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.
© 2007 Jack Canfield
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As the beloved originator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul® series, Jack Canfield fostered the emergence of inspirational anthologies as a genre - and watched it grow to a billion dollar market. As the driving force behind the development and delivery of over 100 million books sold through the Chicken Soup for the Soul® franchise, Jack Canfield is uniquely qualified to talk about success.
Behind the empire Time Magazine called the "publishing phenomenon of the decade" is America's leading expert in creating peak performance for entrepreneurs, corporate leaders, managers, sales professionals, corporate employees and educators. He is a compelling, empowering and compassionate coach who for the past 30 years has helped hundreds of thousands of individuals achieve their dreams.
Affectionately known as "America's Success Coach", Jack has studied and reported on what makes successful people different. He knows what motivates them, what drives them, and what inspires them. He brings this critical insight to countless audiences internationally --- sharing his success strategies in the media, with companies, universities and professional associations in over 20 countries around the world.
Jack is a Harvard graduate with a Master's Degree in psychological education and one of the earliest champions of peak-performance, developing the specific methodology and results-oriented activities to help people take on greater challenges and produce breakthrough results.
He's personally taught millions of individuals his unique and modernized formulas for success and has packaged them in his latest book The Success Principles™: How to Get From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be. This new self-improvement standard contains 64 powerful principles of success utilized by top achievers from all walks of life and all areas of commerce. The Success Principles - and the entire empire of "Principles" books, products, coaching programs and branded retail merchandise - is Mr. Canfield's next offering to the more than 100 million readers he currently reaches worldwide.
Mr. Canfield's other best-selling books - The Power of Focus, The Aladdin Factor, and Dare to Win, - have generated millions of bookstore and Internet sales, and have launched complementary products such as audio programs, video programs, corporate training programs and syndicated columns to enthusiastic corporate buyers. His audio program, Maximum Confidence, has sold more than 350,000 copies through Nightingale-Conant alone.
He is Founder and Chairman of the Canfield Training Group in Santa Barbara, California, which trains entrepreneurs, educators, corporate leaders and motivated individuals how to accelerate the achievement of their personal and professional goals.
Jack is also the founder of The Foundation for Self-Esteem in Culver City, California, which provides self-esteem resources and trainings to social workers, welfare recipients and human resource professionals.
Jack is the CEO of Chicken Soup for the Soul® Enterprises, a billion dollar empire that encompasses licensing, merchandising and publishing activities around the globe. Jack's nationally syndicated newspaper column is read in 150 papers worldwide, and the Chicken Soup for the Soul® radio shows are syndicated throughout North America. Jack is also syndicated columnist through King Features Syndicate and is a popular news subject featured not only in major trade publications, but in every major metro newspaper across America and in hundreds more around the globe.
Chicken Soup for the Soul® has also been a featured television program for both the PAX and ABC networks. Additionally, the company's licensing division produces dozens of top-selling items including Chicken Soup for the Soul® nutriceuticals, pet foods, greetings cards, music, collectibles and other licensed merchandise. A Chicken Soup for the Soul® magazine also launched in the summer of 2005.
Jack's background includes a BA from Harvard University and he also holds a Masters degree in Psychological Education from the University of Massachusetts and a Honorary Doctorate from the University of Santa Monica, Parker College of Chiropractic and St. Ambrose University. Over the past 30 years, he has been a psychotherapist, an educational consultant, trainer and a leading authority in the areas of self-esteem, achievement motivation and peak performance.
Jack Canfield holds the Guinness Book World Record for having seven books simultaneously on the New York Times Bestseller List - beating out Stephen King. He even holds the Guinness Book World Record for the largest book-signing ever for Chicken Soup for the Kids Soul. And he's the only author to have won both the ABBY Award and the Southern California Book Publicist Award in the same year - honoring him as both an outstanding writer and a consummate book marketer.
Jack has also been a featured guest on more than 1,000 radio and television programs in nearly every major market worldwide - many of them on a repeat basis. A sample of these shows include Oprah, 20/20, Inside Edition, The Today Show, Larry King Live, Fox and Friends, The CBS Evening News, The NBC Nightly News, Eye to Eye, CNN's Talk Back Live!, PBS, QVC and many others.