Why The Confidence You Have Dictates The Results You Get

Visualization has often been used to enhance sports performance, creativity and stress management. These are all ways of using visualization as a manifestation technique. Many people have done it and you can too.

Visualization works because your mind doesn’t know the difference between fantasy and reality. If you’ve ever watched a horror movie and noticed that you’d stopped breathing during a suspenseful moment, then you’ve experienced your mind reacting to a visualization instead of the reality that you were safe in your chair. Because your mind is so powerful, it can ignore external reality and your body will react as if your visualization was real. So how can you use this to your advantage?

VISUALIZATION TO ENHANCE PERFORMANCE

There are countless studies that have been conducted with athletes on the effects of visualization. These athletes have been hooked up to biofeedback machines to measure their muscle activity and brain wave patterns while visualizing themselves playing their sport perfectly.

In real life, it’s difficult to play the perfect golf game or hit every pitch or never miss a basket. However, in your mind, you can visualize yourself doing exactly that. While doing so, your mind and your muscles react as if you were actually doing the movements in real life. With regular visualization practice, these athletes built muscle memory that improved their game.

That’s how powerful visualization can be. Simply visualizing yourself performing an activity allows your muscles to respond without resistance from real life external forces. The more intense your visualization, the better your muscles respond and the better your performance the next time you play.

This isn’t just applicable to sports, but to any kind of performance. If you have to make a speech, add visualization to your practice time. Visualize yourself calmly standing before your audience and remembering everything you wanted to say and see your audience reacting favorably to your speech. When it comes time to give your speech, you’ll find that you’re much calmer, exude an air of confidence and your audience responds to that instead of responding to your nervousness. In other words, visualizing success makes it possible to manifest success.

VISUALIZATION AND CREATIVITY

In the book, The Shadow Effect, Deepak Chopra talks about using visualization to create changes in yourself from a "level of holistic creation." According to Deepak Chopra, by visualizing an experience using all 5 senses, you change your experience of the world. When you open your eyes, the world looks and feels more vivid.

Our conscious minds process a fraction of what our subconscious minds can process. So, by visualizing and deepening our conscious mind’s focus on particular aspects of our experiences, we open up our subconscious minds to a greater level of creation and transformation.

In her book, Visualization, Shakti Gawain talks about how this kind of visualization can enhance creativity. After all, creativity is about creating something from a space of potential. Visualization can connect you with what Deepak Chopra calls the field of pure potentiality—the place where all things can be created.

HOW TO VISUALIZE

You’ll need to start with a quiet space where you won’t be disturbed for at least 30 minutes. With practice, you won’t need so much time.  But, in the beginning, you may find your mind wandering from your visualization and that you need to regain your focus. Unlike the meditation technique that I teach, visualization requires focus and concentration. It goes without saying that you should never visualize while driving or doing anything that requires attention focusing on that particular activity.

Once you’ve found a quiet place and secured undisturbed time, sit comfortably with your eyes closed. Start with visualizing a pleasant experience. Use your "eyes" to "see" the vivid colors that surround you in this experience. Then add sound. While focusing on the colors, listen to the sounds in your experience. The sounds don’t have to match what you’ve chosen to see. For example, you can visualize being at the top of a mountain watching the sun rise while listening to a Gregorian chant instead of just the wind and the birds. The choice is yours as to what you see and what you hear.

Once you’re able to focus on your vision and sound, then add smell. Imagine a scent that you love or find soothing and add that to your visualization experience. After that, add the sensation of taste. Imagine the taste of something you enjoy to the point of being able to taste it in your mouth. Finally, add the sensation of touch and visualize the feel of something you enjoy. 

During this process, you may have noticed unrelated thoughts entering your mind—things you needed to do, things you didn’t want to forget, things you were worried about, etc. With practice, you’ll be able to stay with your visualization longer and deepen the experience in your body.

You can use this process to visualize a pleasant experience you’ve had or would like to have. You can also use this process to take an unpleasant experience and visualize a different outcome. Each time you visualize, you send messages to your subconscious about how you would like your life to be. 

Your life is a reflection of what your subconscious mind believes it to be. So instead of going over unpleasant thoughts and memories in your head, remember or create pleasant experiences. 

Changing subconscious beliefs about yourself and your life can change the course of your life in welcomed, unexpected ways.