"CREATIVE VISUALIZATION HELPS US TO CONQUER"

Creative visualization is a technique using your imagination to create and visualize scenarios in the mind's eye. By using visualization techniques, you create a mental picture of something and then focus on this image or scenario for periods of time.

Creative Visualization

From Imagination to Reality - Attracting Success with Mind Power

Creative visualization is a mental technique that uses the imagination to make dreams and goals come true.

Used in the right way, creative visualization can improve your life and attract to you success and prosperity.

It is a power that can alter your environment and circumstances, cause events to happen, and attract money, possessions, work, people and love into your life.

Creative visualization uses the power of the mind, and is the power behind every success.

By visualizing a certain event, situation, or an object, you attract it into our life. It is a process that is similar to daydreaming. For some people, this might look like magic, but there is no magic involved, only the natural process of the power of thoughts and natural mental laws. It is like having a genie at your disposal!

There are people who use this technique naturally in their everyday affairs, not being aware that they are using some sort of power. All successful people use it consciously or unconsciously, attracting the success they want into their life, by visualizing their goals as already accomplished.

Creative Visualization and the Power of Thoughts

How does it work and why?

The subconscious mind accepts the thoughts that you often repeat. When it accepts them, it changes your mindset accordingly, as well as your habits and actions. This brings you into contact with new people, situations and circumstances.

Thoughts are endowed with a creative power that molds your life, and attracts what you think about.

Thoughts travel from one mind to another, and if they are strong enough, they can be unconsciously picked up by people, who are in a position to help you achieve your desires and goals.

We are part of the Omnipotent Power that has created the universe, and therefore, we participate in the process of creation. Bearing this thought in mind, there is no wonder that thoughts materialize.

Stop for a moment and think - You are an indivisible part of the great Universal Power! This means that your thoughts can come true! Not all your thoughts, but those that are focused, well-defined, and often-repeated.

Thought is energy, especially a focused thought, soaked with emotional energy. Thoughts change the balance of energy around us, and bring changes to the environment in accordance with them.

Most people think and repeat certain thoughts quite often. They focus their thoughts on their current environment and situation, and therefore, create and recreate the same sort of events and circumstances.

Visualize and Achieve Your Dreams

This process preserves the same "world" and status quo. It is like watching the same film over and again. The good news is that you can change the film by changing your thoughts. You can visualize different circumstances and situations, and in this way, create a different "reality".

By changing your thoughts and mental images, you change your "Reality". You are not employing magic or supernatural powers, but using only natural powers and laws that everyone possesses. It is not something "Material" that you change. You only change your thoughts and attitude, but they change and reshape your world.

If, for example, you live in small apartment and need a larger one, instead of brooding about your fate and lack of money, change your thoughts and attitude, and visualize living in a bigger apartment. This is not difficult to do. It is like daydreaming.

Overcoming Limited Thinking

Creative visualization can do great things, but for every person, there are some areas, which he or she might find hard to change, at least in the immediate future. The power of visualization is a mighty power, but there are some limits to using it. These limits are within us, not in the power.

We often limit ourselves and cannot look beyond a limited circle. We limit ourselves by our thoughts and beliefs. We limit ourselves to the life we know.

The more open-minded we can be, and the bigger we dare to think, the greater are our opportunities and possibilities. Limitations are within our minds, and it is up to us to rise above them.

It may take some time until things start to change. Simple, small demonstrations of this power may come fast, but bigger results may need a longer time to happen.

The time and effort put forth in this study are really worthwhile. Have faith and patience and results will start appearing.

An Example of Creative Visualization

Years ago, before I got married, I decided to visualize getting a date. I imagined myself sitting in a restaurant and talking with a girl. I focused on this image several times during the day, several minutes each time.

The next day, a women working in the same place where I worked, asked me if I can come to talk with her. I hardly ever spoke with her, maybe just saying good morning. I went to her desk, and she asked me whether I had a girlfriend. When she heard that I didn't, she proposed to introduce me to one of her friends, and then gave me her phone number.

When I got home, I called the girl, and asked her to meet me. We met on the same day in a restaurant, exactly as I visualized.

All this happened within about 24 hours. Surprising isn't it? This power can sometimes work really fast.

Oh, you are curious to know what happened with that date? Well, nothing, because she was not the type of girl I was looking for. I used the power of visualization rather haphazardly, not thinking about how I wanted her look like, about her character, etc. I just thought about meeting a girl, and it was a wish that came true.

Four Basic Steps for Effective Creative Visualization

Creative visualization is the technique of using your imagination to create what you want in your life. There is nothing at all new, strange, or unusual about creative visualization. You are already using it every day, every minute, in fact. It is your natural power of imagination, the basic creative energy of the universe, which you use constantly, whether or not you are aware of it.

To use creative visualization it is not necessary to believe in any metaphysical or spiritual ideas, though you must be willing to entertain certain concepts as being possible. It is not necessary to “have faith” in any power outside yourself.

The only thing necessary is that you have the desire to enrich your knowledge and experience, and an open enough mind to try something new in a positive spirit.

Four Basic Steps for Effective Creative Visualization

1. Set your goal

Decide on something you would like to have, work toward, realize, or create. It can be on any level — a job, a house, a relationship, a change in yourself, increased prosperity, a happier state of mind, improved health, beauty, a better physical condition, solving a problem in your family or community, or whatever.

