24 Jul The Power of Visualization
Seeing is Believing
the power of visualization
Ok… I admit it. I can be a bit of an Anthony Robbins addict. Some people find his stuff a but outrageous but, for me there is nothing better to accompany me on my morning walk than Tony.
Last week I was listening to him speak on visualization. This is something I do on a daily basis. Some folks would call it day dreaming but, for me it is looking into my future and seeing how I want it to be.
A Psychology Today article references a study looking at brain patterns in weightlifters and found that the patterns activated when a weightlifter lifted hundreds of pounds were similarly activated when they only imagined lifting. In some cases, research has revealed that mental practices are almost effective as true physical practice, and that doing both is more effective than either alone. For instance, in his study on everyday people, Guang Yue, an exercise psychologist from Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Ohio, compared “people who went to the gym with people who carried out virtual workouts in their heads”. He found that a 30% muscle increase in the group who went to the gym. However, the group of participants who conducted mental exercises of the weight training increased muscle strength by almost half as much (13.5%). This average remained for 3 months following the mental training.
If this worked for them then it certainly can work for you. Here are for easy steps to get you on the visualization fast track.
Make it the right time. Creative Visualization is best used when you are truly relaxed and feel positive. A good idea is to take a nice long hot bath, especially at night, then put on very relaxing music in headphones, and meditate for a couple minutes.
Start to visualize what you want. After your feeling 100% positive and relaxed close your eyes and visualize a mental movie of what you desire. For many people it’s hard to visualize at first so use this tip. Let’s say you desired going to the beach. Start off with the feel, feel the warmness of the beach and feel the light breeze swaying away. Then go to hearing, hear the seagulls, the kids laughing, the people talking, the waves. Now visualize yourself, with all these senses, walking to the beach, taking your stuff and doing whatever you would do at the beach for as long as you like.
Practice make perfect. Creative Visualization is much less effective if only done every few days or so. It should be done at daily. Besides… it is so much fun designing your own future… right?
Feel excellent, believe and take action. You must feel like you have what you desire and visualize this on a daily basis. Additionally you should truly expect it to happen. How long will it take to manifest? It depends on how big the goal is. There is no rule book that says how long it will take but bigger goals will take a bit longer than very small ones. Most importantly you must always take action. Visualization without action is just… well… day dreaming.
Maximize your human experience!
Thom
