You’ll find free visualization tools scattered through this article and a collection of them at the end of the post for you to use.
The goal with visualization is to condition your subconscious mind with the beliefs, emotions, energy and clarity you need to bring your ideal life into reality.
Many of the world’s most successful, productive and creative people visualize daily to perform at their peak.
What does it mean to do visualization?
Visualization is the process of mentally imagining a goal or desire in a way that feels as if you’re already living in that reality. The daily practice of visualizing your dreams, as already complete, can rapidly accelerate your achievement of those dreams.
It is the practice of imagining what you want to achieve in the future, as if it were true today. All five senses of sight, smell, touch, taste and hearing are used in this exercise.
The process of visualizing directs your subconscious to be more consciously and more constantly aware of the target you have in mind.
A human being always acts and feels and performs in accordance with what he imagines to be true about himself and his environment. -Maxwell Maltz Share on XWhat is an example of visualization?
I’m uncertain of the first uses of visualization to manifest success in reality. Recently, I did come across a mention of its use by Jim Thorpe, a Native American who was awarded Gold medals for winning the Pentathlon and Decathlon events at the 1912 Olympics in Sweden.
On the ship to Europe, his teammates observed that he was sitting around in a dream like state on the deck. When asked what he was doing, he said that he was imagining being on the award podium and creating mental pictures on going through the physical motions of his events. Nowadays that is common practice for many accomplished athletes.
Jim Carrey is a Canadian-American actor, comedian and artist. In the early 1990s, Jim was an unknown actor struggling to get by. To stay motivated, he decided to write himself a cheque for $10 million for “acting services rendered” and dated it for 1994. He carried it in his wallet for daily inspiration. In 1994, Carrey learned he would reap exactly $10 million for his role as Lloyd Christmas. Today, Carrey is one of America’s top movie stars and he credits his constant visualization with helping him get there.
Natan Sharansky, a computer specialist who spent 9 years in prison in the USSR after being accused of spying for the USA, has a lot of experience with mental practices. While in solitary confinement, he played himself in mental chess and said, “I might as well use the opportunity to become the world champion”. In 1996, Sharansky went on to beat world champion chess player Garry Kasparov.
Why is visualization so powerful?
Your body and mind are a whole and training the mind will have strong effects on what your body can achieve.
This helps to prepare and to teach you how to respond to a situation before it happens and conditions your brain to see, hear and feel the end results in your mind.
Brain studies have revealed that thoughts produce the same mental instructions as actions. Mental imagery impacts many cognitive processes in the brain. For example, motor control, attention, perception, planning and memory. Therefore, the brain is getting trained for actual performance during visualization.
Faith is the courage to let your mind visualize what lies ahead as you protect your heart from being troubled by what happened in the past. -Gift Gugu Mona Share on XVisualization techniques
Mental rehearsal is often a technique used by athletes during training and before main sporting events. You picture yourself going through the actions of performing a task, as opposed to the actual physical practice. You imagine performing without having to actually do anything.
Visualization meditation requires concentrating on a mental image or several images to help focus and center the mind and body –Matko, 2019. Any calming image that you find peace in can work, although there are often some commonly used images that may help.
A vision board is a collage of images arranged in a way to help you manifest your goals or vision. Your board can be physical or digital, you can even use Pinterest to collate your visuals. Use a vision board to manifest your personal goals or create a visual representation of a personal vision statement.
An affirmation is a straightforward statement, which when frequently repeated, which profoundly affects both your conscious thinking processes and, more importantly, the subconscious. We sometimes make these statements intentionally, or more often than not, without thinking about them. The key to affirmations lies in the repetition. After all, anything you repeat is going to be memorized over time, even subconsciously. Affirmations can be powerful and profoundly affect you by wiring your brain to accept what’s repeated as truth.
You cannot advance if you cannot visualize the end from the start. -Nabil N. Jamal Share on XListen to (ad) brainwave entrainment audios or guided (ad) hypnosis MP3s or (ad) subliminal audios while picturing your goals in your mind. When you listen to binaural beats (brainwave entrainment), your brain activity matches the frequency set by the frequency of the beat. This is called the frequency-following effect. This means you can use binaural beats to entrain your mind to reach a certain mental state.
Dreams are one of the best ways for our limitless non-conscious mind to reach out to us. Dreams can absolutely change your life for the better, because your powerful non-conscious and inner mind (ad) communicates through dreams. They can give you real-life million-dollar ideas that you can follow, practical solutions to aggravating problems, perfect opportunities to try out new ideas, creative options you had not considered and premonitions of what is to come. Declare the intention of what you want to dream about before you go to sleep.
