Reasoning Power

The average person has 60,000 thoughts per day of which 80% are counterproductive to the task at hand. The key is to focus those thoughts towards your task and leverage their power to produce effective results.

The word thought is defined as “reasoning power” and it is the power of our thoughts that produces changes in our emotions. The word emotion derives from the Latin "emovere" which means to stir up or agitate, and what gets stirred up or agitated by our emotions is our physiology. When our physiology is impacted we can see differences in posture, gait, heart rate, respiration rate, vision, and strength to name a few.

Thoughts ------->Emotions------->Physiology-------->Performance

Our ability to control this process is crucial to success and failure. When people under-perform at a task, mission, or sport predictable pattern emerges of counterproductive thoughts, feelings of anxiety or stress, undesirable changes in physiology, which lead to a negative performance outcome.

In contrast when people perform their best it is because they leverage this process to their advantage. Great performers learn to do this so well, they often describe being in the “zone” or “not thinking” because they are so engaged in the activity.