Free I Heart Me by David Hamilton Page B

you do this, the old wiring will simply dissolve and any feelings of low self-worth will lose their grip on you. You will, essentially, forget how to have low self-love.
    Wondering whether it could actually be this simple? Why not give it a try and see for yourself?
Become a Self-Love Olympian
    Imagination can be so powerful. Top athletes have learned to appreciate how ‘mental practice’ can boost their performance. I used to be an athletics coach and the team manager of one of the UK’s largest athletic clubs. Once you’re in that arena, you swiftly learn just how much mental practice élite athletes do.
    I did a corporate talk recently and I spoke after Sally Gunnell, who won the Olympic gold medal in the 400-metre hurdles at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. She explained that about 70 per cent of winning gold was mental. After failing to win the world championship gold in 1991, she’d hired a sports psychologist. Soon she was visualizing every day. She did loooots of visualization. She practised running and hurdling in her mind.
    Importantly, she did a lot of practice on how she’d respond when something went against the plan – when someone overtook her, for instance, or when she had the thought that she wasn’t going to win, or when she felt tired. These are the kinds of things that many people forget to do with visualization, but they are just as important as seeing yourself being the best you can be.
    Using visualization to improve life performance is exactly the same as using visualization to improve sports performance. You can use it to become an Olympic self-worth champion. I had to use it myself some years ago in a difficult situation.
‘You Can F**k Your Decimals!’
    This was actually the first thing that was said to me when I started the first class in my new job as maths lecturer.
    While writing my first book I accepted two chemistry teaching jobs. One was at the University of Glasgow, where I taught in the Department of Adult and Continuing Education, and the other was at James Watt College of Further & Higher Education. After a few months in the latter, I was asked to teach a basic maths class at a training centre outside the college. It was part of an engineering apprenticeship programme, a regional initiative to provide education and skills to young boys, some of whom came from troubled backgrounds.
    I arrived at the centre and entered the class. The noise was deafening. The room was filled with 16-year-old boys, some of whom had been expelled from school, some of whom were in regular trouble with the police, and most of whom had no desire whatsoever to learn maths.
    I tried to introduce myself, but I was barely heard above the din. I clapped my hands a few times to get attention. One or two boys looked at me, offering me a glimmer of hope. I couldn’t think of anything else to do except start the class. So I did. My first words were: ‘We’re going to cover decimals this afternoon.’ That’s when I obtained the advice about what I could do with my decimals, calmly offered by a menacing boy at the front.
    They say you can smell fear!
    The next hour or so was a disaster. I stuttered and stammered, apologized when someone didn’t understand me, and got through about 5 per cent of what I’d intended.
    I wanted to run out of the class. In the end, I kind of did. I ended the class 45 minutes early and told the boys that as they’d done so well in their very first class, I was giving them extra time off.
    I got into my car, drove out of the town, found the nearest quiet place, pulled over and burst into tears.
    I was terrified at the thought of going back into the class the following week. The next day, I went straight to find Fiona, the department head, to tell her I wasn’t teaching that class again. If she had a problem with it then I’d be resigning my post as a lecturer.
    Fiona wasn’t in that day. So I explained what had