my mind a picture of failure. I see myself closing the office, giving it up and pleading with Dr. Schmargle to let me work for him.

I’m miserable.

The vision of being a plastic surgeon becomes blurred in my mind. I’m in a panic.

At the beginning of the fourth week the phone rings. I dread to pick it up and speak to Mother. I pick it up. It’s a friend who became a doctor. He has a patient for me.

I get shaved, put on my white coat. The hour is a lifetime before the doctor comes with my first patient. He is a shoe salesman in his twenties with a bashed-in nose from an accident.

The Art of Dehypnotizing Ourselves

At the beginning of my career I was hypnotized by a positive belief about my future even though many people didn’t understand what this future was. The point is, I did.

Yet, at a moment of fear and panic I was hypnotized by a negative belief that I’d never succeed.

Within all of us is the capacity for happiness, regardless of how big a failure we think we are, because within us is the power to change our feelings of inferiority by dehypnotizing ourselves from negative beliefs.

We begin to dehypnotize ourselves from false beliefs the moment we stop trying to be what we’re not, when we stop trying to be like someone else … by trying to be superior in an effort to overcome an inferiority complex.

We are separate individual personalities, distinct from any other human being. We are not like the next person or in any way supposed to be like the other person. We are unique in ourselves

We must stop keeping up with others. We must keep up with ourselves! We are not inferior or superior.

Once we see this we are on the way of dehypnotizing ourselves from false feelings of inferiority.

We dehypnotize ourselves from the effects of stresses and strains by walking into the room of our mind and seating ourselves in our chair as we are now…seeing the geyser outside letting off steam, playing roles in our mind, watching motion pictures in our mind as we improve ourselves by being what we are and what we can be through the technique of relaxation: the greatest power within us to make us what we can be by teaching us to slough off the spasms and negative feelings that make us less than what we are.

Relaxation is a form of hypnosis where we use our hidden powers to recall mental pictures of past scenes of happiness to make us happy for the present.

Relax. Hypnotize yourself to happiness Dehypnotize yourself from extra worry, extra fear.”

So there you have it. Hypnosis is a way to plant positive suggestions and goals into your mind. Dehypnosis is a way to remove the negative suggestions put there by others – and kept there, usually by yourself.

Many people will readily admit , “i’m my own worst critic.”

Yet, where did this begin?

Oftentimes, it began in childhood. It was either a learned, environmentally influenced behavior – or something you had put upon you so often, that you took up the mantle and continued the “beatings” long after they ended.

So now, you’re an adult, with a brain and nervous system, a mind-body that can accomplish great things, but you stop yourself by repeating negative mantras of not being good enough, smart enough, strong enough and so on. And so you become what you have hypnotized yourself to believe.

Now it’s time to reverse the negative hypnosis. It’s time to dehypnotise yourself from what you no longer find useful.

I believe the very best way and the fastest way to be dehypnotised is through Socratic questioning. It usually only takes a few questions for a person with negative beliefs to start seeing the light.

And once he or she does, we can NOW do Theatre of the Mind with a tidal wave of positive feeling and emotion.

So whether we’re talking about hypnosis or dehypnosis, we’re still talking about YOU getting clarity, focus and power to be, do and have what you want in life.

By the way, speaking of Maxwell Maltz’s Theatre of the Mind – I’m thrilled to announce that the program I created with Nightingale-Conant on this subject is NOW on the market. You can go there now and claim your copy.

In this program you’ll be getting an entire package consisting of 8 CDs, a DVD and much more. It’s an absolutely incredible package. I encourage you to go there now and place your order.

Be Still – and Flow,

Matt Furey

P.S. We had such an overwhelming demand of requests for Neg Busters/Theatre of the Mind coaching that I’ve decided to hold a LIVE teleseminar to explain the program and help you get involved. So, if you haven’t heard back from me about the program, get ready for the announcement coming your way on the date and time for this free event.