The Power of Visualization

Why we must experience the future in our minds before we see it with our eyes.

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“When you visualize, you materialize.” — Dennis Waitley —

Ibelieve that we create our own reality. If you’re reading this, you probably do too. It’s not woo-woo. It’s science.

“Visualization is the human being’s vehicle to the future — good, bad or indifferent. It’s strictly in our control.”

— Earl Nightingale —

A big part of moving more quickly towards the future we want or bringing it to us — however you see it — is visualizing it first. Visualization is literally seeing what we want in our imagination and experiencing it as if it’s real

I first learned about visualization as a teenager, but I thought it was only for athletes. When my brothers were playing basketball in high school, their coaches would have them visualize their performance in upcoming games.

Feeling the shots they’d take.

Hearing the swish of the net as the ball entered it in a perfect arc from the top of the key.

Seeing the crowd raise their hands in jubilation.

Hearing the roar of excitement as the score increased by three points.

Seeing the game in their minds before hand was seen as a way to bring that reality to fruition. And it was critical part of preparing for the game.

Visualization is a full-body experience

Visualization has long been used as a tool by elite athletes. Iconic tennis player Billie Jean King was known to visualize her upcoming matches and famously said:

“You have to see it to be it. “

In the lead-up to the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, journalist Christopher Clarey wrote an article in the New York Times about how imagery — as visualization is sometimes called — was being used as a tool by athletes participating in a range of sporting events at the games.

It turns out that visualization, as practiced by these athletes, is a much more elaborate process than my brothers and their teammates were doing.

The process of visualization, as described by both the Olympic athletes and sports psychologists who spoke with Carey, is a full-body experience, one involving all the senses. In some cases, athletes imagined the ride to the venue and press conferences after the event as well as the event itself. Emily Cook, a freestyle skier for the United States at the Sochi Olympics, argued that:

“You have to smell it. You have to hear it. You have to see it. Everything.”

Our brains don’t know the difference between imagination and “reality.”

In an article chronicling the daily habits of peak performers, Carmine Gallo interviewed Bob Bowman, the longtime coach of retired swimmer Michael Phelps. In the interview Bowman maintained that visualization helped Phelps program his “internal viewfinder” and was critical in his success as the most medalled athlete in Olympic history. He explained that:

“For months before a race Michael gets into a relaxed state. He mentally rehearses for two hours a day in the pool. He sees himself winning. He smells the air, tastes the water, hears the sounds, sees the clock.”

Bowman argued that visualization is an essential tool for elite performance in any endeavour. One of the reasons this is so — he stresses — is that the brain cannot tell the difference between what we imagine in our minds and what we see before us with our eyes.

When we visualize, we are literally telling the brain: “This is our reality.” And the brain and the mind — with a little help from the universe and a liberal dose of massive action — make it happen.

In an episode of the I Am With . . . Jonny Wilkinson podcast journalist and author Lynn McTaggart who has done significant work on the subject. On the podcast she also spoke about how elite athletes use mental rehearsal (the term she used for visualizing a game or event beforehand). She said that the brain can’t distinguish between an action and the thought of an action:

When you practice that in your head, it’s almost like setting down train tracks in a wild country. You put the train tracks down and the train goes much more smoothly over them . . . When you practice it in your head those same neurons have already practiced the action. So when they actually perform action they do it that much better.

We can all use visualization to enhance our lives and move more quickly toward the future we want. I’ve been using visualization for several years now in both my personal and professional life. It helps me feel more in control of shaping my reality, and it’s brought so much good into my experience on planet Earth.

“Hold a picture of yourself long and steadily enough in your mind’s eye and you will be drawn towards it.”

— Napoleon Hill —

A step-by-step guide to creative visualization

Several years ago, I took a course on creative visualization on Mindvalley with Lisa Nichols and Vishen Lakhiani, which I recently re-visited. In the introduction to the course, Lakhiani explains that creative visualization should be done when you’re already in a meditative state, ideally when you just wake up in the morning or when you’re about to go to sleep at night.

The process itself includes several steps, beginning with imagining what you want to change and ending with creating a different outcome. The steps he describes are as follows:

Step 1: Close your eyes and imagine that there is a huge, high-definition television screen directly in front of you.

Step 2: On the television screen, visualize a scenario that you want to change as it is now and feel the emotions associated with that situation. Do this just for a minute or so. Don’t get too caught up in it. This feels counterintuitive (at least to me), but Lakhiani argues that it is an important aspect of the process.

Step 3: Next, visualize erasing this situation you don’t want from your life by turning off the imaginary television or erasing the scene on it with an imaginary eraser.

Step 4: Then, bring what you want to the screen. Make sure it is in vivid colour and brings in all the senses. Experience what the new reality looks, smells, tastes, and feels like. Don’t hold back. This is a critical part of the process. Feel it like you’re there.

Step 5: Next, feel the emotions of what it is like to be in this new state. Feel the joy and then magnify it. And feel what it’s like to hold that joy in your body.

Step 6: Finally, see two or more people benefitting from this new reality and how happy they are that it’s come to pass.

That’s it. Lakhiani suggests that before you finish, you set an intention that this or something better will come to pass. And then you let go. Ideally, you should repeat the process a few times a day for several weeks. But don’t get too caught up in the prescription of it. Being chill about it is part of the process, in my view.

To see it, you must first believe it

One thing Lakhiani doesn’t cover in his explanation of creative visualization is the importance of believing that what you have visualized is possible (i.e. it can be achieved) and will soon become your reality. For me, this is critical.

Having unwavering belief is something that the late psychologist and spiritual teacher Wayne Dyer often emphasized in his work. In fact, the importance of believing what we want is possible is the subject of his book. You’ll See It When You Believe It. I highly recommend his books The Power of Intention and Wishes Fulfilled as well if you’re craving a deeper dive into the subject.

I’ve found that unless I believe something is possible, it’s unlikely to come into my life. I’ve also found that the less tightly I hold onto something I want to bring into my life, the more likely it is to come and the quicker it will arrive (in direct proportion to how much I can let it go). That’s not always easy, but when I do it successfully, magic happens.

I experienced this magic just recently. For the past few years, I’ve been fundraising for the initiatives I lead to literally keep the lights on. It’s been hugely stressful and has often kept me up at night (which is a limiting belief and belays a scarcity mindset in and of itself but that’s not the point here).

A couple of months ago, I decided to let go. I decided that all would be okay no matter what happened. We would be okay as a team, and so would everyone else we work with. I let go of everything while still holding my vision for the future. Just a few days after I did that, we got positive news on the funding front.

This success has buoyed my belief and enhanced my visualizaiton practice. I believe that there are no limits to what we can achieve as human beings. The only obstacle is our minds. Once you program your mind to a new reality, it’s a foregone conclusion as long as you believe it.

If you haven’t incorporated visualization into your day-to-day yet, I highly recommend you do. There are lots of tools out there to help you get started, most of them free. So give it a try. What’s the worst that can happen?

For more on my work on global policy, find me here. For more on my work with young climate leaders from the global South, find me here.

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