Every boxing analyst is saying Conor McGregor doesn't stand a chance
against Floyd Mayweather and maybe they're right.
But I have a different perspective because while I don't know much about boxing,
I am a student of human psychology and I have never seen anyone
with a better mental game than Conor McGregor. He is insanely confident
which creates the optimal emotional state for dominating a fight
and a huge part of that confidence is how Conor uses
visualization to see his victories before they happen.
Joe, I'm gonna crack him with a jab and he's gonna wobble and I'm gonna put him away early.
It's gonna be a first-round KO. Mark my words.
Saturday night when I go out there and put Diego away in the first round, I'll prove my word.
I can't believe I'm going to say this but
he told Lorenzo and I the other day, "I'll bet you 3 million dollars I knock him out the second round."
So in this video, we're going to explore just how Conor visualizes differently from most people
and how this creates the highest percent of chance that he gets what he wants.
Obviously, his physical training is indispensable but the motivation to train,
the ability to psyche an opponent out, and the calm nature he has in a fight,
all begin with the mental game which is what you're going to learn to harness today.
The first unique thing that Conor does is visualize the pre-game.
Now, all fighters visualize to some extent —
some visualize their hand getting raised, the belt being wrapped around their waist,
and some visualize the finishing moment knocking out their opponent.
Conor does it differently. Just listen.
Now I've already visualized what's ahead of me here.
I've already visualized my hands getting wrapped,
walking to the weigh-ins, walking to the cage...
Winning a fight is a multi-step process —
you show up to the venue, you get your hands wrapped, you warm up,
you walk out, you step into the cage, you get announced and then you fight.
At any one of these moments, a fighter can get hit with a burst of nervousness
or an adrenaline dump, it can literally cost them the fight.
In some ways, it's no different from a job interview, a big meeting, or even a date.
If you let your nerves get the best of you while you sit waiting for the other person to arrive,
you're going to be too nervous when they finally do.
Conor avoids this pitfall by visualizing everything from the start.
I visualize everything. I've visualized this conversation. I visualized the walkout. I visualize everything going on.
I know— I have shots picked out and I'm gonna show in this fight in five weeks
and I've seen everything in me head and now it's gonna happen.
When you see it in your head, you're gonna see it before your eyes; that's what I say.
So when he walks out to fight, the whole scenario is familiar.
None of it feels new which means none of it feels scary.
Now we aren't all cage fighters but let's say you had a big job interview and you want to visualize to help you nail it.
Instead of picturing yourself sitting in the interview and smiling or being
at the end and signing an offer letter, picture every moment of the experience —
from walking into the building feeling confident to answering specific questions that you know you'll get asked
all the way to leaving the office and smiling when you say goodbye.
If you can make the entire process feel familiar, you'll be able to maintain your cool throughout.
The second important thing Conor emphasizes is the details.
Here he is right after a reporter asks how he so accurately predicted how he would win his first ever UFC title.
I was asking you on Thursday about his right hand.
Yeah.
Can I tell you what you told me?
I said his right hand would get him into trouble; that's the shot I predicted.
I said he'd overload on his right hand, I said I'd slip, I said I'd bang with a left hook and that's what happened.
Now notice how he didn't just say, "Oh, I saw myself winning this fight,"
but talks about seeing specific sequences in his mind.
How do you do that?
I mean if you can see it here and you have the courage enough to speak it,
it will happen so I see these shots, I see these sequences and I don't shy away from them.
We can all use this strategy for almost anything
whether it's an important sales call, a negotiation, or just the first date.
You can go through and imagine potential twists that the event could take
and imagine what your perfect response would be.
When it happens in reality, it may go one of any different way
but by imagining yourself handling it perfectly in different variations,
you prepare yourself to rock it no matter how it plays out.
Conor also creates physical manifestations of what his vision is as if it's already happened.
Now there's nothing new about having a vision board
but while it might feel good to look at your wall and see images of a big stack of cash
or a beautiful stock image of your dream guy or girl,
Conor takes it a step further and to something really unique.
For instance, after winning his fight against Dustin Poirier
which was only his fourth fight in the UFC,
Conor went backstage, borrowed someone else's UFC belt,
wrapped it over his shoulder and took a photo with it.
Why? Because he looked at that photo every single day until it became his reality.
He did it again before his fight with Siver — this time with two belts.
This was six months before he'd even had his first title shot
and in November 2016, he made it a reality and became the first person
who hold two division championships at the same time in the UFC
and now he's done it with Floyd Mayweather — this time with a mural in his gym.
In this next clip, you can see he even melds his sparring practice with visualization.
No stone has been left unturned.
