Visualization can be a powerful technique for ‘Living Better’ – achieving successes that are important to you.
What is visualization, anyway? Visualization is “seeing in your mind’s eye”. In a word, imagination. It’s not just thinking. Visualizing includes imagining with true-to-life images and scenes. Visualization is purposeful – it’s not just daydreaming. It is purposefully imagining something we’d like to be or accomplish to the extent that we can “experience” it in our mind’s eye.
Our brain believes visualizations! Our brain can believe that nightmares are real and can recreate experiences with visualization.
We can close our eyes and picture an experience we want. This kind of visualization is a powerful mind-hack, as our brain then begins to re-wire itself for the outcome we have visualized.
Athletes use visualization to improve performance. Visualization can be used to take advantage of what’s called the “Law of Attraction”. Visualization can be used to relieve stress and ease anxiety. It can also be used to set goals—and reach them. It helps us to focus on what we want to achieve.
Consider this Scientific American article titled with the question: Can Visualizing Your Body Doing Something Help You Learn to Do It Better? The article’s question is answered by Srini Pillay, an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and author of Life Unlocked: 7 Revolutionary Lessons to Overcome Fear. Pillay states that visualization—thinking about our body doing something—directly activates the motor cortex. It creates new connections and primes the body for action. Wow!
Jennifer Baumgartner, Psy.D, writes about visualization as “a cognitive tool accessing imagination to realize all aspects of an object, action, or outcome.” Concrete expressions of what has been visualized (such as vision boards, phrases, or small objects) can symbolize and remind us of the visualization. Visualization can be used to create “mental vacations” from anxiety. We can visualize catching the ball, hitting a home run, or rehearsing a presentation.
In Seeing is Believing: The Science Behind Visualization, the author points out, “…tell your brain your plan in a thousand words, and it gets bored mid-way…but draw it – or show it – a picture or photo and it will respond with much deeper interest and attention.”
In fact, the more detailed and realistic a visualization is, the greater its power. We might first see ourselves in the third person, and then actually see ourselves in our own body doing something – complete with sounds, smells, and physical sensations.
Visualization isn’t magic, but it seems to, at the very least, prime us to change—to practice being our better self. It helps us to aim in the direction we want to go, at both a conscious and a subconscious level.
More resources:
Visualization: How Mental Imagery Can Make You Better at Life
5 Reasons Why You Should Visualize
This is a visualization exercise that actually works, according to neuroscience
Ease Anxiety with These 5 Visualization Techniques