It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it. -John Steinbeck Share on XWatching movies or videos that depict achievement by others who might have already accomplished our desired outcomes is also a form of visualization. Watch inspiring true stories or motivational documentaries that teach steps towards how to achieve your desired goals. Movies are a good way to get in touch with the feelings of goal achievement. If it’s a sport goal that easiest because you can view the play of your sporting heroes and emulate some of their techniques. The same is also possible when studying alternative goal achievers. Envisage the kind of decisions that your goals’ heroes might make when encountering challenges that you face on your own journey. Imagine (visualize) having a conversation with them to solve a problem.
Music helps to access subconscious parts of the brain. You might like to try new life frequencies (ad) vibrational energy music while visualizing or these (ad) free manifesting songs. My friend, Richard Webb, also has a great collection of (ad) transformational music for you to use, as well as providing instructions on how to set up your own music success playlist.
Art gives similar access to varying neurological pathways as music. Something magical happens, our brains react when we experience truly profound artwork. The kind that makes you feel an upswell of emotion, gain an epiphany or contemplate society. Our brains react to art and emit brain waves. The more appealing a work of art, the more gamma brain waves created!
In using any of those listed techniques, imagine situations in as much detail as possible and engage as many of your senses as you can. Who are you with? Which emotions are you feeling? What are you wearing? Do you smell anything? What sounds do you hear? What else is in your immediate environment? Are you feeling warm or cool?
Visualization techniques can also be used in combination, this adds interest or enhances the experience. For example, play empowering audios or music while creating a vision board, speak affirmations out loud while mentally rehearsing a particular scenario, play hypnosis audios during sleep, incorporate many of the tools into the physical environment of your home and garden so they are more reflective of the goals you have in mind.
What are some benefits of visualization
Brain studies have revealed that thoughts produce the same mental instructions as actions. Mental imagery impacts motor control, attention, perception, planning and memory. The brain can be trained for actual performance during visualization.
Visualization can boost your motivation, define and clarify what you want, optimize your performance, reduce stress, declutter your mind, increase your confidence, decrease anxiety, spark inspiration and enhance productivity.
Focus on the individual steps, the moments, and let them lead one to the next. -Charles F. Glassman Share on XWhy can’t I visualize things?
You may have aphantasia, which is the inability to voluntarily create a mental picture in your head.
Not a lot is known about aphantasia and a remedy has not yet been discovered. There have been more studies published over the last decade, so researchers may know more in the near future.
Studies have estimated that 2.1 to 2.7 percent of the population may have the condition.
Perhaps you might try simple beginnings. For example, practise by closing your eyes after looking at your breakfast plate and place it into your imagination as a mental picture.
I’m not an expert on aphantasia, however the simplest of techniques practiced on a regular basis might support connecting new neural pathways that enable the beginnings of imagining.
Another practice might be to draw something with a pencil without giving yourself specific details about what it should look like. You might ask yourself to draw a spoon, a dog or a phone. Close your eyes and try to imagine in your mind how you might draw that item to depict it.
If, over time, even those simple exercises appear impossible for you then, instead, you might like to create a vision board of your goals and desires but clipping, collating and pasting pictures from magazines onto a display board. Using similarly alternative visualization tools could be helpful too. I’ve listed a few below.
You mean I'm supposed to make stuff up? You are creators, you make stuff up all the time! -Esther and Jerry Hicks Share on XVisualization tools
Affirmations are phrases or statements that we repeat to ourselves to help us shift our minds in ways that, hopefully, improve our lives. if we repeat our affirmations often enough, our brain just might start to think these thoughts automatically. Personally, I like to begin affirmations with the words, “I choose to …” for example, “I choose to feel that I am having fun”.
Meditation for stilling the mind and walking yourself through positive scenarios is a great morning practice each day. Enjoy visualizing your personal goals with this free meditation and relaxation timer.
Mind Movies gives you the simplest, most enjoyable way to harness the power of visualization and optimize your subconscious mind. So, below, I have added several links to Mind Movies free books, webinars and tools, for you to explore their offerings.
If you can hit play on a YouTube video, you can (ad) design your own Mind Movie. Just select your images or video clips, music and affirmations and let the software do the rest. You’ll have created a short 3-minute video as a digital vision board, representing your best life. You’re the creator, the director and the producer.
Guided imagery audios are a great tool too. One of my earliest and still favorite is from Jafree. His website is a little messy and slow to load yet his tools are worth the effort. Check out some of his offerings (ad) at this link.
Click on the following images to explore many of Mind Movies’ resources
Click the following images to learn more about each. NOTE: If the images are ever missing, please return in 24-hours, it’ll simply be a plugin glitch and I will have fixed it by then! Thank you.
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