From... like you said, from nutrition, from the cardio side, from the rounds,
from the ruleset, from the canvas of the ring, from the size,
the tension in the ropes...
He's using a ring that's specifically designed to replicate the one he'll use on Fight Night.
This makes sure his practice simulates his future reality as closely as possible.
There's a famous quote I love —
"Everything is created twice — first in the mind and then in reality."
Whether it's a phenomenal artist, athlete or entrepreneur,
they envision their greatest achievements in their mind first and then they make it happen.
That's why great businessmen are often called visionaries
because their gift is to imagine something and then make their vision a reality.
Maybe as Conor says, his visualizations shape reality.
Or perhaps they simply give him the unshakable confidence needed to succeed at a world-class level.
Either way, he would not be where he is without them.
Did you have faith maybe back then the... your time would come and that you would be able to explode onto the scene as you had.
If I didn't, it wouldn't have happened.
Now that said, what makes Conor so special
is that he dreams of achieving things that no one has ever achieved and
at the same time, he grounds his visualizations in reality.
Look at the lead-up to his first fight against Chad Mendes.
Chad is a two-time all-american wrestler; he had taken down all of his previous opponents.
Listen to this interview from Conor before their fight.
What'you gonna do? You can't even pass guard; you're a white belt on the mat.
Well, you get me down and you hold me down; I'll butcher you from the bottom.
I'll get back up and butcher you on the feet.
Conor doesn't say, "You won't take me down."
He says, "I'll BUTCHER you from the bottom."
Look at Conor's reaction at the end of the first round
after chad has successfully taken him down and landed some brutal elbows.
He gets up smiling because he knew he'd be there and survive it.
He's happy because the fight is playing out exactly like he visualized it;
that may be one of Conor's greatest secrets.
Behind all the grand visions and the big boasts, he's an avid student of reality.
He looks at past success to model.
He watches Bruce Lee, Muhammad Ali, Roy Jones Jr... the list goes on — even his own losses.
I just broke it down into small pieces and analyzed the fight.
Joe Rogan: Good left hand. Mike Goldberg: Diaz just missed.
Mike Goldberg: Conor's busting Nate up.
Yes, he's watching to see his mistakes but he's also watching
for individual moments of success that he can model in their rematch.
...gained confidence from what I was looking at and how I felt
and understand the where-I-was-then-to-where-I-am-now and that was it.
And then he will watch that moment, hold it in his mind, replay it over and over,
and use it as inspiration for how he visualizes the rematch going.
That's why while every boxing analyst is saying that Conor's only chance of beating Floyd is to bull-rush him,
I would guarantee that Conor isn't listening. Why?
Because they haven't beaten Floyd in a boxing match.
Instead, I'd bet every cent I have that Conor is watching hours of Floyd's fights
just looking for even the briefest moment where he's been hurt or in trouble
and then he will picture himself doing that same thing exploiting that same pattern
over and over until he feels like he's done it a hundred times.
Now one question I've always had with visualization when I'm trying to do it myself
is — when should I do it? Do you do it right when you wake up or right before you sleep?
Here's Conor's answer.
Can you put yourself in the mindset of a guy who's waiting in line with other people?
Always. Always.
Do you remember what that guy was thinking? Are you daydreaming of this? Was that even possible?
Every second of every day, I was daydreaming it.
People are talking to me and in my head, I'm counting something.
I'm counting up a number or I'm knee-deep in a sequence on the mat or on the feet.
That's my life — sequences and numbers — nothing else.
Every time he zones out, he's thinking about himself fighting.
Just listen to how he emphasizes the word — frequently.
Does it feel the way you thought it would?
Yeah, it does; it feels beautiful.
I dreamt this so much so clearly, so precisely, and so frequently that it has manifested itself into reality.
This may sound exhausting until you realize that we all do this anyway.
We visualize all the time. Most people just visualize the bad so you try to push
someone to ask for a promotion and they immediately picture getting shot down.
Or you tell them to approach the beautiful person at the bar
and they instantly imagine it going poorly and then they freeze up.
The only difference is Conor has spent hundreds of hours purposefully visualizing
the positive while most people are unthinkingly visualizing the negative.
Check out this clip where an interviewer presses him to imagine what it would be like to lose.
What happens if you do lose to Jose Aldo?
That is not in the equation; that does not process in my brain one for one second.
It's the reaction most people would give if you ask them, "What would you do with a billion dollars?"
They pause for a while and then you get an answer like, "Buy a boat. Get a Ferrari," — things that any millionaire could do.
A billion dollars is so much money, it's so outside their perception of reality; they can't really fathom it.
That's how Conor feels about losing a fight.
Can you not allow yourself then, as a fighter, to go into that—
I could try but it wouldn't happen. It wouldn't even happen.
