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Interview with Lee Pulos
PULOS: So that's another aspect of it
all -- that they very, very, very carefully watch their self talk. As a
matter of fact, they're constantly
MISHLOVE: So it almost sounds like,
if we were to take that as a generality, that maybe for every four hundred
and thirty-two people with low
PULOS: Possibly. There is a general factor to self- esteem, but there also are certain areas in your life in which you can have low and high self-esteem, but if you put them all together you get sort of a general factor involved. Of course there are all kinds of studies that are emerging, that people with low self-esteem are more subject to psychophysiological stress disorders, and so on. So it affects us on all levels, Jeffrey, very much so. MISHLOVE: Do you find, in looking at high-performing individuals, that they've gone through periods of low self- esteem and then come out of that? For example, in business you hear cases like Walt Disney, who went bankrupt seven times before he was a success. Do people actually transform themselves in the process of becoming a high performer? PULOS: Well, I think a lot of people will take models. A lot of high-performance people read biographies of people in their field, and they find out what these people think like, what they feel, what they do, and they begin emulating, and they have a kind of role model, and begin incorporating, introjecting, some of their qualities and characteristics. MISHLOVE: This must involve a good deal of visualization abilities. PULOS: Well, visualization is another one of the qualities, mental rehearsal. In their mind's eye they're constantly running a mental movie of what it is that they wish to achieve -- constantly. Much of my work with athletes, for instance -- I worked with a couple of Canadian swimmers, where they would visualize every single stroke of the race, and the feeling of the water, the sound of the crowd as they're going up and doing their flips, everything. As a matter of fact, they would take turns timing each other, and they would be within one second of the splits in the various laps. That's how close their visualization matched the actual performance. Of course I think everyone is aware of the sorts of things that have been done in cancer counseling using mental imagery. MISHLOVE: Why don't we review that for a moment? PULOS: Well, this is based on the work of Carl Simonton, a radiological oncologist, who used relaxation techniques and mental imagery to augment the chemotherapy, radiation, the regular medical treatment that people were receiving. A typical example of some of the imagery, for instance -- one woman with lung cancer would imagine herself going into her lung with a vacuum cleaner and vacuuming away the diseased tissue, and then coming in with a medicated spray. A fourteen-year-old boy with terminal leukemia went into his bloodstream dressed like the Lone Ranger, all in white, and every time he saw a leukocyte he'd pull out his six shooters and kill the leukocyte and haul away the dead leukocytes. MISHLOVE: And these people were then successful in overcoming a disease like cancer. PULOS: Well, with terminal patients, after five years, twenty-six percent of his population were still alive. MISHLOVE: People who otherwise would have been -- PULOS: Would not be alive. There was
an increase in the quality and quantity and longevity of life. Of course
there have been a number of other
MISHLOVE: Well, I suppose since the
East Germans, I think it was in the Montreal Olympics, began winning all
the medals, the news came out that
PULOS: Not only the East Germans. Actually it was the Russians; after the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, since they were going to have the Olympics in 1980, they wanted to set up a showpiece for the world. They split their athletes into four groups: Group A, one hundred percent physical practice, traditional; Group B, seventy-five percent physical, twenty-five percent mental; Group C, fifty-fifty; and Group D was seventy-five percent mental practice and twenty-five percent physical. Now these were all world-class athletes; they had all the skills. At the end of the Moscow Olympics and the Lake Placid Olympics, they counted the number of medals that each group had won. Group D, seventy-five percent mental, twenty-five percent physical, had won the most medals, and there was an inverse relationship. MISHLOVE: Seventy-five percent mental, twenty-five percent physical. That was the most optimal way to prepare. PULOS: Yes, absolutely. When I first
started working with athletes in 1967, with the Canadian national volleyball
team, I was the only sports
MISHLOVE: So they didn't have the picture. PULOS: No picture. Then he said, "Look,
I've got the picture in the next room, but I'm going to take you in there
one at a time and show you the
MISHLOVE: Or have different goals. PULOS: Different goals, different expectations. MISHLOVE: So the key to a really successful, high-performance team is where everybody is working towards the same goal, and they all understand that goal. PULOS: That's right, that's right. And
of course looking for ways to build up self-esteem within both the corporation,
the team, and individually.
MISHLOVE: Well, how do you overcome
years and years of programming since childhood, if you grew up in Iowa
or someplace like that, where
PULOS: You change it the same way you learned it. You begin substituting the negative self talk, the negative images, the negative expectations, with positive ones. It's exactly the same way you learned in the first place. MISHLOVE: And how do you do that? PULOS: Well, you begin being aware of the kinds of things you say to yourself. MISHLOVE: You have to monitor your thoughts. PULOS: You know, you're affirming things
to yourself, negatively or positively, all the time. Let's say if I were
to try to lose weight: "I can't lose
MISHLOVE: What you seem to be saying -- and I hope I'm not pushing your point too far -- is that really we're all hypnotizing ourselves all the time. PULOS: Constantly. End Part 2 of 3 parts.
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