In every court reporting program across the country, there comes a moment—sometimes quiet, sometimes devastatingly loud—when a student thinks, I can’t do this. Maybe it’s a plateau at 180. Maybe it’s a string of RPR failures. Maybe it’s a CSR mock where the errors outnumber the correct words. And behind it all is the same pressure: Try harder. Push more. Grip tighter. Don’t let go.
But what if the very act of gripping is what slows us down?
An unlikely insight comes from a little-known moment in scientific history—one that has nothing to do with stenography, and everything to do with how humans experience reality and achievement.
“In 1993, a Russian physicist walked away from his lab forever. Few knew he had discovered a shocking secret about reality itself.
Vladimir Krupin, a quantum physicist, realised that reality might already exist like a movie with infinite versions. Instead of trying harder to make things happen, he taught that changing your inner state could “slide” you into the version you wanted. His radical idea was simple yet revolutionary: treat your goals as no big deal. According to Krupin, when you stop clinging to outcomes and adopt a relaxed mindset, opportunities and success manifest faster than desire ever could. This method challenged traditional thinking in physics and psychology alike and caused a stir in Russian intellectual circles.
Today, Krupin’s insight resonates with people exploring mindfulness, manifestation, and self-transformation. His three-step “no-big-deal” approach encourages modern readers to pause, release stress, and shift perspectives to align with their desired reality. Beyond physics, it’s a lesson in patience, inner balance, and the hidden power of perception. His work reminds us that sometimes the most extraordinary discoveries come not from tools and labs, but from quiet reflection and courage to think differently. History shows that changing your mindset can ripple across culture and personal life alike.”
For court reporters—especially students chasing higher speeds—this strange, almost mystical concept is not as far-fetched as it sounds. In fact, it mirrors what elite reporters, seasoned realtime writers, and certification experts have quietly understood for decades: speed comes not from effort alone, but from the inner state behind the effort.
The Paradox of Speedbuilding
Every stenographic student reaches the paradox eventually:
- The harder you press, the more your fingers lock.
- The more you obsess over accuracy, the more errors appear.
- The more you fear the test, the faster the dictator seems to speak.
This is not imagination. Neuroscience confirms that performance under pressure deteriorates when the brain moves into “fight or flight.” Cortisol rises. Muscles tense. The prefrontal cortex—responsible for precision, sequencing, and fine motor control—begins to shut down.
Court reporting requires the opposite: fluidity, timing, micro-relaxation, and rhythm. It requires the upper brain to remain open, alert, and receptive.
High speed, paradoxically, comes from ease.
Krupin’s insight—that treating your goal as “no big deal” allows you to slip into the version of yourself that already succeeded—aligns almost perfectly with the lived experience of reporters who have passed the hardest exams.
Sliding Into the 225 You
When Krupin suggested that reality contains “versions” of outcomes, he wasn’t offering magic or pseudoscience. He was describing a psychological truth:
You cannot perform at the level you fear.
You perform at the level you embody.
The students who pass the CSR and RPR are not necessarily the ones with the most hours, the biggest dictionaries, or the newest machines. They are often the students who:
- Stop acting like the test is a life-or-death moment
- Detach from perfection
- Trust their muscle memory
- And practice from a mindset of inevitability rather than desperation
This mirrors Krupin’s three-step “no-big-deal” approach:
1. Pause
Before writing a take, elite reporters often visualize themselves at the strokewriter, hands loose, breath steady, posture relaxed. They reset their nervous system.
They know mastery begins before the audio starts.
2. Release Stress
You will never write clean if your shoulders are by your ears.
Students who plateau often don’t realize they are writing inside a state of tension. They grip the machine, press too hard, chase words, panic when they fall behind, and then blame their skill—not their state.
Relaxation is a skill.
So is non-attachment.
3. Shift Perspective
The most powerful thing a court reporting student can do before a test is change one belief:
Instead of “I have to pass,”
shift to “I already write at this speed; today I simply record the evidence of that.”
In other words, slide into the version of you who already passed.
This is not delusion. It is alignment.
Your hands follow the story you tell yourself.
