What Vince Flynn Can Teach You About Thinking.

June 22, 2012

“One of Rapp’s assets was the ability to slow things down in his mind’s eye… He could calculate what the other players were going to do and react. When things were tense like this, he could block out the fear and extraneous information, focus on what was important, and slow things down. Panic-induced decisions had a nasty way of leading to bad, or in this case, fatal outcomes.”

In Vince Flynn’s latest Mitch Rapp book called Kill Shot he vividly shares how Mitch Rapp is able to get out of spots that would leave most people dead. As an assassin Mitch Rapp can’t afford to not keeps a level head which means being able to slow things down so he can more clearly see a situation.

That is exactly what you need to do especially the higher the stakes and the more pressure there is in the moment.

But being able to slow your mind down isn’t easy especially since your amygdala wants to flood you with adrenaline and have you either flee or fight. Outcome Thinking is all about teaching your brain to slow down so you can always say the right thing at the right time.

Here is an exercise you can do in order to help your brain to start slowing down and you will laugh with the first one as it follows the Girl Scout motto of “always be prepared”:

Play The What If Game- in this game you mentally walk through how you would handle all kinds of situations. Like what if you went in the board room and found out you had the wrong presentation? What if you really needed gas, stopped at a station and half way through pumping your gas saw some shady characters coming toward you?

You play with personal and work situations. They have actually done a study and found that of the top CEO’s they found they all played some game of “what if” in their brain so they could always think through scenarios from multiple angles and be prepared if disaster struck or their opponent took a decidedly unexpected turn with a conversation or negotiation.

Playing What if causes your brain to continually work on and create plans to take action. For your brain real play and what if scenarios actually engage the same muscles and responses This means that when faced with a real life scenario that is similar to a “what if” you played in your brain, your brain is most likely to automatically trigger your muscles to respond in the exact way you directed it to during the “what if” scenario. In other words, you will automatically respond appropriately and quickly.

I have been attacked twice in my life. Both times I fought off my attacker successfully because, as a woman who travels frequently, I had practiced “what if” continually and was automatically ready to respond.

So how prepared are you? Take Action and work on slowing down your thinking by playing What If and coming up with unique solutions.

Learn more about the Outcome Focus® Leadership Development Training by contacting Paul Cummings at 952-921-9421