Visualization techniques have helped the most successful people on our planet to get where they are now. All the big names, whether from the film industry, banking, or top athletes, have all been able to achieve their goals by visualizing.
Practice shows that the ability to visualize has a potent effect on achieving your desired goals. So this means that if you can visualize at all, you have the same capabilities as those same successful people.
The only challenge you have to overcome is using visualization techniques just as effectively as they do and modeling what those successful people do. The methods that I go through below have proven their success over time and have now been used by tens of thousands of successful people (all in their own way) all over the world.
Who uses visualization techniques?
Top athletes, super-rich and super happy, successful people, all started their dream come true with a single image, an image engraved on their retina: the image in which they had already achieved their goal. Presenting that exact image is called visualization.
How can you acquire the abilities to be able to achieve the same? How can you use the visualization techniques that have proven successful for your own goals?
By integrating the following advice into your daily life, you will find that you can attract the desired future and significantly simplify and accelerate the realization of those dreams, goals, and ambitions.
Advantages of visualization techniques
You would think that the visualization process is simple and does not require any special skills. That’s right, but in order for it to work efficiently, it’s necessary to approach the visualization techniques below in a specific way for the best possible outcome. Using visualization to achieve your goals will then bring you three significant benefits:
1.) You activate your creative subconscious, so you have more tools and options available to achieve your goals.
2.) You are already building the neurological network in your brain to become your “future self.” So you program yourself to be successful in whatever desired area. (By this, I mean that success has a different meaning for all of us)
3.) With the right way of visualizing, you let the Law of Attraction work for you. When you build the network in your brain and visualize the future structurally and frequently, you will increasingly notice synchronicities. You will start to notice ‘coincidences,’ like 11:11, 12:12, and others of all kinds. These synchronicities indicate that you are on the right path – and attract the people, resources, and conditions you need to achieve your goals.
How and when are you going to visualize?
Visualization is quite simple. Anyone can visualize. Make sure you read the steps below and apply them so you get the most out of them.
You will get the best results by applying these techniques either just before going to bed or just after you wake up. During this sleep-wake state, your brain creates a different brain wave pattern. In that state, the theta brainwaves are dominant. You also create these brainwaves in a state of trance, for example, with hypnosis or in a meditative state. In this state, you are highly suggestible, so you can imprint new ideas straight into your subconscious.
In this theta state, you are most receptive to suggestions and have the best access to your subconscious mind. This provides the ideal conditions for planting new patterns in your brain.
Visualization techniques: step-by-step
Intensify your visualization with submodalities
Sit or lie in a comfortable position, but don’t fall asleep. Close your eyes and picture your desired situation. Visualize how you are in your future situation and experience how it feels, how it sounds, how it smells, et cetera, all as if you have already realized your goals. In fact, you are watching a movie about your future self.
And as they say: “This is where the magic kicks in.” You can intensify your perceptions with your imagination. So everything you see, feel, hear, smell, and taste can be boosted with the so-called NLP submodalities. These submodalities make the experience many times more intense. They are the aspects of observation.
When you visualize a particular image in your ‘personal movie,’ you can ‘edit’ the properties of that image, just like on the equalizer of a mixing console you can sharpen, bring closer, make the colors more intense, or add more contrast. The possibilities are endless.
You can also do the same with sounds, feelings, tastes, and smells. By combining the different submodalities, you intensify your experience, and you no longer look at your own film on the inside of your eyes, but you are actually the protagonist in your film.
Make it a 3-dimensional experience in your imagination. I am saying a 4-dimensional one because, in your personal video, you can travel in time. You travel to your future self situation, in which you already realized your goals.
Visualization techniques through mental repetition
Top athletes can tell you everything about visualization. Just before essential races, you see how they “pump themselves up”, how they visualize their race in their head in a hyper-focused way. They envision step by step how they will go through certain movements, steps, or actions during the competition.
Not only do they apply the technique of this mental rehearsal just before the match, no, but it is also a significant part of their entire training, all the way up to the game. By going through the steps, visualizing how they successfully win the race, they are able to deliver top performance at the moment supreme.
Also, when visualizing through mental rehearsal, you can play with the submodalities, making the experience more intense. Do you already hear people cheering you intensely when you pass the finish line?
When applying mental rehearsal, you go through the steps you need to take to achieve your goal chronologically. What do you see, what do you feel, what do you smell? What clothes are you wearing? Consider your facial expression. How relaxed or tense are you?
Imagine the surrounding sounds. Can you intensify them or filter them out? You can direct your internal film all by yourself. Create your situation exactly the way you want it because you are at the wheel!
When you repeat this process for yourself day in and day out, you create a new neural network in the brain and prepare yourself for your success. By incorporating this five-minute routine into your daily practice, you will be amazed at what it brings you.
It’s good to know what the most recent scientific insights in neurology say about this: the body cannot distinguish between feeling and reality. In short, this means that you can fool yourself into anything, both in a positive and negative sense. So always choose the positive feeling!
