Your Imagination is Everything: It is the Preview of Life's Coming Attractions

http://www.thrive-team.com/2014/08/see-it-to-believe-it-the-power-of-visualization/

Two years ago, I wrote a post called Conceive, Believe, Achieve about the efficacy of visualization to reach your goals (http://alinefromlinda.blogspot.ca/2015/01/conceive-believe-achieve.html).  Visualization might be rare in your world, but in the world of professional sports, it's commonplace. Many athletes, including gymnast Mary Lou Retton, have proven that it works.

Colin Hiles, aka The Mindset Guy, maintains that visualization is the greatest accelerator to achieving your goals.  In his video, "How to Visualize to Achieve Your Goals Faster" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxoToJCWA44), he points out that your subconscious mind plays such a vital role in shaping your actions.  "Your imagination is your preview of life's coming attractions," maintained Albert Einstein.  If you focus on what you don't want, and that's what worriers do, you will likely attract trouble.  If you focus on what you do want, and that's what people who pray or meditate do, you will likely attract good results.  

Colin Hiles explains that in visualization, in the process of developping a new mindset, you start with the invisible and make it visible.  For example, if you want to lose weight, you see yourself as that thin person.  Your thoughts are very deliberate at first.  He recommends that you focus on images as the subconscious mind understands images rather than words.  Furthermore, the subconscious cannot distinguish between something that is real and something that is vividly imagined.  If you close your eyes and hold the image vividly enough, you should get a physiological response.  For example, if you imagine yourself sucking on a lemon, you might start to pucker up.  However, if you imagine yourself vacationing on a beautiful island, you'll probably find your body relaxing.

Here is Colin Hiles' six step process of VISUALIZATION:

1.  decide what goals you want to achieve

2.  relax; get into an Alpha state, the bridge between the conscious and the subconscious

3.  alternate between imagining (belief/desire) and feeling (talk and act as if you have already reached your goal)

4.  focus (act ideally)

5.  repeat (twice a day for 5 minutes)

6.  cheat (use Colin Miles' step by step audio guide)

https://quotefancy.com/quote/3150/Albert-Einstein-Imagination-is-everything-It-is-the-preview-of-life-s-coming-attractions

Conceive, Believe, Achieve

"Imagination rules the world." (Napoleon Bonaparte)

Since today is the first day of 2015, I thought it would be a good day to focus on goals.  Anyone who reads my posts regularly knows that my dream is to publish a book.  My goal is easily identifiable.  Is it achievable, though?

Read my post "Whoever Believes Will Achieve" (http://alinefromlinda.blogspot.ca/2012/11/whoever-believes-will-achieve.html).  What stuck out in my mind when I re-read it recently was that the mind makes little or no distinction between image and reality if the image is vivid enough.  That is powerful stuff!  

Successful athletes use visualization techniques to improve their performance.  Once such athlete, Mary Lou Retton, used to carry around index cards to help her visualize nailing a gymnastics routine. Her Olympic medal haul included one gold, two silver and two bronze.

"Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve." 

Napoleon Hill, author of the above quote, is a believer in visualization.  According to Brian Tracy, author of Goals:  How to Get Everything You Want -- Faster Than You Ever Thought Possible (see http://www.amazon.ca/Goals-Everything-Faster-Thought-Possible/dp/1605094110visualization) visualization activates "the law of attraction", drawing people, circumstances and resources into your life to help you achieve that goal.  Tracy also maintains that visualization activates "the law of correspondence".  If you change your mental pictures inside, it will change your outside world. You become what you think about most of the time.  

Brian Tracy says visualization includes four parts:

1.  frequency:  how often do you spend visualizing an image 

2.  duration:  how long do you spend visualizing an image 

3.  vividness:  how vivid or clear is your image

4.  intensity:  the amount of emotion you put into that image

If you are an archery expert, you will appreciate Tracy's analogy:  You can't hit a target if you can't see it.  The author recommends that you visualize late at night, thereby enabling your mind to accept that at a deeper level during sleep.  The other optimum time to visualize is early in the morning, before the mind is filled with the day's activities.  

"Have complete faith that your pictures will materialize."

According to Tracy, "[Visualization] can do more to help you step on the accelerator of your own potential than any other exercise you engage in."  So, as you write a list of new year's resolutions for 2015, remember:  Conceive a goal.  Believe that you can reach that goal!  Achieve it!

http://www.mechanictomillionaire.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Epi-87-M2M.jpg