visualization

We live in a chaotic and hectic world. Many people live lives that are stressful and fast paced, and we may feel we can hardly catch a break to catch our breath. When we are under stress, we are feeling pressured and cannot function to our full capacity.

When the body is under stress, we may experience sensations in our body like heart palpitations or rapid breathing.

These are signs that our nervous system is in fight or flight mode and we are being flooded with adrenaline and other stress hormones. Sometimes it can be difficult to rationalize what we are feeling in our bodies.

It is possible to change our reaction to current situations, even if we cannot change the situation itself.

Visualization is one way to bring a new thought and idea to the mind and create a mental image of something that is more beneficial and helpful in the moment so we can move forward.

How Stress Affects Us

Stress is a feeling of overwhelm that can adversely affect our mind and body. Stress is a response to modern living that can be difficult to process. When we cannot change a situation, we have to look to how we can change ourselves to better adapt to the situation.

Utilizing tools and practices such as guided meditations helps to engage the mind to assist us in creating a new vision for our lives that is more positive and optimistic and fulfilling.

Why Visualize

When we visualize positive imagery, we can begin to associate our mental states with the faulty of our thoughts. When we think more positive thoughts, we have access to a happier and more abundant life.

When we can take a pause and recognize our mental status, we can bring gratitude into the picture. Thinking grateful thoughts can bring a broader sense of peace by allowing us to tap into what has gone well for us and how we can bring a renewed sense of positivity to the moment.

When we are stressed and feel like we are spinning out of control, visualization is a practice we can undertake to focus the mind on a chosen vision. Maybe the vision is one of achieving a personal goal or one that is dreamed by the family.

Try visualizing a time when you were in a situation and were worried you might not make it through, but in the end, it turned out better than you could have imagined. Try visualizing a time in the past when one of your dreams come true, and when you felt joy, abundance, and happiness. Remember these feelings and know that you can recreate them anytime to feel the grandeur in gratitude of life.

Once you can connect to a past successful vision of abundance, you can bring a sense of peace and calm to your life. You can connect with the knowing that certain situations have worked out for you and have gone your way in the past. This brings confidence that life will continue to provide, amidst the ups and downs.

Creating a Calming Mental Picture

Visualizing a calming mental picture can be the key to calming the chaos of the mind. Connect to an image that brings you peace and clarity and commit to holding it in your mind as long as possible until you can feel a shift in the energy. Sometimes even a few seconds of engagement in visualization will bring results!

Breathe with intention and feel the presence of your calming imagers coming true for you and be confident that you can change your outlook and perspective.

Visions of nature, water, fire, or other elements are a great place to start with imagery if you don’t yet have a clear picture of your desired outcome.

Some people are not aware of the power of visualization and all that it can do for our lives. But actually, we are all engaging in visualization throughout the day. However, many of us are stuck in visualizations of what we do not want, rather than what we do want. People often use visualization to imaging negative outcomes or to worry about the future. Sometimes we even worry so much that we seem to make the very thing happen that we don’t want to happen!

Visualization is not just a new age technique for manifesting. Instead, various athletes, musicians, and other successful people use visualization and mental imagery to make their dreams come true in their lives. Research has proven that people who do visualizations to create a positive experience before they engage in the activity.

An exercise psychologist from Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Ohio found that people who did a workout in their minds were able to increase their muscle strength capacity by 13.5% as opposed to those people who actually did the activity with an increase of 30% muscle strength (From mental power to muscle power— gaining strength by using the mind, Yue, Guang). This means that just by visualizing in our minds we prime our body to create successful outcomes.

Research done by Newmark in 2012 also demonstrated the efficacy of visualization and guided imagery in sports performance utilized after the Russian 1984 Olympics (Cases in Visualization for Athletic Performance, Newmark, Thomas).

Basic Steps to Visualization

To begin visualization, you want to know what you want to manifest in your life. Knowing what you want to achieve will help you to create a visualization that will make your dreams come true. But first, you have to know what your dreams are, what you desire and how to make it happen, or at least, which step to take to get you to the next level.

Begin by describing the vision in detail. Maybe you want to record your vision into a microphone in order to clearly hear yourself express what you want with your own voice. You may feel more comfortable writing down your dreams in a journal and exploring how you can write your life into a new existence. Both of these practices help us to create a clear picture of what we want to create.

The next step is to begin visualizing what you want to manifest. You can visualize the circumstances or you can visualize the process or even skip all the way to the outcome. The most important part is to link the vision with the feelings you will feel when you complete the task and get to your dream place.

Taking daily action is essential. We cannot make great changes overnight if we do not take action each day. We need to set ourselves up for success each day by returning to our vision and making sure we keep in contact with our dreams. We want to continue to access our manifestations and change them as we gain new information.

We need to stay strong in order to persevere and stay on top of our goals. When we are not directing our lives, we can end up working for others or wishing we had access to different opportunities that are more fulfilling. When we are faced with challenges, we can continue to visualize our successes and find a pathway out of any situation.

Visualization provides a proven method for exploring mindfulness and engaging in meditation in a goal-oriented fashion. We can participate actively in the making of our lives through visualization.