Who Are Your Top Five? (A Powerful Tool To Change Your Life.)

When Anthony Robbins’ top trainer Joseph McClendon was asked the one thing he would tell someone to do that would lead them to their goals he answered, “Rehearsal.” He explained that rehearsing the person you want to be is essential, to act and speak now as if you were already that person.

Napoleon Hill, whose book Think and Grow Rich has sold over 30 million copies, shared a similar technique. One person who practiced what Hill taught was Ken Norton.

Norton read Hill’s book after he lost his first boxing match. His life was changed by what he read and applied, so much so that he went on to defeat Muhammad Ali.

Hill’s technique was having a “Cabinet of Invisible Counselors.” For Hill this was simply answering the age old question, if you could talk to anyone from history, who would you choose and what would you ask?

Thomas Carlyle shared, “Show me the man you honor, and I will know what kind of a man you are, for it shows me what your ideal of manhood is, and what kind of a man you long to be.”

Hill would vividly imagine meeting with people that were personal heroes and then ask them for advice, imagining what they would answer. (One way to do this is to read biographies of your own heroes.)

Hills group included individuals such as Abraham Lincoln, Napoleon Bonaparte, Socrates, Newton, and Carnegie. Each night before going to sleep he would imagine a meeting with his heroes and hold a dialogue with them to seek wisdom for a problem he was working on.

Hill went into great detail about how much impact this practice had on his life. You may find Hill’s technique too metaphysical for your taste, but you can get similar results by simply thinking about whom you admire and what advice they would give you. For instance, you could simply say, “Were my grandmother here, right now, what would she tell me to do?” Then simply let your mind process the answer.

Jack Canfield, author of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, shares that he rehearsed by going to a party where everyone literally acted for the night as if they already reached their goal. People complimented each other in the same manner. People would tell each other, “Congratulations on winning the gold in the Olympics” or “I saw your interview on Oprah, amazing job!”

As you get the image of who you are seeking to become into your subconscious and into your nervous system your brain will help you reach goals in lightning manner.

So who are five people you would pick from history to ask questions of? What would they tell you and how could you turn that advice into action? As George Eliot shared, “It is never too late to be what you might have been.”