Simple Mindset Tweaks — Visualisation
Say farewell to procrastination
I want you to imagine yourself at the end of this year if you continued giving yourself excuses. After flooding your mind with a constant barrage of reasons year-round, you find yourself in this position: Your new year’s resolutions are non-existent. Your productivity standards are below average compared to your peers, and you never felt satisfied in the end.
Programming your mind — gets rid of mental barriers that prevent you from doing work. Visualisation, visual cues, and discipline are essential tools that complement each other. They will enable you to outperform yourself and reach your desired goal.
Today we’ll be covering visualisation — the act of forming vivid mental images in your mind. Here are the lesser-known benefits of visualisation and how you can take action afterwards.
INITIATING & IMPROVING FITNESS
“If my mind can conceive it and my heart can believe it — then I can achieve it.”
— Muhammad Ali
Visualisation is a method used by 23-time gold medalist Michael Phelps to achieve success in his sporting career. Needless to say — even for me, it has helped me to stay consistent with regards to my fitness and work life. Anyone can do it, including you, despite the looming challenges ahead.
The first and only step is to tweak your mind through visualisation. How then, can visualisation help with something so physical? I don’t play soccer in my head!
Coach Bowman, the coach of Michael Phelps, said that he used to give Phelps absurd challenges since the age of 11. He wanted to lay the groundwork for Phelps during turbulent, unforeseen circumstances.
When Phelps was swimming at one of his first National Junior meets in the U.S., Bowman noticed he had left his goggles behind just before he walked out to the blocks.
“I saw them sitting in our team area, I could have taken the goggles to him, but I decided to keep them and see what he could do,” Bowman said.
“So he swam and won the race without the goggles just like he did here in the (200) butterfly when his goggles filled with water.”
This is a prime description of having a clear vision of your direction. When you embed it deeply into your mind, you foresee unavoidable adversity that comes weekly — if not daily, basis. You aren’t fazed by the slightest bit because you programmed your mind for it. You know how to act upon revisiting a similar situation. You free yourself from the dread of various diversions because you are dead focused on your goal.
Bottom-line: Instead of yearning to be fit, sculpt a mental image of yourself engaging actively with exercise, and you’ll most likely start improving your fitness.
MINDFULNESS
Recall your most remarkable achievement — the sense of happiness and fulfilment. Now imagine yourself crushing your goals and becoming the person you’ve always wanted to be. Envision your life as if you’ve reached your end goal.
When you visualise, you create situational awareness of your circumstances, because you realise you need to take actionable steps to get to the endpoint. And by becoming aware of the challenges you might encounter, you’re mentally prepared to make plans and devise strategies to tackle these obstacles.
Refusing to process the crux of this idea before embarking on your intended journey — is a sure-fire way of handicapping yourself. It is impossible to have visual clarity by day-dreaming all the time, and expect that you achieve your desired outcome without proper execution — the practical facet of visualisation. You live life at every present moment, and whatever you do will impact your future vision.
Stop exhausting energy — worrying about the past and the circumstances we face along with this voyeur. Realise this: we will fall victim to inexorable events that are out of our control. Hence, we maintain that within our reach: our vision, mindset, and approach to every situation.
Bottom-line: Envision your goals; etch them deeply into your mind. Keep asking yourself, “If X happens, what will I do next?”. Stop getting trapped in your circumstances and past; stop living inside your head and start doing.
IDENTITY SHIFT
During your visualisation session, I want you to forget about the limitations and insecurities that you’re carrying with you. I want you to say, “Even though I’m not strong enough, I’m capable of working toward accomplishing such a feat despite my circumstance”. In your mind’s eye, these negative self-thoughts vanish, and you become the person you desire to be. You can be the fitness enthusiast, the soccer champion, or the well-versed intellectual.
I envisioned my passion for writing and placed my identity in becoming a writer. This drove my commitment to writing daily and consuming more books to expand my repertoire of knowledge. This served as a constant reminder of my responsibility as a writer. I want to bring forth words that carried impact and emotion.
I model after the Be-Do-Have paradigm, described by psychologist Dr David Yarian. He proposes that as the law of gravity governs falling bodies, the law of attraction governs our identity. As we focus our undivided attention on something, we draw closer to it.
For starters, we need to ‘BE’ — who or what we’ve always wanted to be. Be more, do more!
Bottom-line: Implement the Be-Do-Have model. Perform tasks (Do) that are befitting of who you want to be (Be). Change your identity (Be) so that you perform tasks (Do) befitting of who you want to be.
IMPLEMENTATION
IDENTIFY THE VISION
Before you establish a direction for your life, you need to consider areas you’d like to strive for. It could be better relationships with others, excelling in your varsity studies, or becoming fitter.
You can’t improve your life if you don’t identify what you want out of it. Find an area in your life you’d like to see improvement in for the long run.
PAINT A VIVID PICTURE
General answers don’t give targetted results. They are nebulous at best — similar to broadly declaring a resolution to becoming a better human. That is a fundamental aspiration for all humans. I would love to know more beyond its apparent vagueness.
At the core, I would want to understand the fundamental reason for your being. Your raison d’etre. How do you serve others with altruistic motivations? Up to the tiny details like the way your beneficiaries smile when receiving their much-desired help. Paint intricately and descriptively — that you stay laser-focused on what you’re doing. Start by gleaning inspiration from the insights and experiences of successful people all across the globe, made possible with the internet’s ubiquity. Modelling after them will enable you to visualise what it means to attain your goal — eventually!
Remember I told you to reminisce about an exceptional achievement or something that you’re proud of? I wanted you to take in the emotions felt when you’ve accomplished something. Now channel this emotion toward your subsequent pursuit.
If you afford to spend so much time worrying about certain things, why not channel that energy to pursuing your goals in the face of failure? Use emotion like a fuel, propel yourself to greater heights with it, rather than leak fuel — pondering over your mistakes and berating yourself for it.
PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE
If visualisation helped people become fulfilled, successful, and purpose-driven, why isn’t everyone doing it? Like any other skill, visualisation has to be practised consistently to paint an accurate picture that depicts your vision. Furthermore, another barrier to entry is perceived effort. You also need to start taking actionable steps toward your dream — every single day.
“If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time.”
— Steve Jobs
That’s why it's equally important to practice visualizing, to etch your vision deeply into your mind’s eye, so you’re constantly reminded along your journey.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
To sum up, visualisation acts as a medium for us to engage in fitness, promote self-awareness, and become more. Don’t forget to identify your vision, colour your imagination, draw emotional strength, and persistently work on your craft. If no one else believes in you, I’ll place my bets on you. Don’t fall short of your potential because you have what it takes. I want you to fully realise the power you hold — a power that rocks the world to work with you intricately and subtly, like a grand scheme.
“The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.”
— Bruce Lee
Stay tuned for this 3-part series that will supercharge your mind for productivity. We’ll cover the essence of visual cues and discipline, essential guiding tools that will help you realise your vision.
Thank you for reading, and don’t forget to share this article!
