Want to win a gold medal at the Olympics?

Or wipe the floor with the other parents at your kids’ sports day?

If so, listen up and listen good. 

Here’s what I recommend:

Performance Enhancing Drugs.

(so-called “PEDs”)

But I don’t mean taking PEDs.  Not on your nelly!

I mean the opposite.  I mean deliberately avoiding them. 

Avoid PEDs and you’ll be the one standing on the podium with bragging rights over the other parents.

Wondering what on earth I’m on about?

Well, a bunch of boffins have been boffin-ing away in their lab, doing a bunch of experiments.

In one experiment, the boffins got a few cyclists together, gave them all a caffeine pill (either a zero, low or medium dose), then sent the cyclists out on a time trial.

Unsurprisingly, the cyclists given the low dose performed better than the zero dose cyclists, and the cyclists getting a high dose performed better than the low dose cyclists.

But here’s the plot twist:

NONE of the cyclists were given the caffeine they thought they were.

In fact, they weren’t given any caffeine at all.

They were all given placebos.

Which means the cyclists who thought they were being jacked up on caffeine somehow got more out of their bodies than the others.

Interesting huh?

The placebo effect is well known when it comes to treating illness.

But studies are showing that its equally effective when it comes to performance too (lots of other tests out there just like this one).

Turns out the boffins haven’t figured out why this works yet.

Far be it from an up-and-coming transformative coach (that’s me, by the way) to tell the boffins what the answer to this conundrum is.

But I’ll do it anyway!  And hopefully a scientist somewhere will stumble on this email and the pieces of the jigsaw will fall seamlessly into place.

See, our thoughts determine our experience of life.

Just like any other placebo, thinking that you’ve popped a pill which will cure your headache or give you an extra boost in a race is often enough to cure your headache or give you an extra boost in a race.

And all these dopey athletes who load up on PEDs and then get caught with their hands in the cookie jar are missing a trick.

You don’t need to take PEDs to give yourself an edge.  You just need to think you are.

Our thoughts really do create our reality.

Good news for anyone who has something they’d like to create in the world.

And if there's something you'd like to create in the world and you’d like to explore how your thoughts play their part, you might like to consider coaching.

More details here:

https://waitinglist.followingfulfilment.com

That’s all for today. 

- Tom