FEATURE — Leading up to the 1984 Olympics, after 20 years of low rankings, the coaches for the United States judo team knew that to make a dent in the Japanese-dominated sport, they needed a big change.

The American Olympic fighters they trained were highly skilled. During practices, it seemed like the athletes should be able to beat most of the fighters from other countries. But when the U.S. team brought their skills to the Olympic stage, they failed out more quickly than the coaches could explain.

They decided to try a new approach by hiring seventh-degree black belt holder and former educator George Hamm to develop a new mental preparation training model. Their reason for banking on Hamm was simple. In addition to being formally educated and a master instructor, he was primarily a sports hypnotherapist with a new approach that had been proven to work. 

Hamm observed the abilities of the U.S. judo team, saw that they were capable of a higher ranking, and decided to try a demonstration. He found a Japanese martial artist who had never trained in judo before and brought him to practice. Secretly, he showed the young man a few basic moves and explained the rules. Hamm then put him straightaway into the ring to fight the team’s best Olympic athlete. 

While the American fought the untrained judo artist, the coaches noticed the difference in his performance; the American fighter lost strength and ability, giving a landslide victory to the young Japanese man. It was a replay of the former Olympic games. 

It was clear that there was only one reason the U.S. fighter lost: He subconsciously gave up the match before starting the moment he realized his opponent was from Japan. 

Hamm went on to train the team with his proven mental programming techniques, leaning heavily on hypnotherapy. In the Cinderella year of 1984, the U.S. judo team came out of nowhere to take the silver medal in the half-middleweight class and the bronze in two other divisions. The American team had learned their most valuable lesson: The formula to winning was in their minds.

This story continually repeats itself in athletics and in every other area of life. For instance, your child, a member of a competitive team, has been training all season and making winning plays at every event. But when he competes for the championship, he’s off his game.

It happens in sales. It happens in business, in interpersonal relationships, with learning and testing and with personal financial growth. It happens nearly every time that the human mind can come up with some good reason that success may not be inevitable. 

You, your partners, your children, your employees, your teammates… How often does failure occur simply because we subconsciously think there is enough reason for us not to succeed?

Hamm found the solution to this quandary as he experimented with the power of the mind. However, hypnotherapy is not only the fastest way to level athletic performance. It works for everything. It works for sales, business success, test-taking, learning, any kind of emotional change and for anything in which you might have a desire to succeed. 

Human beings consciously use only 10% of the brain. The other 90%, the subconscious, is constantly processing and managing memories, feelings, involuntary body functions and new information coming into the mind. According to Hamm, the U.S. judo athletes succeeded because he was “teaching the other 90% of the mind.” 

You can think of the subconscious brain as a computer acting exactly as it’s told, programmed by words, thoughts and experiences. Relying on the filter of the conscious mind, the subconscious mind believes anything that the conscious mind doesn’t nix before accepting it as truth. We do this all the time as we decide whether or not something is true. 

An exaggerated example of this might be that you walk into a room wearing a gray shirt, and a co-worker says to you, “I like your yellow shirt.” Most likely, the conscious part of your brain will immediately reject this thought and “filter” it away from your subconscious mind since you already understand you are wearing gray. If you didn’t use your filter – say you didn’t consciously understand colors for some reason – you would be highly suggestible to the yellow shirt idea from your color-challenged friend.

What we don’t filter away from the subconscious goes inside it, programming our behavior. That programmed information functions on autoplay for our success, our failure or our mediocrity. 

What does that have to do with the possibility of future success? Everything. Our conscious minds are fallible, and when things are not as cut and dry as gray and yellow, they let a lot of things pass to the subconscious mind that probably shouldn’t. You can see how a teacher or parent calling a child “stupid” can equate to that child beginning to believe that they are, in fact, stupid – altering their subconscious programming and their behavior. We even program ourselves. Do you know someone who’s constantly saying, “I always lose my keys”? They probably always do.

What do you think happens when someone says they are fat, ugly, stupid or clumsy? What behaviors result from someone repeating, “I can never get ahead. I’m never picked first. I mess up under pressure. I’m never the top sales agent”? You guessed it. They are programming their subconscious minds to give them very specific outcomes. 

Our environments, our socioeconomic situations, our opportunities, our levels of intelligence may be different. But what really gives us a winning edge and sets us apart from others in success is how we are mentally programmed. 

For a person who has had failure or mediocrity as their general result, getting the subconscious mind to spit out success requires directing it to believe differently. We might tell the conscious mind that we can do better, but if there have been years of subconscious programming screaming mediocrity to us, our conscious minds might just filter it out. 

Modern hypnotherapy isn’t about stage shows or silly swinging watches. It’s about being able to access and utilize the most powerful part of your mind to harness permanent, positive change for quick and measurable results.

The changes made to the subconscious mind in hypnotherapy can’t help but spill out into real life. They did for Hamm’s Olympic athletes. They do for the clients I’ve worked with, and they have for me. I have loved learning that my mind has the power to change my ability to succeed. It’s my great passion to teach the same process to others.   

So what does success look like in 2022 for you? What do you need for your sports team, your work team, your family or your income? Maybe it’s time to make a plan to change your mind.

Written by ERIN DEL TORO, clinical hypnotherapist with True North Mind Management.

This article was originally published in the Jan/Feb. 2022 issue of St. George Health and Wellness magazine.

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