Success is not
an accident. It is a deliberate, systematic process of deciding
where you want to go and what it will look like when you get
there, and then taking the steps, day by day, to turn those
dreams into realities. And perhaps the most powerful of all
tools for success you can learn to use is visualization, seeing
with the mind’s eye.
Visualization is an absolutely amazing process that is used by
highly successful men and women. However, it is a power that is
available to everyone. And the better you get at visualization,
the more rapidly you move forward to accomplish your goals and
aspirations. Perhaps the best statement on visualization comes
from Denis Waitley, who says, “Your imagination is your preview
of life’s coming attractions.”
All improvement in your life begins with an improvement in your
mental pictures. Your mental pictures act as a guidance
mechanism that causes you to act in ways that make your mental
pictures come true in your life.
The Law of Correspondence says that “As within, so without.” It
says that your outer world tends to be a reflection of your
inner world-like a mirror. What you see in the world around you
will be consistent over time with the world inside you. The Law
of Concentration says that “Whatever you dwell upon grows in
your reality.” Those two laws in combination explain much of
success and most of failure.
Successful people are those who continually think about pictures
and images of the people they would like to be and the lives
they would like to lead. Unsuccessful people, unfortunately, are
those who continually dwell upon and imagine exactly the things
they don’t want to happen in their lives.
Your subconscious mind is extraordinarily powerful, but it is a
servant, not a master. Your subconscious mind coordinates every
aspect of your thoughts, feelings, behaviors, words, actions and
emotions to fit a pattern consistent with your dominant mental
pictures. It guides you to engage in the behaviors that move you
ever closer to achieving the goals you visualize most of the
time. But your subconscious mind merely accepts commands from
your conscious, visualizing mind. If you visualize something
that you fear, your subconscious mind will accept that as a
command as well. It will then use its marvelous powers to bring
your fears, instead of your dreams and aspirations, into
reality.
Over and over, in surveys and tests, it has been found that
successful, happy people think about successful, happy things
most of the time. Unsuccessful, unhappy people, on the other
hand, continually dwell upon and mull over the people they
dislike, the situations they are angry about and the events that
they don’t wish to occur in their lives. And-surprise!
surprise!-whatever a person thinks about continually, either
positive or negative, tends to materialize in the world around
him.
Since virtually no schools or courses ever teach people about
the power of visualization, average people use it in a random,
or haphazard, way most of the time. Instead of continually
thinking about the things they desire and, therefore, moving
consistently toward them, average people think first about
something they want, and then they think about something they
don’t want. They think about things they desire, and they think
about things they fear. They think about people they like, and
they think about people they dislike. They think about success,
and they think about failure. They think about wealth, and they
think about poverty. They think about having a nice life, and
they think about being impoverished or being deeply in debt. And
then they can’t understand why their life seems to go back and
forth, back and forth, and they make very little progress.
The starting point of great success in your life begins, in the
simplest terms, when you discipline yourself to think and talk
about only the things you want and refuse to think and talk
about anything you don’t want. The fact is that your mind is so
powerful that if you don’t want something, you must absolutely
refrain from allowing yourself to think about it when it comes
into your mind. You must push it out, knock it aside, get rid of
it, and get your mind back on what you want.
One of the best formulas for positive thinking I ever learned
was this: No matter what is going on around you, think about
your goals. If you have problems with your finances, stop-refuse
to dwell upon them-and instead think about your goals. If you
are having difficulties with other people, change your mind by
switching your thinking off of your problems with them and onto
your goals.
Eventually, through repetition, you will find yourself thinking
about your goals most of the time. And, as we’ve known for more
than 2,000 years, as you think about your goals, you begin to
move toward them, and they begin to move toward you. All manner
of remarkable things happen in your life that bring you closer
to your goals.
You see, your subconscious mind can’t tell the difference
between something that you vividly imagine-such as a goal, a
hope or a dream-and a real experience. For example, if you go to
an automobile dealership and take your dream car for a drive,
and, as you drive along, you imagine you already own that car,
and you create the feeling of enjoyment that would accompany
your being the proud possessor of that beautiful machine, your
subconscious mind simply accepts that the car belongs to you. It
doesn’t argue; it doesn’t complain; it doesn’t try to change
your instructions. It simply tries to make your instructions a
reality.
