How to Feel Good, Day 4 -- P.E.G. stands for...

Here's one you haven't heard (I made it up and haven't told anyone, so I'm confident).

Day 4 of How to Feel Good features "P.E.G."

P = Pre-  (as in "before")

E = Experience (the sensations, feelings, sights, sounds, etc. that come with something being true or real)

G = Gratitude (a state of being thankful, appreciative)

So PEG is Pre-Experience Gratitude.

• Deliberately choose an attitude of gratitude for something before you experience that thing "for real."
• Gratitude in advance of something happening. 
• Being grateful that X has happened, when X hasn't happend yet.

Get it?  (I'm sure I could say it another way, lmk.)

Try it now: 

1) Notice what appears in your mind right now that you'd like to have happen. 

2) Be grateful that it happened.  Say, "thank you."  

3) Hold that state for 5 seconds.

Feel good?

One of the cental tenents of mental performance is that our minds don't distinguish well between what's "real" and what's imagined.  

Experiencing gratitude for something that hasn't happened yet sets our inner goal-achieving mechanism sights on making it happen.  We're programming our subconsious mind.

We're telling our inner helmsman: "Make it so."  (With a nod to Star Trek's Capt. Picard)

Again, think of something you'd like to have happen, such as an achievement, goal, or state of being -- something that no one would say is "real" now -- and be grateful it happened.

I have goals for my Mental Performance Coaching Certification Program.  To P.E.G. it (yes, it's both a noun and a verb), I imagine each of those goals being met and shift my inner lens to gratitude:

"I'm sooooooo grateful for having ______ people in my program right now -- and that they LOVE it. They are out there changing lives, freeing athletes to live their dreams and that feels so good."

Know It: PEGing is Pre-Experience Gratitude

Do It: Call to mind something you'd like to have be true, but isn't yet.  Experience gratitude that it has happened.

Own It: Make this a daily practice, find your way to PEG.

That's Playing Big,

Dr. Tom