What to write for a Christmas Day horseracing column? 

Certainly not another tired end-of-year review, who's best, who's worst, yada-yada-yada put-you-to-sleep piece to fill up space. 

How about a little gift, something you can use in 2001, in the spirit of whichever holiday you celebrate (including Boxing Day up there in the Great White Canadian North)? 

A gift that's intangible, doesn't exist phsyically, yet produces tangible results;  whose results become obvious when you receive them; a gift that only exists if you believe in it. 

Sound a little crazy? 

For some, a reminder or affirmation. For others, something to consider with an open mind. (For yet others, a bunch of crap--sorry, no gift for you this year!) 

You're probably familiar with Dr. Norman Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking, or books with other titles such as Think and Grow Rich. The central idea of these books and other like them is you can achieve any goal you want (as long as it's physically possible, of course), primarily by simply visualizing that goal and reinforcing the vision over and over. According to the theory, the process of visualizing and reinforcing programs your subconscious to seek the goal, with your subconscious "steering" you, reshaping your thinking and actions to work outwardly to reach the goal. 

I'm here to tell you that it works. 

I think it's very unfortunate that the concept has not been given the serious endorsement it deserves. A couple of decades of pop psychology, psychobabble, and the labelling of a lot of worthless feel-good ideas as self-help or success-building business practices, have discredited a legitimate idea that works. 

Some common examples come to mind right away: clinical hypnosis; and the behavorial change (usually group meetings once or more weekly) reinforcement sessions used by everyone from AA to franchised weight-loss clinics. 

So, how does this apply to handicapping? 

The things that you can do to "reprogram" yourself may appear to be idiotically simple steps to many: set aside a place and time to sit and simply visualize yourself handicaping, making a bet, then cashing tickets; writing down a positive affirmation and repeating it several times a day aloud, reading it before bedtime, and so on. 

But they work.

How do I know? 

Because I've done it. And in more ways than one. 

This is stuff you're not taught in school, college, or in most areas of life or business. It does border on the edge of what many classify as the intuitive, psychic, or just plain mumbo-jumbo. Interestingly enough, several books that have come out over the last few years in which business leaders who achieved great success in their fields were interviewed. Asked how they arrived at their greatest decisions, the response was not "by planning and research" as much as by gut feeling, an almost intuitive decision that came immediately and without question. 

Could it be that the gut feeling, the intuitive flash, comes from your conscious mind being able to bring together all that your subconscious has been accumulating, directing, and driving you toward, in one so-called quantum leap? 

Based on my own life experience, especially in racing and handicapping, I know it's possible. You have probably had at least one or two days on which you knew that certain races would be run a certain way as if you wrote the script for the race, and didn't do what you'd call any serious handicapping at all. 

A fluke day or a coming together of all the handicapping factors on a different level of thinking that is not considered as an option by most? 

The power of positive handicapping is the same as the power of positive thinking, but specifically directed to handicapping. 

A couple of real-life examples from the past two days illustrate the power of thinking in a positive way. Before I tell you the story, let me preface it by saying that I do not mean this to be a bragging session and that this type of situation definitely does not happen every day! 

At Fair Grounds, I had doped out several quite legitimate longshots in one turf race each day. In the first race, one of the longhsots won and paid $30, with the other two finishing third and fourth. Although I bet on the winner and cashed, I was very annoyed. The mystery horse that ran second went off above 20-1, as did the horse who ran third. The exacta paid $732 and the trifecta paid over $10,000.The next day, an unexpected horse ran first, with my next three horses finishing 2-3-4. 

Sandwiched around these races were two other turfers in which I hit low, but cold exactas. 

I was grousing about my losses to my friend, Spotplay, who verbally slapped me in the face and said something like "Are you NUTS? You've just won two races and your plays that lost damn near won, and you were one of the few people to spot the horses' ability. All you need is one score like this and your season will be made!" 

Of course, he was absolutely right. My point of view was focusing on the negative, when I had in fact done, by my own standards, a really good job of handicapping those races-a very positive thing! Those cold exactas looked mighty "warm" after he brought me back to my senses. 

I recommend several books (and not necessarily Dr. Peale's which seems a bit dated to me) for your consideration and application: 

THE MAGIC OF BELIEVING by Claude M. Bristol 
Old (1948) but not dated and a clear, easy to understand approach to the concept. 

THE INTUITIVE EDGE by Philip Goldberg 
Well-rounded look at the entire process we use in making decisions. 

THE LUCK FACTOR by Max Gunther 
Every gambler should read this book. Examines all the different theories of luck and how to improve yours, as implausible as that sounds! 

THE RIGHT-BRAIN EXPERIENCE by Marilee Zdenek 
A little more avant-garde but has some excellent stories of how people in different professions learned to think more creatively of solutions to challenges in their work. 

"Audentes fortuna juvat." - Fortune favors the bold. 

Be bold as a new year starts!