If Visualisation really is so Powerful …

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then why aren’t we all living in our own personal paradise?

Mmm … something just doesn’t add up …

We’re told, again and again, that all we need to do is decide on a worthy goal and visualise it, repeatedly. Visualise it as having been achieved. And we do that. We take our time … we whittle down all the things we really want, right down to their essentials … and what we’re left with is our goal, or goals.

Then we form the habit of spending a few minutes each day (preferably twice a day or more), during which we relax deeply and visualise those goals as having been achieved. But for most of us, most of the time, that doesn’t bring about the achievement we expect.

Why?

In short, we’re doing it wrong!

Just visualising, i.e. seeing, the outcome the way we want it, isn’t enough. There’s more to visualisation than that. If it were that straighforward, we’d all have discovered this amazing mechanism years ago, and we wouldn’t need anyone else to point the way either. It would have been as simple as learning to walk. Actually, that’s not a good analogy; learning to walk is something we all achieve, which is what I was trying to compare it to, but learning to walk is far harder, and is actually one of the hardest things you’ll ever do in your life.

Learning to walk

learning to walkFirst, you have to learn how to shift from crawling, which is, let’s face it, pretty easy. A very, very young child can do it, once they feel the urge to try. Going from that to walking is a big thing. You have to learn how to stand upright first, which is a huge challenge, in terms of balance, when you’ve never done it before. Then you have to try to maintain that balance … and that’s even before you start the whole tricky business of moving one foot in front of the other.

When you do that there’s another whole balance issue … your weight has to switch successfully from one leg to the other, and all the time your body is tending to fall down. Getting that balance, and holding it, is not easy, not easy at all. The first few steps are usually accompanied by an adult holding you steady, or holding your hand, and by you trying, and stumbling … and falling to the floor. Inevitably falling. Again … and again! That’s why I say it’s not easy. You ‘fail’ at it time and time again, and that failure is very apparent. Sometimes you’ll feel the pain of failure physically. If ever there was a time to quit it would be now.

But we all made it! We learned to walk! It might have taken some of us longer than others, but we got there. And why? Mostly because we never gave up. Even when ‘failing’ was a painful experience, we just got back up and tried again. And again. And again. We never quit! Pity we don’t always have that determination in later life …

Back to visualisation …

We think of visualisation as seeing a successful outcome. That’s due to the term, visualisation, not surprisingly. In fact, it doesn’t really matter very much whether or not you can ‘see’ the outcome, or even how clearly you can see it. Seeing it is only a piece of the visualisation jigsaw. If you focus all your powers on creating a crystal clear mental image of your hoped-for successful outcome, you might still come up short. On its own it’s just not enough!

Maybe visualisation should be called experiation

What you have to do is experience the successful outcome! The shorthand term for that is visualisation, but that doesn’t cover the whole thing (and it puts the stress on the mental image, which results in confusion). What you need to do is trick your subconscious mind into believing that you’ve already achieved your goal. That way, it will support you in having that thing that you’re working towards having. If it truly believes you have achieved your goal, it makes it its business to support you all the way, and it’s an incredibly powerful ally to have on your side.