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SPECIAL OFFER! You can get a FREE audiotape describing how the Zone works in craps and life! Just call toll free 1-800-257-7130 for your FREE cassette!       The Zone   By Stephen Heller, Ph.D.   Copyright © 2006 by Jerry Patterson Enterprises, Inc., All Rights Reserved   With the development of the PARR Zone, Dr. Heller (now deceased) left an incredible legacy to craps dice controllers. This article, an introduction, is the first of many which will be incorporated, with acknowledgement, into the new book – Winning Dice Control Techniques: Shooting Craps from the Zone by Jerry Patterson and Sharpshooter.   When Jerry asked me to develop a mental readiness support method for his PARR method, he said it should be about focus.  I told him I wanted to make the program about what professional athletes called The Zone .  From my work with athletes spanning nearly thirty years, I have learned how powerful The Zone can be for those who desire to increase performance in any activity.   Top performers from all professions have discovered how to create The Zone.  I would bet that most people who read this manual have also found themselves in The Zone during times of outstanding achievement. The challenge is to be able to create The Zone on demand and that is what this manual is all about.   Here is how The American Heritage® Dictionary defines Zone:  “An area or region distinguished from adjacent parts by a distinctive feature or characteristic.” To me, this means The Zone is a mental state that enables us to separate from distractions.  We arrive at a state of mental being during which our skills and abilities come together in a powerful and synergistic combination. We feel like winners, we act like winners and we perform like winners!    The Zone includes focus but focus doesn’t necessarily include The Zone.  If you look up Focus in The American Heritage® Dictionary, you will read:  “A center of interest or activity.  Close or narrow attention and concentration. Focused – To direct toward a particular point of purpose.”   I want you to think about The Zone as your destination.  Now, consider focus as the vehicle or mode of transportation that enables you to get there. The PARR Zone will show you how to create the kind of focus that leads you to The Zone.  When you have mastered The PARR Zone, you will have developed:   Muscle Memory, combined with a psychological state of confidence and a sense of calm purpose. The purpose of this training manual is to teach you the exact steps that enable you to enter The Zone on demand and with consistency. Specifically, you will learn how to enter The Zone within seconds while putting Jerry Patterson’s PARR method into action at the craps tables.   You may even find yourself using The Zone in many areas of your life. I have taught hundreds of individuals the secrets of being able to create The Zone on command. These people have used The Zone to become more successful in their business and personal lives, too.   What this Manual Isn’t   This manual will not encourage nor instruct you in how to make everything more complicated and confusing. One sage said, “Everything should be kept as simple as possible. Just no simpler.”  There is great wisdom in this statement. One sure way to ruin a winning method is to continue to add more improvement until the system is too complicated to work.    What this Manual Is   This manual is designed to make learning The PARR Zone simple and fast.  It will show you the exact steps you need to recreate The Zone when you want it. You will also learn how to incorporate The PARR Zone as a seamless part of PARR itself. To enter The Zone on demand will require you to practice what you learn in this manual.   The Problems of victory are more agreeable than the problems of defeat, but they are no less difficult. Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965) This manual will expose you to cutting edge motivational techniques. You will learn that there are two different ways to visualize. One way, called the spectator, makes it more difficult to obtain goals.  Yet, this is the way most people are taught to visualize. When you use the powerful form of visualization called Experiential Visualization, you dramatically improve your results – automatically!    With Spectator Visualization, you experience what you are visualizing as if you aren’t really part of the event. Instead, you are a bystander.  As such, your brain is lulled into believing that what you are visualizing just isn’t that important to you.    When you use Experiential Visualization, you step into the image and begin to feel the experience, as if it were really happening.  One example can be found in dreams. Most of us have had falling dreams.  In some of these dreams, we are off to a side watching someone who looks like us as he or she falls.  While this may cause a little anxiety, it’s more likely to be a non-event.    With the Experiential Dream, it feels as if we are falling.  This is the experience that wakes us up with rapid breathing and our hearts pounding. The dream fooled part of our brains into responding as if the experience was really happening.  Experiential Visualization will help you trigger your brain into thinking you are calm, confident, with a sense of calm purpose, combined with muscle memory.  That’s Muscle Memory!   Individualization   It’s very important for you to seek out your realistic levels of comfort.  If you exceed your comfort level, you will experience tension and often anxiety, too.  Tension and anxiety cause ideo-motor responses.  These responses will cause muscle spasms and involuntary movements. These are the last things you want to experience when you are attempting a controlled throw of the dice.   The following are examples of where you need to find your comfort levels.  Each one could have a powerful impact on your ability to succeed:    Betting Levels – If you bet outside of what is your realistic comfort zone, you will cause yourself grief. When it comes time to put the money where it belongs, you will want to hedge bets.  You will either bet less than is called for or, while using the correct unit, you will avoid making all the correct bets. Peak Times – Studies have shown that people have peak times of effectiveness and times of least effectiveness.  Some people perform best at night while others are at their peak in the morning. You need to find out when you are the sharpest, most alert and confident. The next step is simple – restrict your serious playing time to your personal peak times.  Playing Times – Besides your personal peak time, you need to discover what times of day you seem to be most comfortable while in the casinos. For an example, I am very uncomfortable playing after 2:00 a.m., even though there are better blackjack conditions available. If I try to play against my comfort zone, I find my concentration ebbs and I keep looking for a reason to end the session. Physical Condition – How you eat, sleep and exercise during playing trips affects your ability to perform in an explosive way. As an example, when people fail to eat for many hours, their blood sugar falls dramatically. When this happens, their ability to think and reason is seriously compromised.  Yet, people in this state can’t recognize it because of their low blood sugar.  If you play in this condition, you are begging the house to take your money. Bankroll – You need to set aside a specific sum of money that you will use as your Casino Bankroll.  This should be money that you don’t need for any other purpose. Playing on borrowed money or money you can’t afford is an invitation to disaster.  That’s called Scared Money!  Playing on Scared Money leads to fear and anxiety. When you are in a state of fear and anxiety, it will be difficult and perhaps impossible for you to create and enter The PARR Zone.  Next:  The PARR Zone: Level 1 Learning Program.     Dr. Heller had a professional psychology practice for nearly thirty years. He worked with major personalities along with what he referred to as Real People. His specialties included hypnosis, motivational psychology and working in the area of relationships.  He developed an approach for helping people called Unconscious Restructuring.  Some of his techniques are widely used today and pre-date systems such as NLP. In an earlier career, he appeared on radio and television where he introduced Unconscious Restructuring (UR) to the general public, and, at the same time, running training seminars throughout the United States introducing UR to the helping professionals. He authored two books, Monsters and Magical Sticks (There’s No Such Thing as Hypnosis – New Falcon Press) and When Cupid’s Arrow is a Pain in the Ass (Freedom From Destructive Relationship Syndrome – H.I. Enterprises). Dr. Heller worked with Jerry Patterson for over 10 years focusing on the mental aspects of gambling.  He was a successful blackjack and craps player and published two manuals on Blackjack along with several short papers on craps.