Why Visualization is Important to Your Success in Life
Discover how to tap into your mental power and use visualization to achieve your goals and dreams in life.
I know you have heard about it a gazillion times, that visualization is powerful, it greatly increases your chances of hitting your goals and reaching the success you want.
Not only that, but it is also said that when you visualize, you are actually activating the Law of Attraction by attracting the things you want into your life. True?
Well, I’m not a big fan of the Law of Attraction, but I do support science and research. And yes, if you want to achieve extraordinary success in life, you need to tap into the power of active visualization.
Visualization and Mental Rehearsal Improve Your Skills
In an article written by Joe Haefner, he shared that there was a study conducted by Dr. Biasiotto at the University of Chicago on a group of basketball players.
Dr. Biasiotto divided the basketball players into 3 different groups and tested each group on how many free throws they could make.
- The first group was asked to practice free throws every day for an hour.
- The second group was asked to just visualized themselves practicing and making the free throws in their heads.
- The third group was the control group and was asked to do nothing.
After about a month, Dr. Biasiotto tested the free throw skills of the players again. And this was what he discovered:
- The first group improved their accuracy by 24%.
- The third group, which did nothing, saw no improvement, which was expected.
- The second group improved their accuracy by 23%, even without physically touching the basketball.
Can you see how powerful and effective visualization can be right now?
The second group of basketball players practiced their free throws through mental rehearsal, yet, their improvement was as much as those who went through the physical training.
Jack Nicklaus, nicknamed, The Golden Bear, is an American retired professional golfer. He is regarded to be one of the greatest golfers of all time. He has won a record of 18 major championships, 3 more than the second-placed Tiger Woods.
During an interview, this was what he said…
“I never hit a shot, not even in practice, without having a very sharp, in-focus picture of it in my head. First I see the ball where I want it to finish, nice and white and sitting up high on the bright green grass. Then the scene quickly changes, and I see the ball going there: its path, trajectory, and shape, even its behavior on landing. Then there is a sort of fade-out, and the next scene shows me making the kind of swing that will turn the previous images into reality.”
You may think that visualization is bogus, but plenty of study and research has shown otherwise.
According to an article published on Monster.com, you can use visualization to help you find the right job/career that you want:
The Journal of Consulting Psychology outlined an experimental study of visualization techniques. One group of job seekers received traditional career counseling and interview coaching.
Those in the second group were exposed to the same career counseling and interview training, but these job seekers also learned to use visualization techniques related to these subjects.
Two months after the training, 21 percent of those in the group who did not use mental imagery found new jobs. But 66 percent of those who used this technique were employed within two months.
Do you also know that Hollywood actor, Jim Carrey once told Oprah Winfrey how he visualized his way to success?
Before he was famous, Jim would drive to Mulholland Drive every night, sit there, looking down at the city on his feet, stretch out his arms, and say, “Everybody wants to work with me. I’m a really good actor. I have all kinds of great movie offers.”
Jim would repeat doing so over and over, convincing himself that he had a couple of movies lined up.
He even wrote himself a check for $10 million, and wrote on the check, “for acting services rendered”, and dated the check 10 years later. And that was in 1985.
In November 1995, 10 years later, Jim Carrey got a movie deal for “Dumb and Dumber”, and the deal was for $10 million.
How to Visualize the Success You Want
Now that you understand the power of visualization and why it is important to your success. It is time to learn how to do it.
Here are a couple of tips:
1. Visualize with emotions
You want to include sight, sound, and feeling to really boost the effect of visualization. Don’t just see yourself achieving your goals without feeling any excitement.
Make your visualization as real as possible. If you want to visualize driving your dream car, see the car parked in your garage. Be specific with the car brand, model, and color. And imagine yourself walking to your dream car, unlock it, hear the door unlock, feel your hand grabbing the door and pull the door open. See yourself sitting on the driver’s seat. Feel the comfort of the seat. Smell the new car smell and listen to the engine rev as you hit the start button.
You want to make your visualization exciting and interesting. The more emotional and the more real your mental picture, the more likely your mind will materialize it.
2. Make it into a movie
Remember, this is your life and you are trying to visualize the ideal future that you want. Hence, you are the director and the actor.