Think of your subconscious mind as a photo lab and your
conscious mind as a camera, or a photographer. Your conscious
mind takes pictures of what you want and passes the film to the
photo lab, your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind then
develops the pictures and passes them back up to your reality.
The photo lab doesn’t argue with you over the content of the
film that you sent to it. It simply develops the photographs
exactly as you saw them through the lens of your mind’s eye.
To get back to our car example, when you resume driving your old
car after having driven the new car from the dealership, your
subconscious mind accepts the new car as your desired reality
and the old car as your past situation. Your subconscious mind
then goes to work and consistently, continuously begins to urge
you in the direction of doing the things that will make it
possible for you to have that new car.
A friend of mine, who was unemployed at the time, decided to use
this technique to get a new BMW. He began visiting the
dealership every Saturday and taking a new BMW for a drive. He
feasted his mind and senses on the car. He smelled the leather,
he looked through the windshield and at the dashboard, and he
thought of himself owning this car as he drove it around on
test-drives. He got a brochure on the car from the dealership,
cut out the pictures and put them everywhere, including on the
steering wheel of his old car. Each time he glanced down at the
steering wheel and saw a picture of his new BMW, he imagined
that he was already driving it.
The most remarkable things began to happen. First, he went from
being unemployed to being employed. After two months, he changed
to a better job, and after four months, he changed jobs again.
By the end of the year, he was making three times what he had
made at his very best job in the past. This time, he was working
in an area of sales that was totally suited to him. Almost
exactly to the day one year after he began this visualization
process, he walked into the BMW dealership, traded in his old
car, bought his brand-new BMW, and drove it away. He was still
driving it the last time I spoke to him. Does visualization
work? Well, here’s an exercise that has worked for me and might
work for you.
Everyone I know wants to have his “dream home.” The first
problem with obtaining a dream home is that most people have
never even sat down to think about what it would look like.
Many years ago, when my wife, Barbara, and I were going through
financial difficulties, we began putting together a composite of
our dream home. We subscribed to magazines full of beautiful
pictures and descriptions of lovely homes for sale. We cut out
pictures and descriptions that were consistent with what we were
looking for. We discussed our dream home at great length. We
went to open houses in the best neighborhoods in the city. We
looked at beautiful, expensive homes and at the details and
furnishings in them. We read Architectural Digest and House
Beautiful. We eventually came up with a mutually agreed on
composite of what our dream home would look like. Within a year
after beginning this exercise, we moved from a rented home to a
beautiful home that we had purchased. It wasn’t quite what we
had in mind, but we both recognized at the time that it was
merely a stepping-stone to what we really wanted. A year later,
after looking at 150 houses in different cities, we walked into
a home that was for sale, took one look around and, without
speaking, both knew that we had found it. This was the home that
we had been looking for. It cost twice as much as we ever had
imagined paying for a house, and it required a good deal of
renovation to make it conform to the mental pictures we had
developed. Nonetheless, we bought it, renovated it, repainted
it, furnished it and landscaped the grounds exactly as we had
imagined. And it all began to come together after we had
carefully crafted a clear mental picture of what it would look
like when it was done.
Many, many books and articles have been written on the process
of visualization. I’ve personally studied the subject for many
years. Because the ability to visualize is a natural attribute,
it is something that you can learn to do extremely well with
practice. If you do it properly, and consistently, visualization
can help you to move ahead further and faster than perhaps any
other process you could engage in.
There are four specific dimensions of visualization that can
contribute to its effectiveness in bringing you the things you
want in life.
The first of these is vividness. The more vividly you can see
something that you want in your mind’s eye, the more rapidly it
will materialize in your reality. Most people have only a vague,
fuzzy picture of what they want. They say they want to be rich
or healthy or happy. But when you ask them exactly what that
means to them, they don’t really know. If it fell on them out of
the second story of a building, they probably wouldn’t recognize
it.
Vividness refers to the clarity of detail in your mental
pictures. The more time you spend examining pictures of your
desired goals, or drawing your own pictures of them, or writing
out clear descriptions of what your goals and dreams would look
like when they came true, the more rapidly the pictures are
accepted by your subconscious as a command. Your subconscious
mind immediately goes to work to coordinate all of your other
resources, internal and external, to bring those desires into
your life. “As within, so without.” The clearer and more vivid
your goal is in your mind’s eye, the more rapidly it
materializes in the world around you.
