Priming Your Mind to Succeed in Painful Situations

Jeff A. Martinovich, author of “Just One More”

Chaos and stress are difficult to successfully manage at times. Brain compartmentalization, an author says, is a proven way to “surf” life when significant disruptions emerge or hit full force. Learning to compartmentalize, he claims, can aid in regaining strength and confidence to be more effective.

Jeff A. Martinovich is the author of a new book, “Just One More: The Wisdom of Bob Vukovich,” that talks about it.

Martinovich has an interesting story, per his website. He was the founder and CEO of MICG Investment Management, a billion-dollar wealth management firm. After the 2008 Financial Crisis, he rejected three government plea offers, resulting in a 14-year prison sentence. Yet the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed twice, two U.S. District Court Judges were removed, and after nearly 7 years, he was released to home confinement in May 2020 to begin rebuilding his life.

He had to survive emotionally as much as psychologically and now communicates to others how it can be done. Martinovich states that people have the ability to partition off thoughts of fear, rejection and calamity — and by doing so, can reach their north star. 

“As Bob Vukovich explains in ‘Just One More,’ the keys are 1) not to catastrophize 2) hone our skills to focus in the middle of a perfect storm and 3) produce and act versus simply worrying and stressing about everything that may go wrong,” he says.

He adds that this is very doable, regardless of how we might likely feel in the moment, “The best news is that these abilities are learned skills, and if we keep mastering the small troubles of the day or week, we will build strong ‘compartmentalization muscles’ to be able to handle the black swans which show up on a random (day).”

Martinovich’s trying personal experiences helped teach him something during and after his personal crisis, which helped him endure, survive and now thrive after a painful protracted legal battle and seven-year imprisonment.

“I knew that if I let stress, despair, and depression get hold of me I was dead, very possibly literally,” he recalls. “I made a commitment to get stronger every single day: physically, intellectually, and emotionally-spiritually. This required intense focus and energy on my part and didn’t allow for any self-pity or whining. I had to get at least a tiny bit stronger in each category daily in order to know that I would be strong enough for tomorrow. Each day was full of disappointment after disappointment, with 99% of my nearly 500 motions denied, but I convinced myself I had no other choice. If I gave up, the bad people won.”

That’s how compartmentalization came to be helpful. It was necessary.

“When we are so focused on achievement, we actually become too exhausted by the end of the day to feel sorry for ourselves.  Compartmentalization uses up all the energy in the productive pursuits,” Martinovich discovered.

Moving away from catastrophic thinking and beliefs is critical to resilience. It’s mandatory for mental health, something Martinovich is passionate about communicating.

“Again, this is death. We have to believe in a grand design, whatever that may be for each of us. We must believe that deep down inside us, we are a good person, even if at the time we don’t feel it and no one else believes it. We have to know that, eventually, we will make it out the other side. We also must realize that everything takes 10-x longer than we thought it would,” he says.

He provides an example of how this works.

“A great number of hikers lost in the woods give up when they were within 1-mile of safety. If we are constantly visualizing the victory, our mind can’t focus on the tragedies which may occur,” Martinovich insists. “The human mind and body are capable of extreme endurance if we simply believe it. As studies of prisoners of war, concentration camps, and even broken hearts have proven, once we believe we will not survive, we do not.”

Easier said than done, of course, in the storm of doubts and fears. Skillful learning might seem overwhelming yet Martinovich says there is knowledge than can prove helpful to our desired personal development.

“I like how Tony Robbins always teaches that actions create feelings, not the other way around,” he says. “People sit on the couch their entire lives waiting for motivation to help them take action. If they would drag themselves into activity, kicking and screaming, they will then feel motivated. I believe we came down to this planet this time around to overcome fear and make incredible progress. We did not arrive here to protect our feelings, live comfortable lives, hold unchallenging jobs, retire, go fishing, and then that’s it.”

Instead, he asserts, the focus can be on confidently ‘doing’ more often, as a replacement for often debilitating worrying.

“This is an adventure, and if we attack every day with as much positive energy as possible, we will hold depression and despair at bay and accomplish so much more than we could have ever imagined.”