You did what?
A few years ago, my daughter who had just learned to drive, took full advantage of her new found freedom and explored places that her dad would rather not know about.
When I was a teenager, my mom didn’t have a clue what I was doing and rarely asked. I usually lied when she did. Not my kid, she is open and relishes in her experiences. She loves to share some of them with me.
She told me about how on one of her explorations, she was meeting a friend on the university campus, and was lost in a parking garage, alone at night. She told me it all ended well and finally gave up and came home. I love that she tells me things, and I hate that she tells me things.
After learning that my 16 year old daughter had been lost in a parking garage on a college campus at night, alone, I noticed that story wanting to loop in my brain. The way I noticed it was that I’d find myself physically clenched up with the fight response in full bloom, heart beat, pulse, everything as if I was actually protecting her, instead of imagining I was protecting her.
I’m guessing you’ve had the same experience. An imaginary fight or bracing yourself for an imagined force.
Visualizing is your mind’s way of preparing for the future, and like most mind driven activities, it will default to preparing yourself for danger. The mind needs a job.
Successful people who have used visualization like, James Carrey, Jay-Z, Oprah, Arnold Schwarzenegger… have great stories and different methods for their visualization. The key takeaway here is visualization is practice for making the future turn out how you want.
My biggest learning about visualization is this; If you have a goal, don’t want it to happen, visualize it actually happening, give your mind a job.
Here's an invitation...
Check out these two resources to guide you in visualizing the future you want:
Into The Magic Shop - this is a fun and easy story about how an elder passes on a powerful visualization technique. I use this technique.
Here is a really short video of Michael Phelps and his coach talking about his ability to visualize everything that could possibly happen.
Try on visualization for yourself. Think something you want… and practice visualizing it as if you already have it or already are it for 3 minutes each day.
If you have your own techniques, or learning to share about visualizing the outcome, please comment below, others can surly benefit from your experience.
If you would like support in visualizing the future you want, connect with me, I’d be happy to hear from you.
Carl Blanz