The Power Of Visualization, According to Science
Stop fooling yourself, believing that intentions and promises alone will change anything.
By now, you might think the worst kind of betrayal is when a boyfriend/ girlfriend/ spouse, or even a friend betrays you.
Well, it is not. It’s the one we make towards ourselves.
We all have intentions and promises:
— ‘This is the year I will be in my best and healthier shape ever, lose a few pounds, read those books I’ve been meaning to read for the last couple of years, launch my own business, spend more time with my family and loved ones”…
…And yet we all fail to some degree.
If this is you, I need to enforce a little bit of tough love:
Stop promising for tomorrow! Get up and start now.
Stop making excuses for who you were yesterday.
Make a change and become someone different today.
Stop fooling yourself, believing that intentions and promises alone will change anything.
Understand that when the subject is ‘change’, a tiny step is more significant than a gigantic intention.
It’s time to leave the passenger’s seat and occupy the driver’s seat.
We all have great intentions and New Year’s resolutions. Each year is the same. However, the majority give up on those resolutions. This happens fast, usually around February or March. It’s not me who says this; it’s a scientific fact.
It’s during these times that I remember these words:
“Knowing what’s best for you and not doing it, that’s also a form of betrayal”.
It’s actually the worst form of betrayal, when we betray ourselves, not doing what we know we should be doing to have a fulfilling life.
Wherever moment you are in your life, and whatever resolutions you might have, GET UP! And make a change today.
Not tomorrow, not next month, not on January 1st, but Today.
In case you are struggling to change habits that no longer serve you, in my previous articles regarding ‘focus,’ ‘productivity’, ‘change,’ and ‘habits’, you’ll find practical tools grounded in Neuroscience (as always), for you to apply right now.
To help you further with the steps to creating the change you want while eliminating brain traps, today I’ll be focusing on a tool I use every single day: ‘Visualization’ — what is it, why it’s so powerful, and how to practice it.
“Blindness is also this, to live in a world where there is no more hope.” — José Saramago*
*From the original in Portuguese: “Cegueira é também isto, viver num mundo onde se tenha acabado a esperança” — José Saramago, Author, Nobel Prize in Literature 1998.
What Is Visualization And Why Is It So Powerful, According To Neuroscience & Psychology
If you want to change your life, you need to change your habits. However, we all know how hard it is to change a habit.
As I’ve explained in a previous article (I’ll leave the link at the end of this post), when you are creating a new habit, and you feel it’s hard and you’re putting in a lot of effort, it’s game-changing to describe and visualize in your mind the step-by-step of the habit.
This will decrease the necessary effort of your limbic system for you to start taking action because it activates your ‘procedural memory’ — which is an automatic memory.
What happens is that circuits of neurons in your brain will start to get activated and compel you to a bigger automatism: it will become easier to implement new habits that originally required a lot of effort.
This is called Procedural Visualization.
I also suggest you use the technique of visualization to design your life’s ‘Bigger Picture’: include all aspects of your life (health, wealth, relationships, etc).
By doing this, you will be helping your mind move toward your desired Identity (the person you wish to become), and your daily choices will start to align with that new Identity and your ‘Bigger Picture’.
This happens because Visualization acts as a mental process that helps your brain rehearse your intended actions, creating new neurologic connections and thus propelling you to start moving. Over time these movements and actions become new habits, leading to new results:
“Visualization and action are intimately connected, involving the motor cortex. Thinking about our body doing something — raising an arm or walking forward — activates the motor cortex directly.
Imagining allows us to remember and mentally rehearse our intended movements. In fact, visualizing movement changes how our brain networks are organized, creating more connections among different regions. It stimulates brain regions involved in rehearsal of movement, such as the putamen located in the forebrain, priming the brain and body for action so that we move more effectively.
Even picturing others in motion warms up the “action brain” and helps us figure out what we want to do and how we can coordinate our actions with those around us. Over time the brain learns our routine movements, allowing these actions to become more automatic and fine-tuned.”
(…) as we get older, the motor cortex has to work harder to imagine actions, so exercising our visualization skills remains important throughout our lives.
— Srini Pillay M.D., assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
It’s like having an internal GPS with the destination you want to arrive: visualize your desired destinations and start focusing on the process to get there (new choices, new mindset,…), even if you need to adjust the course along the way.