The second dimension of visualization is intensity. This refers
to the amount of emotion you accompany your mental pictures
with. Emotion is central to all accomplishments. There is a
little formula, T x F = R. Thought times feeling equals
realization. This means that the thought or picture multiplied
by the feeling or emotion that accompanies it equals the speed
at which it occurs in your reality. For example, you might think
of increasing your income by 20 percent this year. The thought
in and of itself has no power to affect your subconscious mind
or your behavior. But then combine the thought of an increase in
income with the emotion and excitement of what that would mean
to your standard of living. Think of why you want to earn more
money, what you would do with it, how you would spend it, and
how it would improve your standard of living. Think of the
vacation you could take, the clothes you could buy, the home you
could live in, the beautiful furniture you could acquire, the
car you could drive. The more you think about those exciting
reasons for increasing your income, the more emotional and
intense you become about it. You become more excited and
enthusiastic about any increase in income, and this emotional
energy begins to drive you toward doing the things that make
your income increase a reality.
Men and women whose lives don’t improve from year to year are
those who have never thought about why they want their lives to
improve in the first place. If you don’t think about the reasons
why, you can’t generate the emotional excitement and energy that
motivates you to do the things that make your dreams come true.
One of the most important exercises in visualization is “getting
the feeling.” This means that you imagine something you would
like to be, have or do. You then imagine that you have already
accomplished it, and you create the emotion that would accompany
the accomplishment of the goal.
Let’s say that you wanted to win a prize for being the best
achiever of the year in your company. Imagine you have already
won the prize. Then imagine how you would feel accepting the
prize in front of an audience of your peers. Imagine the pride
and happiness and joy and satisfaction of having risen to the
top. As you bask in that feeling, like a sunbather basks in the
sun, the mental picture is combined with the emotion and passed
on to your subconscious mind. Suddenly, amazing things will
begin to happen. You will have more energy and enthusiasm. You
will be more creative and imaginative. You will be more focused
and directed. You will be more efficient and effective. You will
do more and more of the things that move you in the direction of
making that mental picture a real picture.
The third dimension of visualization is frequency. This refers
to how often you play the mental picture of your desired outcome
on the screen of your mind. You see, when you begin to think of
yourself accomplishing something that you have never
accomplished before, your subconscious mind will tend to keep
you stuck in the old, lower levels of achievement. In fact, your
subconscious mind will be a little skeptical of your new
ambition. You must convince your subconscious mind that you
really want it by repeating the command, that mental picture,
over and over, until it is finally accepted as an absolute
instruction for your subconscious mind to act on. When many
people see others driving nice cars, wearing nice clothes,
living in nice homes and going to nice restaurants, they say to
themselves, “I surely wish I could do things like that.” Then,
just as quickly, they start talking about their problems, their
bills, their relationships, and what they are going to watch on
television that night. Then they wonder why nothing good ever
happens to them. In fact, if they think about what they are
going to watch on television that night, that becomes their
visual image, their guiding force, and their subconscious mind
organizes their thoughts, feelings and activities so that they
get home, get onto the couch and watch television. They have
realized their visualization.
The fourth dimension of visualization is duration. This refers
to how long you hold the mental image or picture in your mind at
one time. The longer you can hold that picture, combined with
emotion and vividness, in your mind, the more rapidly it will be
accepted by your subconscious mind as new operating
instructions. That is why you must think about your goals all of
the time.
Highly successful men and women think about virtually nothing
but the things they want to accomplish. For instance, wealthy
people think about engaging in activities that will create
wealth. Healthy people think about engaging in activities-proper
diet, exercise and rest-that will bring about health. Men and
women who are happy in their relationships continually think
about the things they can do and the kind of people they can
become so that they will be more enjoyable to be around.
Successful people are serious about their lives, and they are
especially serious about keeping their minds on what they want
and off what they don’t want.
My friend Ed Foreman says that worrying, for example, is a form
of negative goal setting. It is setting goals that you
absolutely don’t want to accomplish. It is thinking about and
vividly imagining and emotionalizing pictures of exactly the
things that you don’t want to happen.
