Visualize and Affirm Your Desired
Outcomes:
A Step-by-Step Guide
By Jack Canfield, America’s Success
Coach
You have within you an awesome power that
most of us have never been taught to use. Elite athletes use it. The
super rich use it. And peak performers in all fields are now starting to
use it. That power is called visualization. The daily practice of
visualizing your dreams as already complete can rapidly accelerate your
achievement of those dreams. Visualization of your goals and desires
accomplishes four very important things.
1. It activates your
creative subconscious which will start generating creative ideas to
achieve your goal.
2. It programs your
brain to more readily perceive and recognize the resources you will need
to achieve your dreams.
3. It activates the law
of attraction, thereby drawing into your life the people, resources, and
circumstances you will need to achieve your goals.
4. It builds your
internal motivation to take the necessary actions to achieve your
dreams.
Visualization is really quite simple. You
sit in a comfortable position, close your eyes and imagine — in as
vivid detail as you can — what you would be looking at if the dream
you have were already realized. Imagine being inside of yourself,
looking out through your eyes at the ideal result.
Mental Rehearsal
Athletes call this visualization process
“mental rehearsal,” and they have been using it since the 1960s when
we learned about it from the Russians. All you have to do is set aside a
few minutes a day. The best times are when you first wake up, after
meditation or prayer, and right before you go to bed. These are the
times you are most relaxed. Go through the following three steps:
1. Imagine sitting in a
movie theater, the lights dim, and then the movie starts. It is a movie
of you doing perfectly whatever it is that you want to do better. See as
much detail as you can create, including your clothing, the expression
on your face, small body movements, the environment and any other people
that might be around. Add in any sounds you would be hearing —
traffic, music, other people talking, cheering. And finally, recreate in
your body any feelings you think you would be experiencing as you engage
in this activity.
2. Get out of your
chair, walk up to the screen, open a door in the screen and enter into
the movie. Now experience the whole thing again from inside of yourself,
looking out through your eyes. This is called an “embodied image”
rather than a “distant image.” It will deepen the impact of the
experience. Again, see everything in vivid detail, hear the sounds you
would hear, and feel the feelings you would feel.
3. Finally, walk back
out of the screen that is still showing the picture of you performing
perfectly, return to your seat in the theater, reach out and grab the
screen and shrink it down to the size of a cracker. Then, bring this
miniature screen up to your mouth, chew it up and swallow it. Imagine
that each tiny piece — just like a hologram — contains the full
picture of you performing well. Imagine all these little screens
traveling down into your stomach and out through the bloodstream into
every cell of your body. Then imagine that every cell of your body is
lit up with a movie of you performing perfectly. It’s like one of
those appliance store windows where 50 televisions are all tuned to the
same channel.
When you have finished this process —
it should take less than five minutes — you can open your eyes and go
about your business. If you make this part of your daily routine, you
will be amazed at how much improvement you will see in your life.
Create Goal Pictures
Another powerful technique is to create a
photograph or picture of yourself with your goal, as if it were already
completed. If one of your goals is to own a new car, take your camera
down to your local auto dealer and have a picture taken of yourself
sitting behind the wheel of your dream car. If your goal is to visit
Paris, find a picture or poster of the Eiffel Tower and cut out a
picture of yourself and place it into the picture. With today’s
technology, you could probably make an even more convincing image using
your computer.
Create a Visual Picture and an
Affirmation for Each Goal
We recommend that you find or create a
picture of every aspect of your dream life. Create a picture or a visual
representation for every goal you have — financial, career,
recreation, new skills and abilities, things you want to purchase, and
so on. When we were writing the very first Chicken Soup for the Soul®
book, we took a copy of the New York Times best seller list, scanned it
into our computer, and using the same font as the newspaper, typed
Chicken Soup for the Soul into the number one position in the
“Paperback Advice, How-To and Miscellaneous” category. We printed
several copies and hung them up around the office. Less than two years
later, our book was the number one book in that category and stayed
there for over a year!
Index Cards
We practice a similar discipline every
day. We each have a list of about 30-40 goals we are currently working
on. We write each goal on a 3x5 index card and keep those cards near our
bed and take them with us when we travel. Each morning and each night we
go through the stack of cards, one at a time, read the card, close our
eyes, see the completion of that goal in its perfect desired state for
about 15 seconds, open our eyes and repeat the process with the next
card.
Use Affirmations to Support Your
Visualization
An affirmation is a statement that evokes
not only a picture, but the experience of already having what you want.
Here’s an example of an affirmation:
I
am happily vacationing 2 months out of the year in a tropical paradise,
and working just four days a week owning my own business.
Repeating an affirmation several times a
day keeps you focused on your goal, strengthens your motivation, and
programs your subconscious by sending an order to your crew to do
whatever it takes to make that goal happen.
Expect Results
Through writing down your goals, using
the power of visualization and repeating your affirmations, you can
achieve amazing results. Visualization and affirmations allow you to
change your beliefs, assumptions, and opinions about the most important
person in your life — YOU! They allow you to harness the 18 billion
brain cells in your brain and get them all working in a singular and
purposeful direction.
Your subconscious will become engaged in
a process that transforms you forever. The process is invisible and
doesn’t take a long time. It just happens over time, as long as you
put in the time to visualize and affirm, surround yourself with positive
people, read uplifting books and listen to audio programs that flood
your mind with positive, life-affirming messages.
Repeat your affirmations every morning
and night for a month and they will become an automatic part of your
thinking — they will become woven into the very fabric of your being.
©
2006 Jack Canfield
Jack Canfield, America’s Success
Coach, is the founder and co-creator of the billion-dollar book brand Chicken
Soup for the Soul and the nation's leading authority on
Peak Performance. If you're ready to jump-start your life, make more
money, and have more fun and joy in all that you do, get your FREE
success tips from Jack Canfield now at www.JackCanfield.com
|