Why Treating Your Goal as ‘No Big Deal’ Works
Court reporting students often believe intensity equals progress. But the students who break through to 180, 200, and 225 often describe the moment in strangely similar terms:
“It just clicked.”
“It suddenly felt easy.”
“I stopped caring for a second—and that’s when everything came together.”
This is not coincidence.
When you treat your certification like a monster, the nervous system responds accordingly. But when you treat it like a routine checkpoint, your skills surface naturally.
A reporter who writes 225 in class and 180 on test day is not lacking ability.
They are lacking ease.
Krupin’s theory reframes it: the version of you that passes already exists. Your task is not to claw your way into it, but to drop the resistance that blocks it.
How to Apply the “No-Big-Deal Method” in Daily Practice
The path from 140 to 200 is not only technical—it is psychological, emotional, and often spiritual. The method can be integrated into any practice routine:
1. Begin every practice with breath
Five deep breaths. Shoulders down. Loose wrists. Relaxed jaw. Remind your body that it is safe to perform.
2. Visualize yourself at speed
Not struggling.
Not chasing.
Just writing in rhythm with flow and confidence.
Your brain maps the version of you it believes is possible.
3. Practice from the middle—not the edge
Elite pianists do not hammer their hands to exhaustion. They practice just beyond comfort, not at panic-speed. Court reporters should too.
4. After errors, don’t react
Just reset.
Emotion is wasted energy.
Treating mistakes as neutral trains your nervous system to remain open.
5. Before every test, deliberately act casual
Eat a snack.
Look out the window.
Tell yourself: “This is just another take.”
Because it is.
Your brain performs what it believes is normal.
The Reporter Who Already Exists
The most successful students learn to relate to the “future reporter” not as a fantasy, but as a version of themselves already in progress. They stop thinking, One day I’ll be fast enough, and begin behaving as if that version is already here.
They carry themselves like professionals.
They practice like professionals.
They treat steno like the craft it is — and certification like the natural next step.
And slowly, almost imperceptibly, their speed curves shift.
Plateaus melt.
Tension releases.
Tests feel less like cliffs and more like milestones.
This is the essence of Krupin’s insight: to “slide” into a different version of reality by shifting the internal state that interprets it.
Court reporting is one of the rare professions where mindset directly influences physical output. It is not like lifting weights or typing on a QWERTY keyboard. It requires precision at the threshold of human motor capability, a synchronization of rhythm, breath, and micro-movements.
No one brute-forces 225.
They become 225.
Why Students Fail Tests They Are Technically Capable of Passing
Ask any CSR or RPR veteran, and they’ll tell you the same thing: students often fail not because of skill, but because of the psychological weight they attach to the exam.
Students walk into test day holding:
- fear of failure
- pressure from teachers
- guilt about the time they’ve spent
- frustration from past attempts
- catastrophizing (“If I fail again, my life is over”)
- tension from financial stress
- embarrassment (“Everyone else is passing but me”)
This is not just emotional noise — it’s a neurological block.
The body constricts.
The fingers stiffen.
The mind begins monitoring instead of performing.
And the smooth automaticity required for high-speed writing breaks apart.
The test becomes a mirror of the internal storm, not the skill they’ve already built.
Krupin would describe this as “clinging” — holding the goal so tightly that you distort your path toward it. His no-big-deal method teaches the opposite: the less pressure you apply, the more fluidly you move into the version of reality where your goal is already achieved.
For court reporters, this is not philosophy — it is the lived experience of every working realtime writer.
Ease produces speed.
Speed produces confidence.
Confidence produces clean notes.
The Three-Step Method, Translated for Steno
Krupin’s “no-big-deal” approach translates exceptionally well into a concrete practice routine for court reporters and students.
Here is the steno-adapted version:
STEP 1: PAUSE — Reset Your Nervous System
Before each practice session or test:
- Place both hands lightly on the machine
- Close your eyes
- Take five slow breaths
- Release tension in your jaw, shoulders, wrists, and forearms
- Imagine your hands floating rather than pressing
This signals safety to the brain — an essential precursor to speed.
STEP 2: RELEASE — Let Go of the Emotional Charge
Say quietly to yourself:
“It’s no big deal.”
Repeat it if necessary.