Take (mental) photos
Another of my favorite visualization techniques is taking a picture of myself in my future context. In that photo, you stand together with your goal, as if it has already been realized.
If your goal is to drive a fancy BMW M8, visit the local dealer and let yourself be photographed behind the wheel of that beautiful racing monster. Also, smell the brand new interior and anchor this to get used to when the car is yours.
Of course, it is not strictly necessary to take pictures. You can also cut them from magazines and pick them from the internet. I bought a whiteboard and hung it in my bedroom. All photos, quotes, memes, and affirmations representing or symbolizing my goals are the first thing I see in the morning and the last before I go to sleep at night.
Mind Movies: Make Your Own Success Video
Mind Movies is an unparalleled visualization tool! I am very happy that this one ever crossed my path, and I use this software daily.
A Mind Movie is a short video of about 3 minutes or a digital vision board that shows your dream situation. You are the creator, director, and producer, not only of your video but also of your reality.
In your own video, you listen to the music that represents your success, watch your success images of beautiful cars, a dream house, and other symbols that symbolize your personal success. By watching this video daily, you work on your future self. It is lovely to experience what the combination of image and music can produce for powerful results.
Visualize every aspect of your future self
By visualizing all facets of your future situation and looking at it several times a day, you will learn to get used to your future identity. Remember that song Billionaire by Travie McCoy and Bruno Mars? He sang, “I wanna be on the cover of Forbes Magazine”. For example, make yourself a cover of Forbes with your own photo on the front.
Ensure that all aspects are visual, so your living situation, relationships, car, hobbies, work, and your colleagues. Do you aim to lie comfortably on your sailboat in the port of Saint Tropez? Find a photo of your ultimate sailboat and photoshop yourself on the deck.
Did you know that the successful author John Assaraf had pasted his dream house on a vision board and years later came to live in the same house in the documentary The Secret? So not in a place that looked like it, no, that house!
Make Success Cards: Write down your goals
By writing down your goals, you make them “hard” and set these goals “in stone.” Of course, you can formulate plans in your head, but then you always give yourself (and the universe too) the opportunity to deviate from them.
A good way to record these goals is through success cards. Cut cards from cardboard and formulate your goal in the middle, for example, “This July new job.” Then you place the properties that your new job must meet on the left side, so you give your career the desired characteristics, such as “part-time job, earn 1½ times more than I do now, a business trip every month”, just name it.
On the right side, you place the feelings you will experience when the goal is realized. Think of terms of energy, satisfaction, peace of mind, self-confidence, freedom, etc. Think of at least three points on both sides.
What’s most important in using success cards?
Have faith that your goals are coming to you. Should you give it a time limit? Some say “yes”, others “No, don’t”. In his book Think & Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill tells you that you should make your goal as specific as possible and, therefore, assign a time limit. Yet, it also happens that if you don’t, the universe can assign you your purpose. I myself have already achieved various goals without assigning them an end date.
In October 2020, my boss invited me into his office. He said:” Jasper, because of the pandemic, I can’t extend your contract.” A month later, no income. But I decided to take a couple of months off. The next day I made a success card for a new job:
- Working from home
- 60K job
- The position will come to me, instead of me going after it
Early December, I was approached by a headhunter, and on January 1st, I started my new job. The company created a job around my wishes and skills, I could work from home as much as I wanted, and my income increased like I wrote down on the success card.
Conditioning by visualizing
In fact, conditioning is similar to the mental rehearsal discussed earlier. By conditioning yourself to apply your visualization techniques at fixed times, you create a pattern. By gradually expanding this pattern, you will eventually become your future self. You can think of it as a timeline, where at one end you are in your current situation and at the other end is your ultimate desired situation.
You are able to let both ends move towards each other at an accelerated pace. On the one hand, you pursue your goals and work for them. On the other hand, you let your future self move towards your present situation by letting the universe do its work. By conditioning yourself with the help of visualization, you speed up this process.
Daily rituals help you find the right balance between thinking about your future and living in the moment. Choose fixed everyday moments, preferably just before or after sleeping, when you are most open to suggestions. About 10 minutes every time is sufficient.
Expect results
By writing down your goals, using the power of visualization techniques, and repeating your daily affirmations, you can achieve excellent results. A visualization is a powerful tool capable of permanently changing your neurology, even deeply rooted belief systems.
By involving your subconscious mind, you are able to transform. Since this transformation process can be slowed down by doubt, it is essential to rely on the universe’s power. Doubt comes from the rational mind and only creates noise on the line.
By listening to your heart-brain, you give the correct direction to your growth process. Take the time to practice visualization techniques, surround yourself with positive people, read uplifting books, watch motivational speakers and enrich yourself with constructive knowledge and experiences.
Visualization activates our subconscious mind’s creative forces, and by making your goals specific in your movies or images, you are motivated to work hard to create your future reality.
Don’t be fooled by people around you. Pursue your goals undisturbed, and at some point, they will come towards you. Your life is your movie, and you are the director!
