Seven steps to visualisation

Creative visualisation is about using your imagination to create what you want. Visualisation is a form of self hypnosis. We all use visualisation techniques every day, whether we are aware of it or not. Visualisation is what makes successful people successful, but unfortunately it is also what makes the losers losers. Too many people spend their lives visualising disaster and failure, and by focusing on the negative all the time they are training their minds to generate the very failure they fear.

Visualisation consists of combining a strong suggestion with a clear image of what you want. This creates changes in your subconscious expectations and changes in your expectations will cause changes in your outcomes.

 

• Power of Visualisation
• Visualisation Exercise
• Simple Visualisation
• Focused Visualisation
• Backward Visualisation
• Rehearsal Visualisation
• Fantasy Visualisation
• Structured Visualisation

The power of visualisation

Visualisation is used by all top sports coaches. It has been proven that the best athletes constantly visualise and mentally rehearse training, performing and winning. It is the visualisation that makes the difference. Tiger Woods, the world champion golfer, settles down on the aircraft before each tournament, and mentally plays every hole in the course. He visualises each stroke, anticipates errors and rehearses different ways to overcome those errors. He considers what he will do if it is windy, if it rains, if the grass is too long - he goes through every possible condition on every hole until he has played the whole course in his mind and is confident of walking off the last green holding the winner's cup. He also practices relentlessly, but the one would not be possible without the other. The practicing is driven by visions of winning. Visualisation is an essential ingredient of his success.

Everyone can visualise

Some people are better than others at visualising. Some people believe that they cannot visualise, but what they are actually experiencing is the inablity to visualise on demand. Everyone has experience of dreaming, and dreams are just visualisations, so the ability is there. You just need to develop it. If you cannot visualise colours or you only get words or feelings don't feel you have failed or that you have to try extra hard. Just allow your mind to drift and see whatever your mind lets you see. Visualisation abilities can be developed. For example, look straight ahead and then close your eyes. How much can you recall of what you have just been looking at? Most people can picture very little, but everyone gets better with practice. Repeatedly opening and shutting the eyes and trying to visualise the scene does increase the ability to recall the image. To train your visualisation skills try imagining a flower, a coin, the feeling of a bottle straight from the fridge, the feel of stroking a cat. As you get better try adding movement and action to the visualisation. It will come with practice.

 

Visualisation Exercise: The Lemon

Imagine you are in the kitchen of a famous restaurant.

On a bench is basket of lemons. You reach into the basket and select a ripe yellow lemon. You feel the weight of the lemon in your hand..., you slide your fingers over the smooth waxy skin.... feel the dimpled texture..... You lift the lemon to your face and breathe in that lemony smell..... and then you slice the lemon open. As the bright yellow flesh is exposed you see the juice run out.... a lovely lemony citrus aroma fills the room. You cut a slice and put it in your mouth. You bite down on it between your teeth..... the juice spurts out over your tongue.....your mouth fills with the taste of lemon juice.....

 

Most people will find their mouths watering after reading the lemon exercise. This is because in order to make sense of words your brain has to retrieve the memories - the images, smells, textures - associated with the word. The experience of eating a lemon is something that generates powerful physical reactions. Recalling the act recalls the distinctive reaction, and your body responds with a conditioned reflex. The Lemon exercise demonstrates clearly that words do have a physical effect on the body.

 

The main types of visualisation are:

Simple Visualisation

The basics of visualisation are very simple.

1. Find a time during the day when you can set aside five to ten minutes.
2. Settle down somewhere comfortable and allow yourself to relax.
3. Relax until you reach a daydreamy kind of feeling.
4. Then, start visualising what you want.
   It can be a new car, a loving relationship, an overseas holiday - anything at all. Whatever you choose, imagine every detail of what it would be like to have that thing, to use it, to be in it - really be there experiencing every aspect of it. Don't tell yourself it will happen, imagine it has happened, is happening right now, that you already have it.
   Allow yourself to daydream what you would look like, how you are dressed, what you hear, see, taste, smell. Imagine who else would be there, what they would think, say, feel.
5. And then imagine how good you would feel.
   Really indulge yourself.
6. Fill yourself with pleasure, pride, fulfillment, joy.
   The more you can immerse yourself in good feelings the more likely it is that your vision will come true.
7. Repeat this exercise at least once every day, better several times a day.

That's all there is to it. The more you practice, and the greater your emotional identification in the process, the faster it will come true.

