We are all aware of how our mind is powerful and strong enough in numerous ways. An interesting fact of the human brain is that it has the capacity to generate approximately 23 watts of power when awake. Being the most complex organ in the body, it controls your thoughts, behaviors, emotions, memory as well as basic life functions such as breathing and heart rate. Above all, what the mind does is – it can create our own destiny – but how can a 3 pound human brain create someone’s future or destiny? – Read through to find out how the mind works out its way and how you can train your mind to create your own destiny –
The most powerful tool for the brain to create your destiny is said to be visualization or imagination. Visualization is a process of creating images in your mind of anything you wish to have, own or attract to your life. Rhonda Byrne’s book – The Secret – based on the Law of Attraction speaks of how visualization is an effective tool to attract to your life all that you want. The rule goes – When you visualize, then you materialize. Bob Proctor, a very famous motivational coach said – “Thoughts become things. If you see it in your mind, you hold it in your hand”.
The book – ‘The Secret’ has defined visualization in the most simplest manner. Excerpt from the book – ‘Visualization is the process of creating pictures in your mind of yourself enjoying what you want. When you visualize, you generate powerful thoughts and feelings of having it now. The law of attraction then returns that reality to you, just as you saw it in your mind’.
Does this really work? Let us explore some of the experiences/incidences I have read and also some I have faced myself using this power of visualization –
- Jim Carrey, the famous Hollywood actor shared this story quite often in interviews on how in 1985 he used to carry a self-written 10 million dollars check in his wallet (dated 10 years in the future) and in 1995 he was actually paid 10 million dollars for the movie ‘Dumb and Dumber’. Such was his power of visualization.
- All the sportsmen and sportswomen from any field – cricket, badminton, boxing, basketball, WWE, UFC or marathon runners use the visualization tool to prepare for their tournaments and matches in order to win. The preparation that these athletes focus on is not just physical practice but also mind practice. For example, I had read that the Indian cricket team captain, Virat Kohli undergoes NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) sessions before he goes to the field to play. This way he creates a winning mindset to approach his opponents. Another instance – Conor McGregor, an Irish professional MMA and boxer also uses this approach to train his mind before every fight with the purpose of creating a right mindset to win.
- The book – The Secret shares some of the real life incidences of people who have used the visualization tool to attract what they want in life right from the kind of job, the house they want to live in, the things they want to possess etc. The method to tap on the visualization factor is having a vision board made for yourself. I will share the details on this later.
From my personal experiences, I have had quite a few cases where my mind has captured some images and maybe I was attracting them that they actually turned to reality. In 2014, my brother was doing his LDP (Leadership Development Program) in Boston and for a week, he went to visit New York. That year, I was working in an MNC whose main office was in the heart of New York City – Times Square. My brother sent me a photo of this office’s building and I was thrilled to see it. I always looked at this picture with the wish to be there and I guess the Universe heard my thoughts and in the beginning of 2015 I landed in New York and worked at this same office for all of my tenure there. I loved the view, the office, the location, the team mates and the experiences I had there formed the best memories of my life.
Another instance of my visualization experiences is of a recent wish that came true. For over 2.5 decades of my life I had been living in independent homes and I was looking for a lifestyle change. My brother stayed with his family in an apartment and I loved the atmosphere there and the lifestyle that he and his family lived. His home has two beautiful balconies with the full view glass doors and I was fascinated with this view. I had images in my head of sitting by such doors and enjoying the view and just sipping tea etc and I remember telling my 10-year old nephew that one day I would also have a house like his. The Universe granted my wish and in the beginning of 2020 we moved to a new apartment which has the same beautiful balcony with a pool side view and best part, this apartment is closer to my brother’s home. I feel so blessed to have received what I visualized and I am glad I could attract it with the visuals I held in my mind.
People often complain they have problem with visualization – either they cannot detail enough in their thinking or they get disturbed with other thoughts or they just cannot do justice to it. But visualization is beautiful in its own way – you do not have to be perfect to visualize something. You could start small – even dreams and weird imaginations. We all have had weird imaginations – be it flying on your own, imagining yourself to be a Superman like the superhero, have wings like the butterfly etc or have weird dreams where we see the most unusual things around or events that happen with us. Most of the times I have had lucid dreams – I tend to remember the dreams when I wake up and I am able to describe it. Most often my dreams have been where I am driving a jeep/sports car or I am seeing missiles and airplanes from all around creating havoc in the skies. Such dreams scare me when I wake up as I am able to remember the speed of my driving, the chaos in the skies etc. We can start small, with short imaginations. It is true that our minds wander faster but you can always bring them back to where you began.
