02 Jun SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE WHO USE VISUALIZATION TECHNIQUE

-Dr. Shanthi Lakshmi,Ph.D. Bangalore

Highly successful people, regardless of profession, know the importance of picturing themselves succeeding in their minds before they actually do in reality. It is extremely effective when harnessed and used correctly.

Ten years ago, I decided to pursue a Ph.D. in the field of mind-body genomics. At that time, it was not quite popular, so there were not much research opportunities for developing new understanding through research. Moreover, getting a Ph.D. with a full scholarship was quite challenging. So, I started visualizing to achieve my goal with every single detail. I used to visualize writing an email to a professor to express my research interest, getting a reply back from the professor, getting an admission with the full scholarship, holding the I-20 letter in my hand, applying for VISA, getting into the plane, and so on. This practiced helped me to erase the negativity from my mind, stay positive and perform appropriate action to achieve my goal. Now, when I look back, I am so amazed how every single detail of my visualization has manifested into reality.

Many successful people have mastered this technique and openly credit it as a success tactic. Curious how successful people use visualization, I decided to look into a few other famous examples of the power of visualization.

Jim Carrey (Actor)

“ I use to park my car in the Mulholland drive, LA every night, and I would visualize seeing myself  that directors are interested in me, the people that I respected, saying that, they like my work. I would visualize that things are coming to me.  I had nothing at that time, but it just made me feel better. I would drive home and think that I do have these things. I also wrote a check for myself for

10 million dollars for the acting services rendered, kept in my wallet, and I gave myself three years to manifest. I dated it 1995 Thanksgiving.  To my surprise, just before the Thanksgiving 1994, I found that I am going to get 10 million dollars for the movie Dumb and Dumber” Jim Carrey shared his personal experiences of the power of visualization on Oprah Winfrey show.

Jack Nicklaus (Golf Champion)

Champion golfer Jack Nicklaus famously said, “I never hit a shot, not even in practice, without having a very sharp, in-focus picture of it in my head.  First, I see the ball where I want it to finish, nice and white and sitting up high on the bright green grass. Then the scene quickly changes, and I see the ball going there; its path, trajectory, and shape, even its behavior on landing.”

Kerri Walsh and Misty May-Treanor (Beach Volleyball Champions)

“A lot of what we do is visualization,” Walsh Jennings told USA TODAY
Sports. “So to be able to go a year in advance, to the spot where we plan on winning a gold medal, and to take in the sights, the sounds, the stress, the excitement, that’s going to serve us really well moving forward.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger (Actor and Politician)

“I had this fixed idea of growing a body like Reg Park’s. The model was there in my mind; I only had to grow enough to fill it,” he explained. “The more I focused in on this image and worked and grew, the more I saw it was real and possible for me to be like him.”

Later, when he transitioned to careers in acting and politics, Schwarzenegger said he employed similar mental tricks: “It’s the same process I used in bodybuilding: What you do is create a vision of who you want to be — and then leave that picture as if it has been already true.”

Oprah Winfrey

Born to a single teen mom, bouncing around between her grandmother, her mother, her cousins, and her father, Oprah herself got pregnant at 14. When her son died soon after childbirth, she saw it as a second chance. She worked hard in school. After three years of college, Oprah dropped out to pursue a television job in Maryland. In a few more years she had her own talk show and the starring role in The Color Purple. On her show, Oprah regularly praised the power of the mind to change reality, saying, “You really can change your reality based on the way you think.”

Visualization will help us to accomplish four very important things

1. It activates our creative subconscious which will start generating creative ideas to achieve our goal.
2. It programs our brains to more readily perceive and recognize the resources we will need to achieve our dreams
3. It activates the law of attraction, thereby drawing into our life the people, resources, and circumstances we will need to achieve our goals.
4. It builds our internal motivation to take the necessary actions to achieve our dreams…..