• Visualisation in Self Hypnosis
• Visualisation as Hypnotic Technique

 

Focused Visualisation

A more focused type self development combines visualisation with Affirmations and Goal Setting.

Before you start your visualisation exercise create and memorise an affirmation associated with what you want to achieve or specific goals you want to achieve.

For example if you wanted promotion at work, you might visualise yourself behind the boss's desk, making phone calls to important clients, looking out the of the window at your executive car, ordering coffee from your secretary and enjoying the feeling of achievement and total satisfaction. You might then, within the visualisation, mentally repeat an affirmation such as "I am punctual, attentive and dedicated to achieving this company's goals". The affirmation will reinforce the visualisation the visualisation will reinforce the affirmation.

You can also, or instead, add one or more related goals to the visualisation such as "I am voted best in my grade" or "I know every employee by name and sight" or whatever skill you think is key to the promotion.

• Guide to Affirmations
• Guide to Goal Setting

 

Retrospective Visualisation

Another use of visualisation is to allow your subconscious to work out for you how you will achieve your visualised state.

Suppose you want to get promoted to your boss's job. You visualise yourself sitting behind the desk appreciating all the benefits you get from your achievement. In the visualisation you add another part. You imagine yourself being in that chair and allowing your mind at that moment to think back to how you got the promotion. You allow your mind to go through each step, each stage, each milestone on the way to getting what you have now, the promotion. You ask your mind to show you what it was you did to achieve each stage, how you went about it, what the key to success was. Then you move into that situation and visualise that intensely, and do that for every stage. Eventually your visualisation will turn into a kind of movie showing each step on the way and what you did to make sure you achieved that step. As you visualise in more and more detail you are ensuring that it will actually happen.

 

Rehearsal Visualisation

You can use visualisation to rehearse situations where you feel you might need help. Suppose you have to give a presentation to the committee. Suppose further that getting it right will open doors for you and getting it wrong will cancel out weeks or months of planning and preparation. That sort of thing can easily bring too much pressure.
Visualisation can ensure that it is a success. Before the presentation, find time to relax and visualise. You should visualise yourself at the stage before the actual presentation, it might be driving there or waiting in a room outside or something else. Imagine yourself there at the time. Go inside and call up times when you felt good, confident, in control. Amplify those feelings, multiply them again, ramp that feeling up until you are ready to burst. Then transfer that feeling of total power to yourself outside the committee room. Then visualise yourself pushing open the door, seeing the people there, watching them smile in welcome, see yourself stepping up to begin your talk, confident, totally in control. Then visualise each stage, what you say, what you show, see your jokes making them laugh or your points registering home, see yourself dominating the room, owning it, giving the best presentation they ever saw, confident, composed, creative. And then hear the applause, the rising sound of approval, they stand and clap, they gather round you, congratulating, approving, promising.....

Really lay it on thick... you cannot be too good... imagine it is the best presentation the world has ever seen. Then go over it again and again and each time make it even better for you, even more amazing. The result will be that when you get to the room you will have all that energy and confidence buzzing through you - you actually will blow them away.

 

Fantasy Visualisation

Simple and focused visualisations are concerned with reality. Visualisation can also be used indirectly to imagine some kind of fantasy, a metaphor for aspects your life that you want to change.

One common example comes from health. Some success has been reported by visualising your body repairing itself and becoming healthy. People can visualise their body's defence mechanisms rallying around the site of injury or infection and visualise their defender cells as knights with lances, or children might want to use a space ship idea, attacking the foreign cells and destroying them.

Another visualisation is used in pain control. For chronic pain, the person visualises the seat of the pain as represented by a colour, red for example. Then they focus on an area of their body where there is no pain, and visualise that as a different colour, blue for example. Then the person imagines dipping a brush into the blue colour and painting over the red, or pressing both places together so that the colours blend and remove the pain.

• Metaphor Techniques

Structured Visualisation

More complex metaphors need someone else to guide you. The hypnotist puts the client into trance and then guides the client through a specially constructed metaphor. The metaphor sets a scene, leads the client into some situation which mirrors their current problem and then encourages the client to find ways to destroy the obstacles, or push aside the barriers.

 

• Guided Visualisation Example: Facade
• Guided Visualisation Example: Store of Memories
• Guided Visualisation Example: Island of Dreams

 

 

• Topic: Hypnosis Research