Jim's Gems: Visualization Techniques

Building upon last week’s discussion about visualization and the "end-result," we promised to discuss techniques which might be helpful. All successful people including professional athletes, business leaders, politicians, doctors, lawyers and a whole host of others who take personal performance seriously have found the secret to bringing out the best in themselves.

There are experts who claim to have developed their own approach to the methodology. They sell books, give speeches and conduct seminars explaining their methodology. In essence, they make a lot of money selling something that can be yours absolutely free. In fact, you already possess the secret: it's your subconscious mind.

Dr. Bruce Lipton, Stanford University Medical Center, discovered that “most people don’t even acknowledge that their subconscious mind is at play, when the fact is it is a million times more powerful than the conscious mind." Your subconscious mind dictates how happy you’ll be, the relationships you’ll attract, the successes you’ll experience in your career and the levels of confidence you'll reach. It literally influences EVERY aspect of your life.

Visualization is part of your subconscious. It is simply mental rehearsal. You create images in your mind of having or doing whatever it is you want to happen. You repeat these images over and over again. You should focus on repeating this several times a day for five minute stretches. In these five-minute practices, you use your imagination to “visualize the end-result” – being successful, closing the deal, completing that big project, healing the illness, etc.

The key, however, is to always visualize that you have already attained the thing you want. This is actually a mental trick. You don’t hope you’ll achieve it, or build confidence that some day it will happen. With this visualization technique, you “live and feel it” as if it is happening to you now. On one level you know this is a mental trick, but here is an important truth to understand. The subconscious mind cannot distinguish between what is real and what is imagined. Your subconscious will act upon the images you create within, regardless of whether those images reflect your current reality or not.

T. Harv Eker, author and businessman, said, “It all comes down to this: if your subconscious is not ‘set’ for success, nothing you learn, nothing you know, and nothing you do will make much of a difference…By changing your subconscious programming, you take the first essential step to changing your results.”
Does this actually work? In a word, YES! Athletes and other successful people began using leading-edge techniques like mental rehearsal and focused concentration years before the general public or the professional consultants and coaches had even heard of them.

Mental imagery—the kind that involves imagining success—has long been employed by professional athletes to boost their strength, confidence and results. For example, legendary golfer Jack Nicklaus  said he would “watch a movie” in his head before each shot. He visualized a perfect swing, the flight of the ball and the area to which the ball would land. On the green he visualized the line his ball would take and actually see the ball drop into the cup. He could actually imagine receiving the trophy at the end of the tournament. Success was already his for the taking!

“Everyone can use imagery to prepare for all kinds of situations, including public presentations and difficult interactions,” said Dr. Daniel Kadish, a noted psychologist. Research has shown that surgeons, musicians and business executives have used positive imagery to focus and to improve their performances.

Researchers have found that physical movement is consistently involved in the interaction of several specific areas of the brain, and that imagining the movement activated those same areas. In other words, mental rehearsal of an action puts the mind through a neural workout that is very much like the real thing.

So whether you're working on a big project, focusing on that next promotion, breaking your own personal best golf score or selling a new car to an ambivalent customer, mental rehearsal, or visualization, can help you prepare for peak performance by walking through successful strategies and potential pitfalls. What you focus on, you attract.

You can get started TODAY with some simple visualization techniques. There is absolutely nothing holding you back!

Think about it...