I couldn't even try even if I try my best. It's not gonna happen.
So how do you build the habit of visualizing without it taking over your life and ruining your ability to be present?
Well, the best solution I found from my life is to visualize while I'm doing mindless tasks.
For instance, most people zone out in the shower, brushing their teeth, commuting to work...
We can use that time to get hours of extra reps every single day
so when the day finally comes to perform, interview, sell — whatever it might be — we'll be leagues ahead of the competition.
Okay, the last thing I'm going to touch on is going to be a little controversial.
I thought about cutting it but it's so clearly an important part of Conor's belief system that I felt it wouldn't be right to exclude it.
And that is — don't just think it, speak it.
A lot of times, people believe in certain things but they keep to themselves; they don't put it out there.
If you truly believe in it andif you become vocal with it,
you are creating that law of attraction and it will become reality.
This is probably the most dangerous part of Conor's reality-creating process
because studies have shown that when you say a future plan out loud to someone, you're actually less likely to go out and take action on it.
Why? Because just the act of sharing a goal with a friend can let you start to feel the pleasure of achieving it
without actually having to put the hard work in to achieve it.
So you give yourself what psychologists call a "premature sense of completeness"
and it saps your motivation; you don't actually want to go out and do the hard work
because your brain has already given you the good feelings.
That's why so many people say they're going to lose weight or leave their crappy
partner or quit the job they hate but they never do.
So how do we marry this with Conor's emphasis on speaking?
It's by not visualizing with a sense of satisfaction. Conor visualizes with a hunger.
Instead of letting himself get the dopamine hit as if it were reality,
he visualizes it and then he thinks about how badly he wants it and he lets it light a fire under him.
I feed off this. I feed off this. I love this stuff. This is what gives me energy.
Saying I'm gonna do something, putting it out there for the world to see,
and then going out and doing it — there's no better feeling in the world than that.
It's clear that Conor lets his boasts about the future fuel him. Listen to his tone here.
The gold belt's what I want — the two gold belts. I was a two-weight world champion in the previous organization.
Now I'm on the big stage at the UFC. I want that Featherweight belt and I want that Lightweight belt; that's my goal.
There's almost no joy in his voice; if anything, there's an edge to it.
Now contrast that with this next clip.
I always visualize what giving to people what they have given to me would feel like.
I always dreamed of just showing up one day and I'm like, "Here," and that would always give me good feelings.
I've watched every Conor interview I could find and I have never heard him talk
about having a dream of giving like that until after he made it a reality.
Now I don't know if Conor knows this consciously or not
but he has a very distinct separation between what he visualizes and speaks of and what he visualizes but keeps to himself.
Giving to your family like that, that's the kind of spoken goal
that would let him feel that dopamine hit right away and so for that goal he kept it to himself.
Now compare that to all the other times he's spoken of his visualizations
before they've come to pass — they all had a hunger.
Speaking those goals out loud clearly made him feel like he had something to prove.
This interview is the perfect example of it.
Notice how he starts to feel good and allows himself to go there just for a moment.
December the 12th in the evening, when we're all leaving the arena
and we're coming to see you at the press conference, what are we gonna be seeing and what are you gonna be saying?
You know what you're gonna be seeing — something nice... something nice in material.
He allows himself to have that happy fantasy
for about ten seconds then watch as his tone shifts right back to hungry.
I'm gonna see the belt right there coming up the stairs.
You're going to see a banged-up Brazilian.
Hopefully, we see that. It could be somebody else but you'll see me there
with a gold belt, a brand new custom-made shoe, and a smile on my face.
Now it's important to say visualization isn't the only thing that matters.
You and I can't visualize our way into KO'ing one of the greatest boxers of all time.
Conor works his ass off and he says so himself.
Number one is the hard work pays off
and number two is that dreams come true and that's what's happening.
It's a beautiful feeling when preparation meets opportunity. Nothing is impossible.
Conor McGregor shouldn't even be fighting Floyd Mayweather; he's an MMA fighter.
But for years, he kept it in his mind visualizing it over and over again until he knew it was going to happen.
And honestly, after watching him for hours to make this video, he's got me sold.
I'm convinced that for Conor McGregor, nothing is impossible.
For years, he's been making predictions based on what he sees in his mind
and he's almost always right so when he does win and he mentions in his post-fight
interview how it played out exactly as he saw in his mind, I hope you'll remember this video.
Also, fun announcement — Charlie's been working these last few days
on a new Game of Thrones breakdown and he'll be releasing that on Monday.
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We're creating videos twice a week now with the goal of helping you
become your most confident and charismatic self in the moments you need it most.
Alright, that is it. If you made it this far, you're a legend.
I will see you in the next video.