Can you see yourself in your dream job? Can you picture yourself retired, laying on the beach or sitting on your porch in your cabin in the mountains? If you have been dreaming about these things, you actually have been visualizing.
Visualization is more than just (day)dreaming. By envisioning yourself in a circumstance or situation, you actually are doing a great deal of mental ‘work’ to clarify and plan for your goals.
When you visualize, you are stimulating that inner inventor. You prod your subconscious to develop ideas and creative methods of looking at and planning for your goals.
Since you are developing that picture, it makes you more attuned to notice things around you that will help you succeed. You observe the world around you more carefully and identify resources and approaches to problem solving and application of your knowledge and understanding.
By continuously allowing yourself to think through your goal and re-imagine it each time you think about it, you become more flexible, more creative and open to new and different tools and tactics to achieve goals. You start to surround yourself with people and things that coincide with your goals and start to shed those that contradict them. They start to fade from the ‘picture’.
When you see it, you can be it. Seeing yourself successful, ‘living the dream’, builds your self-esteem, confidence and internal motivation.
Visualization can be done in three simple steps.
Get comfortable so you can focus.
Remove distractions and temptations. Get somewhere quiet – no people, phones, computers, tv’s or anything else that might draw your attention and focus from the task at hand.
Much like meditation, close your eyes, take several deep breaths to get as calm and focused as possible let your imagination run wild. Let the picture get vivid, colorful and detailed. You want the ‘vision’ to be you looking at you living inside your desired goal/dream. Remember the old story of the ghost of Christmas past, when he took Scrooge to see his life – looking in through the outside? Do that with your vision – see yourself from the outside being successful, achieving your goal.
This video highlights the obstacles Arnold Schwarzenegger overcame to reach his success. He discusses the importance of having a vision and goal to help you reach success.
How often do we visualize and immediately talk ourselves out of looking deeper? What would happen if you allowed the vision to fully express itself? What would happen if we cultivated a visualization practice? Ashanti shares her story of what happens when you allow your vision to reveal itself fully, unabridged.