Visualization: Reaching New Levels of Success
The mind is like a highly efficient computer. It controls emotions, attitudes, and actions according to the information it has been given to work with. If you feed your mind negative ideas, it can only respond negatively. But when you give it constructive, confident directives, it responds with positive motivation for productive action.
A second useful technique for focusing your creative power on your goals is the practice of visualization — the force that transforms your dreams into reality. Visualization is the act of mentally picturing ideas, events, circumstances, and concrete objects. The importance of visualization in goal setting is its effectiveness in enhancing your ability to achieve.
Visualization is exercised by successful, high achievers in every profession. The visualizer clearly and distinctively “sees” the results that will come from the persistent pursuit of goals. When you see a vivid picture of yourself in possession of your goals, the picture stimulates desire, sparks creativity in planning action steps, and fuels motivation to take action. In the majority of situations, vision gives more accurate knowledge than any other sense. This truth is reflected in the fact that we customarily think in pictures; in other words, we visualize.
- An inventor visualizes when mentally picturing a new device to accomplish a specific job.
- An advertising executive visualizes when planning a graphic layout to present the unique quality of a product or service.
- An artist visualizes by mentally forming the completed picture before the brush ever touches the canvas.
- A salesperson helps the prospect visualize by painting word pictures of the benefits a product or service provides.
You can, by conscious practice, refine your skill in visualization and turn it into a forceful habit that improves your personal productivity. Practice the creative ability to visualize, and support your visualization with concrete action. Once you begin to use visualization regularly and according to a plan, you will find it one of the most helpful tools you have ever used for harnessing the power of your imagination. Visualization affects every part of the goal-setting process.
- Visualization focuses your attention on your goals. You achieve a goal only when you know exactly what it is you want. Visualization is the tool that brings a goal into sharp focus so you take only actions that move you in the right direction.
- Visualization increases desire. When, through visualization, you experience how it feels to be in possession of your goals, desire grows by leaps and bounds. Without desire there is no life nor excitement in your goals program. Enthusiastic desire sustains motivation throughout the entire process of setting and achieving goals.
- Visualization intensifies beliefs and commitments. The saying, “Seeing is believing,” has more than just a grain of truth. When you visualize yourself in possession of a goal, you believe in your ability to achieve it. You know what it looks like, how it feels, and what you must gain in the way of knowledge and skill to possess it.
- Visualization sharpens concentration. Because visualization shows you the exact path to your destination, you are not distracted by outside circumstances or the urging of others to leave the path you have selected. You move directly to your chosen goal.
- Visualization relieves stress. Anxiety and stress creep in when doubt, uncertainty, and fear are associated with the future. Visualization prevents and relieves stress by providing believable information about the future.
- Visualization fuels motivation. Visualization generates intense interest and a sense of urgency that keep motivation at a white-hot heat. Procrastination, inertia, and indecision disappear. You are energized and eager to keep moving toward the accomplishment of your goals.
“Take charge of your life. You can do with it what you will,” said the Greek philosopher Plato. These words are still true today. You can do with your life whatever you will when you make the most of every minute. Take responsibility for your productivity by managing your time more effectively. You will be astonished at the results!
LMI JOURNAL, VOLUME IV, NUMBER 7 Leadership Management® Institute
Reprinted with permission === Strategic Essentials is a Managing Partner for Leadership Management® International, Inc.
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