Let it land.
The point is not apathy — it is detachment from fear.
A student who treats a 200 Q&A like a life-or-death situation will never write it cleanly.
But a student who treats it like Tuesday afternoon practice?
They unlock their true rhythm.
STEP 3: SHIFT — Step Into the Version of You Who Has Already Passed
Before every take, visualize:
- A calm face
- Loose fingers
- Light strokes
- Words landing in your hands with ease
- Punctuation falling into place without effort
- Rhythm instead of panic
Picture the version of yourself on test day:
- collecting your passing certificate
- smiling
- calling your instructor
- texting your family
- updating your résumé
- walking into a courtroom or deposition as an official reporter
This primes the brain to accept this version as normal.
When you normalize success, you perform at the level required to achieve it.
Why This Works: The Neuroscience Behind the Magic
Krupin’s insight may sound mystical, but the mechanism is grounded in well-established cognitive science.
- Visualization activates the same neural circuits as real action, strengthening performance.
- Relaxation increases fine motor fluency, allowing fingers to move at high speeds.
- Detachment reduces cortisol, preventing the cognitive shutdown associated with pressure.
- Confidence increases prediction accuracy, essential for anticipating phrasing and punctuation.
- A “no big deal” attitude preserves cognitive bandwidth, letting the subconscious handle automatic writing patterns.
When combined, these elements create an internal environment where speed is not forced — it emerges.
What Experienced Court Reporters Know Instinctively
Talk to any reporter who writes realtime in federal court. They’ll tell you the same thing:
Your hands are only as good as your state of mind.
Realtime writers cannot afford panic. They cannot afford tension. They cannot afford to “chase” what they’re hearing.
They have mastered relaxed precision — the art of writing fast while staying internally slow.
Students often miss this truth. They equate intensity with improvement. But the deeper secret of high-speed stenography is that the body must be calm to perform at its peak.
This is why the best instructors say things like:
“Drop your shoulders.”
“Stop gripping the machine.”
“You’re trying too hard.”
“Let the words come to you.”
“Relax into the speed.”
These are not clichés. They are the operating principles of high-level stenographic performance.
Sliding Into Your Certification Reality
What would happen if every student treated their CSR, RPR, or state exam not as a monster to conquer, but as a natural next step in their evolution?
What would happen if they walked into test day with the same relaxed confidence they have when writing at home?
What if they believed — truly believed — that the version of themselves who writes 225 Q&A already exists?
Students would pass sooner.
They would plateau less.
They would enjoy the process more.
They would stop burning out at 160 or 180.
They would trust their skill rather than judge it.
They would experience breakthroughs that feel sudden but were building quietly within them for months.
This is what it means to “slide” into a new reality: not through force, but through alignment.
The Quiet Power of Thinking Differently
Krupin left his laboratory after discovering a truth that shook his worldview. Court reporting students don’t need to walk away from anything — they simply need to walk toward a new inner state.
The journey to certification is not merely about words per minute. It’s about the psychology of performance, the physiology of relaxation, and the courage to believe that the reporter you want to become already exists inside you.
The path forward is not force.
It is not fear.
It is not obsession.
It is ease.
It is flow.
It is the quiet conviction: It’s no big deal. I can already do this.
And once that belief settles into your bones, the rest — the speed, the accuracy, the certification — comes naturally.
Because you have finally stepped into the version of yourself that was waiting there all along.
StenoImperium
Court Reporting. Unfiltered. Unafraid.
Disclaimer
“This article includes analysis and commentary based on observed events, public records, and legal statutes.”
The content of this post is intended for informational and discussion purposes only. All opinions expressed herein are those of the author and are based on publicly available information, industry standards, and good-faith concerns about nonprofit governance and professional ethics. No part of this article is intended to defame, accuse, or misrepresent any individual or organization. Readers are encouraged to verify facts independently and to engage constructively in dialogue about leadership, transparency, and accountability in the court reporting profession.
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Wow, what wisdom of Krupin!! His radical idea was simple yet revolutionary: treat your goals as no big deal. According to Krupin, when you stop clinging to outcomes and adopt a relaxed mindset, opportunities and success manifest faster than desire ever could.
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