Supercharge Your Brain

Easy ways to sharpen your focus and perform at your peak.

By Timothy Gower

From Reader's Digest

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The Key to Starting Your Engine

You know the feeling. It's that rare state when it seems you can do no wrong. Maybe you're playing tennis and every shot is landing right where you aim it. Or perhaps solutions to those gnarly work problems are coming to you so easily that you wonder why they seemed insurmountable before.

For most of us, these moments of vision and high performance are too rare. Why is it that sometimes you fire on all cylinders and at other times you can't even start the engine? The answer may be this: You're at your best when you get your mind out of the way.

Take Tom Amberry. When most basketball players step up to the free-throw line, they think about one thing -- sinking a basket. Not Amberry. Each morning, the retired podiatrist, 80, shoots free throws at a gym near his home in Seal Beach, California, and often sinks 500 in a row. But instead of worrying about whether the ball will go through the hoop, Amberry shifts his attention. He checks to be sure his shoulders and feet are properly lined up. Then he bounces the ball exactly three times, never taking his eyes off the ball's black inflation hole. He makes sure his fingers line up on the ball the same way before each shot. Finally, Amberry looks at the basket and shoots. Some days he simply can't miss. On November 15, 1993, he tossed in 2,750 consecutive free throws.

Amberry teaches pro basketball players how to shoot free throws and has produced an instructional book and video. The key, he says, is to become mentally absorbed in a physical routine, which clears the head of negative ideas, such as missing the shot. "You can't have an extraneous thought in your mind when you make that free throw," says Amberry.

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