Visualization is very powerful. I have also noticed the visual power is strong in children. I have had some experiences interacting with my niece and nephew who are below 10 years old and the pretend plays that they do, I have seen them describing characters, stories of their own with all the imagination power they have and I was amazed by how wonderfully they can create imaginary stories, thoughts, characters, dialogues etc. All this is also a result of the environment they are brought up in, the shows they watch on internet and television – we all tend to make them believe that Mickey mouse or Santa Claus is for real but they are 10 times more faster than their generation. They can even give the TV cartoon shows a tough competition with their imaginary stories and characters and scenes that they pretend to create by themselves. I have sensed how they do not focus on being perfect in their pretend plays but at least they make every attempt to create stories in their head and play along with it even if the characters are invisible to their parents and playmates. That is the magic of visualization. You do not have to be perfect but at least you can give it a try with the images you hold in the mind.
Use of visualization in education is also very important – A recent research confirmed that our brain prefers images over text. As per the research conducted, participants in studies only remember about 10% of information presented orally when they are tested 72 hours after instruction. However, that number jumps by about 65% when an image is added to the learning process. This is the sole reason why children from their play school age are shown images to help them learn better and faster compared to words. The visuals they see on cartoon shows also catch their attention quickly – which is why these days television and technology has enhanced their brain capacity faster and higher than a normal human being. Visualization could be both good and bad and how we could create that for our kids is in our hands. We must be careful on what exposure you are giving to your kids in the form of entertainment or television or video games as they are the main factors of contribution to either shape their minds well or ruin them for worse.
Visualization need not necessarily help in attracting material happiness. It also helps in attracting all that is important in our lives these days – happiness, love, lasting relationships, prosperity, peace and confidence. Yoga and NLP are the most important tools that help in attracting these into our lives. Yoga or meditation helps you to relax your mind and at the same time, connects you with your inner self and visualize the good things to feel better and keep the mind healthy. NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) focusses more on feeding the mind with the right messages and also connecting to your inner subconscious mind to help you create the life you want to live. I am personally trained in NLP and I’m aware that to connect to the sub conscious mind, to focus on attracting a better self or a better environment, it is important to focus on the details when one visualizes or creates images in his/her own mind. Details related to color of the object, the feel, the touch, the shape, the size etc all of these are of great importance to help you send the right messages to the subconscious mind in such a way that it helps create the kind of life you want to live.
From last week, I have been attending a few online meditation sessions whenever I get time and these have been very helpful in changing my mindset and thoughts. I would like to share details of one meditation session named – Happiness Visualization that was for a quick 15 minutes. I was curious to understand how visualization would help create happiness so I gave it a try. The audio started with making one comfortable about how visualization need not be perfect and it was important to bring to the mind’s eye to focus on the importance of connecting to the surrounding to achieve happiness. The trainer then suggested on focusing on breathing and closing the eyes to follow his story and visualize accordingly. The story began with imagining a field with a big tree in the center with thick branches and dense leaves. He then moved on to explain how you can visualize yourself as one of the leaves – lush green and young amidst other leaves, who are your family and friends near and far. As a leaf you are beneath the blue sky, feeling the kiss of the sun and the moon, watching the clouds go by and feeling the rain etc.
At one point of time, the leaf gets detached from the branch, sways with the breeze and falls to the ground. The leaf then turns pale and gets dissolved underground with the soil and roots and then grows to be another big tree just like the earlier one. The roots of this tree are interlinked and connected with many other trees beneath the soil. All the trees are connected to one ground, the ground is connected to the Earth, the Earth is one of the many planets including asteroids and meteors which form the solar system, the solar system is part of the galaxy and the galaxy is connected to thousands of galaxies in the Universe. This visualization technique helped me realize how we are a tiny part of the entire Universe, connected to each other by our roots and how this connection is important for us to be happy. This connection highlights the importance of being one among the many and also helps us realize how the connection is just the opposite of loneliness and depression. Another lesson I learnt was how death could mean a new beginning of a bigger and powerful self. I opened my eyes slowly and felt happy about the connection theory that I heard on the audio. This session helped me feel happy from within and it was wonderful overall.
Another factor to throw light on visualization is that just having images is not enough to attract things to your life. The rule goes – when you visualize, emotionalize and vocalize, is when it gets actualized. It is important to synchronize your feelings and thoughts with the images you hold in the mind, this gives a strong signal to the Universe to act upon. For example, when you visualize a tiger in front of you, the natural tendency of a human is to associate tigers to a threat or danger and thoughts that get created in the mind are those of fear and restlessness – Fear of being killed or eaten up by the tiger. Similarly, your thoughts, feelings and the images you hold in your mind have to be in sync in order to materialize.