You want to see yourself from the first-person point of view, and then turn the mental pictures into a movie. See yourself working toward your goals and reaching the success you want with detail.
3. Visualize the process and outcome
A lot of people get it wrong by only visualizing the outcome or the result that they want. If they want to have a dream car, they only visualize having the dream car. And they forget something important: the process.
Yes, the outcome is important, but so is the process. You don’t want to create a “gap” between your dream and your reality.
When you visualize the outcome and ignore the process, your mind will create a “gap” between your reality and your dream. You confused your mind when you visualize yourself driving a sports car, but in reality, you’re not.
This is why you don’t only want to visualize the result, you want to also visualize and see yourself making the process of achieving the goal you want.
This article from GymLion.com shared a study conducted on the effectiveness of process versus outcome visualization:
For 5 to 7 days before an exam, students were asked to either visualize themselves studying or visualize achieving their desired grade or self monitor themselves (the control). The researchers found that the process group studied more and got better grades that the outcome group (8 points) and the control. Interestingly, the outcome group not only under-performed the process group, but also the control.
Therefore, to make visualization effective, don’t just picture yourself living your dream life, but also picture yourself working hard to get there. Visualize the process.
4. Practice visualization every day
Visualization is a skill. And like all other skills, the only way to improve it is to practice it every day.
You don’t hit the gym once and expect yourself to lose 10 pounds and have the perfect body shape, right? You go to the gym and workout constantly to get back in shape.
The same goes for visualization. You don’t do it once and then stop doing it and expect that things will come true to you.
No, it doesn’t work that way. If you are serious and committed to your dreams, goals, and the success you desire, you must practice visualization every day.
In the beginning, the process may seem hard because you’re not used to it. Plus, there will be a lot of details and you need to make the entire process as specific as possible.
After a few days, you may feel lost and wanted to quit doing it. Don’t! This is the crucial moment where you must press on and continue to do so.
If you quit and give up, you will never have it. Just like exercising. You don’t do it a few days and then when you don’t see any result, you quit, eh?
Be committed and give your best. Practice visualization until you achieve the success you want.
Create a Vision Board
I want to share with a short but inspiring story of how John Assaraf, the New York Times best-selling author, harnessed the power of vision boards and envisioned himself to achieving extraordinary success in his life.
“In 1995 John Assaraf created a vision board and put it up on the wall in his home office.
Whenever he saw a materialistic thing he wanted or a trip he wanted to take, he’d get a photo of it and glue it to the board. Then he’d see himself already enjoying the object of his desire.
In May 2000, having just moved into his new home in Southern California a few weeks earlier, he was sitting in his office at 7:30 AM when his 5-year-old son Keenan came in and sat on a couple of boxes that had been in storage 4 years.
Keenan asked his father what was in the boxes. When John told him his vision boards were in the boxes, Keenan replied, “Your vision whats?”
John opened one of the boxes to show Keenan a vision board.
John smiled as he looked at the first board and saw pictures of a Mercedes sports car, a watch, and some other items, all of which he had acquired by then.
But as he pulled out the second board, he began to cry.
On that board was a picture of the house he had just bought and was living in!
Not a house like it but the house!
The 7,000-square-foot house that sits on 6 acres of spectacular views, with a 3,000-square-foot guest house and office complex, a tennis court, and 320 orange trees — that very home was a home he had seen in a picture that he had cut out of Dream Homes magazine 4 years earlier!”
John Assaraf’s story changed my life. I was so inspired after learning how visualization and the use of vision boards could change my life.
Since then, I started to learn from John Assaraf, read all his books, and attend all his training.
And guess what, I experienced similar results. I wrote down my goals, practiced visualization, created vision boards, and every day, I worked toward the direction that I wanted.
I materialized most of my goals and dreams. I owned a couple of investment properties, I’m running an internet business from the comfort of my home, and I’m also doing what I’m passionate about: blogging and sharing inspiring content with you.
So, if visualization works for me and many others, it will work for you too.
Thus, go HERE, reserve your spot for the on-demand training conducted by John Assaraf.
John will show you how to recognize and release your biggest fears that are stopping you, how to unleash emotions into a powerful source of motivation, and also how to use proven methods to take back control of your life.