It doesn’t really matter to your subconscious whether your
mental images are positive or negative. It will bring you
whatever you ask for. There are seven methods that you can use
to tap into the powers of visualization to help yourself move
ahead more rapidly. You can use any or all of them. They are
used by the most successful men and women in our society.
1. Continuously flood your mind with pictures and images of the
person you want to be and the things you want to have and
accomplish. Read magazines that contain pictures and stories of
what you want to achieve. Go to stores and visit open houses
that give you mental images of the kind of lifestyle you want to
live. At the same time, stop watching long, drawn-out television
shows depicting images of things that you don’t want to have in
your life. Stop reading about characters you don’t admire and
situations you don’t like. Stop associating with people who are
going nowhere.
2. Read stories about and autobiographies by successful people.
Continually read self-development materials filled with ideas
and examples of men and women who have set goals, overcome
adversity, and accomplished great things. As you read, you will
begin to identify with those people, and you will actually begin
to become like them in your own personality and character.
3. Listen to success audiocassettes, and watch success videos.
Also, on television, watch the specials that feature biographies
of successful people and interviews with men and women who have
accomplished the kind of things that you want to accomplish.
Soak your mind in images of success, and success soon will
appear in the world around you.
4. Rewrite your major goals, in the present tense, each morning.
When you rewrite your major goals for a greater income, thinner
waistline, better relationships, and so on, stop to get the
feeling or emotion of pleasure and satisfaction that would go
along with the accomplishment of those goals. Imagine that you
have achieved them already. Smile, and enjoy the feelings of
achievement. If you do this every day, you will be amazed at how
much more rapidly you will move toward achieving the things you
really want.
5. Use the quick affirmation technique. Prior to every event in
which you want to be successful, such as an interview or a sales
presentation, close your eyes, and take a few seconds to create
a clear mental picture of this meeting going extremely well.
Breathe deeply. See yourself as relaxed, calm and confident, and
see the other person as positive, happy and cooperative. See, in
your mind’s eye, the exact outcome or result that you want at
this meeting. Smile, and enjoy the feeling of success. Then open
your eyes, stand up straight, and, with complete confidence, go
into the meeting, knowing that you have already succeeded in
your own mind.
6. Use the standard affirmation technique. On three- by
five-inch index cards, write down your major goals, in the
present tense, and review them on a regular basis. As you read a
goal on a card-for example, “I earn $50,000 per year”-close your
eyes for a few seconds, and imagine what it would be like if you
were earning that kind of money. Visualize your ideal lifestyle.
Imagine the restaurants you would dine at, the clothes you would
wear, the car you would drive, the people you would associate
with. Get the feeling of success and achievement that goes with
that greater income. Then open your eyes, smile, and go about
your business, knowing that you have already succeeded in your
mind’s eye in achieving your goal.
7. Feed your mind a clear mental picture of your desired goals
for the coming day, the coming week, the coming months, just
before you go to sleep at night. You should use this method
every day. We know that in the last 15 minutes before you drop
off to sleep, your subconscious mind is the most receptive to
the input of new commands. Since your mental pictures are a
command, take those last few minutes before you fall off to
sleep to daydream and fantasize about exactly the person you
want to be and the life you want to have. Your subconscious mind
will then take the picture down into its laboratory and work on
it all night long. Very often, when you wake up in the morning,
you will have ideas and insights to help make those mental
pictures a part of your life.
Visualization is a wonderful power. But it is like fire. It can
either create or destroy. It can generate warmth or heat and
power, or it can cause destruction and failure. Your job is to
join the rare few who consciously, consistently and deliberately
use visualization to achieve the goals they want to achieve and
to become the people they want to become. Your job is to use the
power of visualization consciously and continuously to create
the kind of future you want for yourself. Remember, as Denis
Waitley says, “Your imagination is your preview of life’s coming
attractions.” Use it with care.
About Brian Tracy
Brian Tracy is a leading
authority on personal and business success. As Chairman and CEO
of
Brian Tracy International, he is the best-selling
author of 17 books and over 300 audio and video learning
programs. Copyright © 2001 Brian Tracy International. All Rights
Reserved.
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