Anthony Robbins, American author and life coach is my inspiration. His first book – Unlimited Power has defined NLP in the simplest manner. The book defines a lot of exercises highlighting how the mind needs to be fed in order to achieve success and grow. Though NLP as a methodology was created by the creators – Richard Bandler and John Grinder in the 1970s but the best research book or guidance to me has been Anthony Robbins’ book – Unlimited Power. The exercises range from how to build confidence, come out of stress, shifting of the mind from something that lacks your interest to something that interests you, creation of goals, vision board etc. NLP is almost a training that even the topmost athletes attempt before they jump to the game to play. They create the field in their mind, focus their energies on playing well and visualize the victory. Just the thoughts of visualization would make their heartbeats pump up, the adrenaline rush gets created, they begin to create a sync of their thoughts, feelings and images of victory and that is how they win big in the field every time.
Let me share some quick tips and tricks to help you visualize better –
- I would suggest you watch – The Secret movie on Netflix or Youtube – it will give you complete details on how visualization works on human mind and how you can attract all that you want and create your own future. There are real life instances shared by people who have believed in visualization and attracted what they always wanted to achieve.
- Vision board – A vision board is a graphical representation of all that you want to visualize or keep reminding your mind of your goals that you want to achieve and attract them to your life. Like the kind of home you want, the kind of car you want to own, the people you want to attract in your life etc. Collect pictures of them and make a good collage that you can keep in your room or at your office desk (unless too personal). The things you want to attract have to be genuine and the process of focusing on attracting them is not just having them up in front but to feel that you own it, you have it already and you are enjoying it. You have to keep the alignment of thoughts, feelings and actions on the same level. That is how law of attraction works and that is how Universe gets the message to act on it.
I have a vision board for myself that I have kept in my bedroom. It includes images of the kind of house I want to make, the type of car I want to own, the people I want to have in my life, the different qualifications under my name, the holy places of Mecca and Madina where I want to perform my pilgrimages (which is my wish), the places I want to visit or stay permanently in , Capricorn zodiac related quotes that represent me (yes, I believe in zodiac and I am proud to be a Capricorn woman who is a hard worker and all-rounder 🙂 ) and a picture of mine with the smile that is so genuine that I wish to stay happy like this always.
3. Attend meditation sessions that enhance your imagination like the one I shared above or may be you could create your own imagination and do a quick recording of it so that you can close your eyes , play it in the background and you get to visualize and feel it throughout in a way that you send signals to the Universe in the right manner. Imagine it like a movie playing where you have control of the scenes or visuals. You have control to imagine what you want in your life.
4. Use Affirmations to support your visualization – Words are as powerful as our thoughts. The signals they sound out to the Universe are always heard. I have learnt via the law of attraction process that the Universe is always listening to your words and thoughts – it is not questioning the good or bad but it is only listening and getting you what you speak and think. So it is important to keep in alignment what you ask, what you speak and what you think and visualize. Form short sentences or affirmations for your visualization that could help in enhancing your process of achieving goals.
5. Altered memory visualization – Visualization not only helps you focus on the future but also on the past in such a way that you could alter your past memories that have troubled you or traumatized you so much that you still see those incidences in your dreams or you remember them once a while. You must be wondering how can we alter the past when it is all over ? – We can alter it using our minds. NLP has this best technique where a person can recollect the bad incident or experience , project it on an imaginary television in front of him placed against a glass wall and takes control of the whole incident using the remote just like you normally do. One can pause the most painful scene or moment of this experience in such a way that they can begin to erase this scene from the television with the help of the remote or see the television getting destroyed by thunder or buried underneath the ground or just any form of destruction you wish to see it happen to that memory playing in front of you. This destruction is a sign of the memory getting destroyed in your mind. It also depends on how many times one person does this exercise in order to get rid of the bad memories.
As I mentioned earlier, NLP focusses a lot in detail on the structure of the memory with the elements of the colors, the hues, the shapes, sizes etc. These elements are very important as it helps one to grasp, build or erase experiences within the mind.
Visualization or the law of attraction comes with a disclaimer that there is no timeline that Universe follows to bring you close to what you have asked for – do not doubt the process. You are only allowed to ask and believe that you will receive – leave the process of ‘How’ on the Universe as it will come to you with your strong beliefs and conviction.
Visualization is beautiful to practice – build your life as a movie where you are the hero or heroine, add your own characters you want, create the emotions or actions you want in your life and see how beautiful your life movie turns out to be – add beautiful colors of happiness, success, peace and prosperity in your story and always believe – the Universe is always listening to your thoughts, knows the images you are holding in your mind and also the words within yourself and what you tell the world. Believe you deserve it and the Universe will serve it :).
https://thelighthousekaurwords.com/ 