Working in The Bothy, Photograph contributed by Andrea Christodoulides, Artist
To prime: to make (something) ready for use or action.
Priming: a substance that prepares something for use or action.
I am a native Greek speaker but consider myself fluent in English, the language I use more often that Greek. The first time I had heard used the verb to prime was by my artist daughter in the context of preparing her canvas for painting. It was an unusual word for me and for some reason I considered it to possibly be artistic lingo. More recently, I heard the word priming from Mr. Tony Robbins in his world-famous workshop Unleash the Power from Within (UPW), which I was fortunate to attend this past April in London.
In the workshop, Tony Robbins taught us what he calls daily priming. Again, I did not consider the word important but took it for face value and dutifully learned the procedure as taught by the master himself. I rationalized its usefulness in that by taking deep breaths the brain gets oxygenated and clears and by thinking of three past successes confidence builds and you are ready to achieve your three goals for the day. It was not until a few days ago that I truly recognized and felt the value of priming through the eyes and words of my Coachee. I had shared with my Coachee the idea of priming and he started using priming every morning as a first step towards building confidence to achieve his ambitious, life-changing goal. As part of our coaching program, I serve as his accountability partner and he is encouraged to send text messages to mark progress. After a few days of using priming, he said in one of his messages “Did it all. It gets better and makes more and more sense. There should be constantly three new feel-good things in our lives; mostly from what we do in the previous day. Soon our brain subconsciously drives us to do new feel-good things today to think about and write them down tomorrow.” I say, isn’t this wonderful!
Receiving this feedback made me reach for the dictionary. Priming is a substance that prepares something for use or action. Tony’s priming prepares our brain for daily action. We gradually get addicted to do the feel-good things and feel good! This way we can be more engaged, energized and fulfilled. We feel happy!
Thank you Tony! Thank you Coachee!