This is what high achievers, successful entrepreneurs, artists, and high-competition athletes do: they visualize their daily desired outcomes and focus on them to reach their peak performance regardless of the ‘noise’ around them.
However, keep this in mind: Focus is key, but also Identity: all their choices are aligned with that Identity for it to work: they operate on a daily basis with a mindset of peak performers — not with the mindset of a Netflix lover who wants to keep spending all weekend watching movies and then wishes to win a marathon without compromising.
It’s WHO they wish to become that opens the path to WHAT they wish to accomplish because they know the process is the key factor; the medal is only a confirmation of their commitment. (I’ll be writing an in-depth article about this soon.)
Bottom line, visualization gives you mental clarity and breakthroughs. It helps you get into a high element of concentration, drive, and intellectual ability in connection to your personality or the activity you perform. You experience transformation via internal forces, leading to new beginnings and achievements. You will feel you are attracting what you want into your reality.
I do it too. Granted, I had wonderful mentors, but that’s why I’m sharing this knowledge with you: to pass this legacy on and help you achieve the very best version of yourself while designing and building the life you dream of.
“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true Wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true Power.”— Lao Tzu
How To Practice Visualization
To help our brains create new neurological connections* propelling us to start moving and create new habits over time that will take us where we wish to be in our lives, images with positive affirmations are key: describe and visualize in your mind what you truly want.
(*To learn how neurological connections work, I’ll leave you a link at the end of this post to a previous article where I share the story of a little boy called Matthew, who got to live with only half his brain).
When we practice visualization, we are making choices into creating our reality: it’s easier to follow through with our resolutions and the implementation of new habits when we can clearly see where they will be taking us.
How to create a vision board:
When I first started, I had to do it ‘old school’: it was expensive and time-consuming. I had to buy magazines, looking for pictures that resonated with my visions and goals. I would then cut them to make a collage with the pictures and a few sentences to help me envision my dream life like I was attracting it to me.
Then I started making them with online photos and sentences, but it was again very time-consuming — and truth be told, I ended up forgetting all about them.
Fortunately, we don’t need to go through all that anymore to create a vision board: today, we have dedicated and super affordable apps that help us do this in just a few clicks and in a matter of minutes that we can literally keep in our pocket — and the best part is: it’s fun and cost less than a coffee a week!
Alongside the vision boards, journaling helped me immensely as well:
Journaling is an exceptional tool for you to reflect and grow personally, and it’s one of the most recommended tools by mental health professionals to have a clearer mind and a happier life. It helps to release mental blockages and be more precise about your thoughts, helping you to understand your emotions, desires, priorities, and worries.
Combine daily gratitude and journaling with your vision boards (I suggest you revisit them at least twice a day — when you wake up, and before you go to sleep — for better results), and you’ll have a very empowering combo to start mastering your brain, mind, and behavior.
Not all apps are made equal:
The app I’m using allows me to easily combine images provided by the app itself with images and video clips from my cellphone and from the web, plus positive affirmations, and music to really boost results, resulting in a video always accessible on my phone. No more guesswork and no more wasted time.
It also includes a gratitude & mood journal with infinite entries: besides the benefits of journaling that I’ve mentioned before, being grateful — for your loved ones, for the milestones you achieve in your life, for the lessons taken from your experiences, and for the little things that happen to you and make you smile — is key to keeping your mind focused on what you want to keep (and increase) in your life, especially when challenges arrive.
With the end of the year approaching, and new resolutions being formed for 2023, I suggest you practice visualization and journaling on a daily basis to make sure you start moving, every single day, toward your goals and desired identity/ life, without getting off track. No more excuses!
To use the app I’m using (and loving), click here. This app is super intuitive, and it costs less than a coffee per week, but to help you further when you click here you’ll get a FREE trial and a 15% discount after the trial ends.*
*Disclosure: this is a paid partnership, one I truly cherish because I know firsthand how powerful journaling and vision boards are. If you know me by now, you know I never recommend anything I don’t personally use, like, and trust.
Remember: What you focus on, expands! Thoughts become actions, and actions become habits: choose the good ones.
Change doesn’t happen overnight, but it will happen if you keep being consistent every day with your new habits (including practicing visualization and journaling, acquiring self-knowledge, and learning new skills).
The only person who can stop you from being happy and designing a fulfilling and meaningful life is… You.
🧠 Join my VIP List to access Exclusive Content. To learn more and subscribe, click here (it’s free).
Thank you for reading. With ♡ Sally _