Fragments, Triggers & Practice

“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games.
26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot… and missed.
I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.”

—Michael Jordan
American Athlete, Entrepreneur, Principal Owner & Chairman of the Charlotte Hornets, Text excerpted from Nike’s commercial “Failure”

Fragments and Triggers
You’ve experienced a moment where the texture of a sweatshirt brings back the time you bought, wore and loved a great set of sweats.  Moments later, that fragment triggers an earlier memory of a brand new sweat suit in college, which in turn brings back a memory of those first treasured sweats from the high school varsity team…  Memory comes in fragments, brought on by sometimes apparently un-related triggers.  Maybe it’s a hint of perfume, taking you back months, years, or decades — one fragment at a time.  The mind is a wonderful and complex thing.  Mere fragments of memory are enough to bring on torrents of recall, hopefully positive, but sometimes negative.  We are creatures with enormously powerful memories.

But what kind of memory fragments are triggered by conference rooms, auditoriums, speeches or presentations?  If they are less-than-pleasant, each time we are called to stand and deliver, we trigger those unpleasant memory fragments — and our confidence slips quietly away.  In this scenario, memory works against us.  But is there a way to slow and reverse the process?

Practice
This is where practice can help.  Regular practice in even tiny increments helps to build a reservoir of positive memory fragments and associations in which you attempt something new, and slowly, through trial and error, build up your confidence, (which is another word for a reservoir of positive fragments…).  Instead of memory being self-defeating, practice makes memory your friend, by creating a massive store of “attempt and success” moments.  An ordinary speaker can acquire that wordless power and confidence, but it only comes through endless, repetitive, positive experiences.  Finding and eliminating every possible way to get it wrong, allows you to enter the room and dominate everyone’s attention because now — you are certain of getting it right.

When something hits a trigger, you want it to bring up a successful moment.  Make sure your memory works for you by continually building up your store of positive experiences related to business, presentations, your specialty subjects and interests.  “Practice Man, Practice!”

Applications

1. Personally
Maybe it’s presentations, maybe it’s building a campfire on a hike, maybe shooting pool with the gang.  Anything you’ve failed at is a store of unhappy memory fragments just waiting to be triggered.  So choose your subject, and start turning losses into wins through practice.  The first go-around is bound to be unhappy, but with each added experience, the tide slowly turns, and you begin accumulating positive memories and associations.  Tomorrow’s success emerges from the seeds of yesterday’s failure.  (The immortal Arthur Rubinstein was said to have practiced walking to the piano… is it possible that he once tripped, even fell at a concert?)

2. At Home
“Oh, we can’t bring that up again…”  Does your family have a closet full of unmentionable subjects?  Things that didn’t work out so well and must never be named?  It’s tough dancing around all the tender subjects in the world, and they mount up…  Maybe it’s worthwhile to create a family practice for laughing at defeats or embarrassments right away.  Taking your “Time in the Bucket” as a parent, can give your children the courage to stand up and laugh at their failures in later years.  It hurts, but it’s worth it!

3. At Work
In our almost forty years coaching new business teams, the things they always ignore are practice, rehearsal and post-mortems.  Practice individually and set an example for your team.  Practice as a team and you’ll become stand-outs at the firm and in the industry.

 
There is no truly magic bullet to great speaking; but endless practice, (and the countless number of positive fragments and triggers) can give you an unshakeable base of confidence that appears magical.

So Practice!  Put in the time!  You’ll still have triggers…  But almost all your fragments will be happy ones!

 
A Final Thought… Have they got it backward?
Contemporary education theory is making much of the Trigger Moment/Memory Fragment issue.  We suggest that the impact of past harmful experiences is being over-rated and viewed as unassailable.  Our perspective is not to avoid thinking about or discussing the difficult subject or negative memory; but instead to make it less significant — even to overcome it — by creating a thousand positive experiences through practice, repetition, certainty of purpose and clear intention.  The past is only King if we fail to move forward in the Present.

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