Getting to Go on Ski Vacations When Your Mind Equates Skiing with a Serious Tumble
The 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games that just concluded certainly inspired people over the artistry, the physical skill, and the sheer mental capacity of the athletes who just tore up the ice; but it also inspired a lot of people to look up ski vacations on the Internet to file away in their minds for the future. If you aren't an expert skier already, learning how to hold yourself on the slopes, learning to manage the speed, the balance, can seem an impossible challenge. All the time that you've ever spent looking closely at the wizards of the ice at the Winter Olympics, what emotions did you catch in the fist-pumping boisterousness? People who have been close to the action long enough feel that it is hair-raising fear that makes it as the emblematic emotion of any Winter Olympics moment. And that is when you talk with the pros. Just imagine what it could be, when we hit the slopes on our snowboards, or bobsleds or skates for the first time, for the tenth time. As long as you know how to deal with the fear.
So, what is it that the fear goes to? A terrible fall that hurts as you take a jolting roll and tumble? There was an experiment done at NYU, and it was very Clockwork Orange. They had a bunch of volunteers come in, and they conditioned them to react with fear every time they saw a blue image on a screen. They brought the fear in by giving the participants an electric shock every time there was a blue image on the screen (didn't something like this happen and that old Bill Murray movie Ghostbusters too?). When they brought the volunteers in the next day, they tried to erase the fear they had learned the previous day, by showing them blue images, but not shocking them. They were successful, but it's only possible to do it when the fear response is freshly learned. The longer the scientists would wait before attempting to re-program their unhappy subjects, the more unsuccessful they were. Each time they erased it, they had to first recall the fear to their volunteers' minds, make it fresh with a fresh jolt of electricity, and then strike while the iron was hot.
So how is this going to help you on your ski vacations? When you are at the head of the ski slope, what you need is to bring up the fear, to make it fresh in your mind. It should be easy to do this when you are standing right there staring down a vertiginous slope. Once that is done, all you need to do is replace that with a better, more positive vision of yourself handling it easily. This does work for most people. If you have a memory of a terrible fall on ice one time, this technique won't erase any memories. But it will make it seem less serious.
The 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games that just concluded certainly inspired people over the artistry, the physical skill, and the sheer mental capacity of the athletes who just tore up the ice; but it also inspired a lot of people to look up ski vacations on the Internet to file away in their minds for the future. If you aren't an expert skier already, learning how to hold yourself on the slopes, learning to manage the speed, the balance, can seem an impossible challenge. All the time that you've ever spent looking closely at the wizards of the ice at the Winter Olympics, what emotions did you catch in the fist-pumping boisterousness? People who have been close to the action long enough feel that it is hair-raising fear that makes it as the emblematic emotion of any Winter Olympics moment. And that is when you talk with the pros. Just imagine what it could be, when we hit the slopes on our snowboards, or bobsleds or skates for the first time, for the tenth time. As long as you know how to deal with the fear.
So, what is it that the fear goes to? A terrible fall that hurts as you take a jolting roll and tumble? There was an experiment done at NYU, and it was very Clockwork Orange. They had a bunch of volunteers come in, and they conditioned them to react with fear every time they saw a blue image on a screen. They brought the fear in by giving the participants an electric shock every time there was a blue image on the screen (didn't something like this happen and that old Bill Murray movie Ghostbusters too?). When they brought the volunteers in the next day, they tried to erase the fear they had learned the previous day, by showing them blue images, but not shocking them. They were successful, but it's only possible to do it when the fear response is freshly learned. The longer the scientists would wait before attempting to re-program their unhappy subjects, the more unsuccessful they were. Each time they erased it, they had to first recall the fear to their volunteers' minds, make it fresh with a fresh jolt of electricity, and then strike while the iron was hot.
So how is this going to help you on your ski vacations? When you are at the head of the ski slope, what you need is to bring up the fear, to make it fresh in your mind. It should be easy to do this when you are standing right there staring down a vertiginous slope. Once that is done, all you need to do is replace that with a better, more positive vision of yourself handling it easily. This does work for most people. If you have a memory of a terrible fall on ice one time, this technique won't erase any memories. But it will make it seem less serious.