Experts& Advise

Visualization: Can I Just Drive it, or Do I Have to Know How it Works?

I often get this question about visualization: “Can I just do it? Or do I have to know how it works?”

Truth is, you can just drive it and still get all the benefits of a better income, better relationships, more happiness and better health. Not to mention the inspiration, motivation and optimism that most successful people have.

And the better you understand how visualization works, the better you can work it. Getting your head around how it works is easy. Here’s a quick sketch.

First a commonsense view ...

The Common Sense Version: Healthy Psycho

Visualize yourself in full ownership of a comfortable home. Is that so insane? Then hey, go psycho for a minute.

Focus on a mental image of you in the back yard of a paid-off home. Wriggle your barefoot toes in green, clipped grass. Visualize a back porch with a redwood deck. On the deck is a gas grill. Beside the deck steams a hot tub. Next to the hot tub is a swimming pool. And no mortgage. You’re debt free in a comfortable life. That’s empowerment.

Now that you’re getting a little crazy, push yourself over the edge ... Make this mental picture concrete with a dream board, also known as a vision board.

What is a vision board? In our multi-media age, it means this: get yourself some digital photographs of such a home, such grass, deck, hot tub, swimming pool -- and most importantly, an image of a paid-in-full note from your mortgage company. Cut and paste from open-source libraries the internet (there’s a good one at www.visionboardsite.com), or make them yourself with a digital camera. Put these in a Powerpoint slide show or a visionboardsite.com slide show. Add motivational music to it.

Serve up this slide show to yourself several times a day. Focus on it. Journal about it. You’ll begin to feel ... a little bit ... “craaaazy.” You’ll begin to feel that you really can do it. You know what? That’s healthy. Because you really can do it. Don’t let anyone -- especially yourself! -- tell you otherwise. Use common sense and reason to affirm your goals.

That’s the first half of how visualization works -- showing you truths about what you can accomplish.

…The second half is motivation.

Your Personalized Motivational Seminar -- Daily

If you’ve ever been to a motivational seminar, you know how quickly a burst of motivation can evaporate. By the next weekend, or the next month, you’ may be warming the couch again.

Not so with a slideshow vision board of images and music of what you want in life. You look at it every day. So it motivates you every day. You make plans, treasure-mapping the skills, relationships and opportunities you’ll need to make it happen. You take action every day. Because you’re taking action, you see yourself making progress -- paying your mortgage down fast, in our life-changing example. Witnessing concrete success adds fuel to your self-help motor. And in five, ten years, you’ve reached your goal. It all started with an intense, focused, goal-oriented visualization.

That’s the commonsense view of how visualization works.

In my next post, we’ll have a look at how visualization changes the way you see the world.