At first, choose goals that are fairly easy for you to believe in, that you feel are possible to realize in the fairly near future. That way you won’t have to deal with too much negative resistance in yourself, and you can maximize your feelings of success as you are learning creative visualization. Later, when you have more practice, you can take on more difficult or challenging problems and issues.

2. Create a clear idea or picture

Create an idea, a mental picture, or a feeling of the object or situation exactly as you want it. You should think of it in the present tense as already existing the way you want it to be. Imagine yourself in the situation as you desire it, now. Include as many details as you can.

You may wish to make an actual physical picture of it as well, by making a treasure map (described in detail later). This is an optional step, not at all necessary, but often helpful (and fun!).

3. Focus on it often

Bring your idea or mental picture to mind often, both in quiet meditation periods, and also casually throughout the day, when you happen to think of it. In this way it becomes an integrated part of your life, and it becomes more of a reality for you.

Focus on it clearly, yet in a light, relaxed way. It’s important not to feel like you are striving too hard for it or putting an excessive amount of energy into it — that tends to hinder rather than help.

4. Give it positive energy

As you focus on your goal, think about it in a positive, encouraging way. Make strong positive statements to yourself: that it exists; that it has come or is now coming to you. See yourself receiving or achieving it. These positive statements are called “affirmations.” While you use affirmations, try to temporarily suspend any doubts or disbelief you may have, at least for the moment, and practice getting the feeling that what you desire is very real and possible.

Continue to work with this process until you achieve your goal, or no longer have the desire to do so. Remember that goals often change before they are realized, which is a perfectly natural part of the human process of change and growth. So don’t try to prolong it any longer than you have energy for it — if you lose interest it may mean that it’s time for a new look at what you want.

If you find that a goal has changed for you, be sure to acknowledge that to yourself. Get clear in your mind the fact that you are no longer focusing on your previous goal. End the cycle of the old, and begin the cycle of the new. This helps you avoid getting confused, or feeling that you’ve “failed” when you have simply changed.

When you achieve a goal, be sure to acknowledge consciously to yourself that it has been completed. Often we achieve things that we have been desiring and visualizing, and we forget to even notice that we have succeeded! So give yourself some appreciation and a pat on the back, and be sure to thank the universe for fulfilling your requests.

Creative visualization is the cognitive process of purposefully generating visual mental imagery, with eyes open or closed, simulating or recreating visual perception, in order to maintain, inspect, and transform those images, consequently modifying their associated emotions or feelings, with intent to experience a subsequent beneficial physiological, psychological, or social effect, such as expediting the healing of wounds to the body, minimizing physical pain, alleviating psychological pain including anxiety, sadness, and low mood, improving self-esteem or self-confidence,and enhancing the capacity to cope when interacting with others.

Stages

According to the computational theory of imagery, which is derived from experimental psychology, the process of creative visualization comprises four stages:

Stage 1 is "Image Generation". This involves generating mental imagery, from memory, from fantasy, or a combination of both.

Stage 2 is "Image Maintenance". This involves the intentional sustaining or maintaining of imagery, without which a mental image is subject to rapid decay, and does not remain for sufficient duration to proceed to the next stages.

Stage 3 is "Image Inspection". In this stage, once generated and maintained, a mental image is inspected and explored, elaborated in detail, and interpreted in relation to the participant. This often involves a scanning process, by which the participant directs attention across and around an image, simulating shifts in perceptual perspective.

Stage 4 is "Image Transformation". In this stage, the participant transforms, modifies, or alters the content of generated mental imagery, in such a way as to substitute images that provoke negative feelings, are indicative of suffering and exacerbate psychological pain, or that reaffirm disability or debilitation, for those that elicit positive emotion, and are suggestive of autonomy, ability to cope, and an increased degree of mental aptitude and physical ability.

Absorption and attention

In order for the participant to benefit from this staged process of creative visualization, he or she must be capable of or susceptible to absorption, which is an "openness to absorbing and self-altering experiences"

Furthermore, the process of processing visual images places considerable demands upon cognitive attentional resources, including working memory.

Consequently, in clinical practice, creative visualization is often provided as part of a multi-modal strategy that integrates other interventions, most commonly guided meditation or some form of meditative praxis, relaxation techniques, and meditation music or receptive music therapy, because those methods can increase the participant's or patient's capacity for or susceptibility to absorption, enhance control of attention, and replenish requisite cognitive resources, thereby increasing the potential efficacy of creative visualization.

Individuals with ADHD often exhibit a greater creative potential, and an increased ability to produce and visualize unique verbal and nonverbal ideas. However, they also show a weaker ability to generate creative solutions when given restrictive criteria, such as procedure, practicality, and time. This weakness is due to executive dysfunction and cognitive rigidity[, which are frequently co-morbid with ADHD. The weaknesses in attention, focus, and motivation are exacerbated by frustration from rigidity, making creative conceptualization substantially harder when guidelines are given. However, increased mind-wandering, lateral thinking, and persistence from ADHD allows for more out of the box thinking. As a result, while affected individuals are able to visualize more creative and original abstractions[, they fall short on creating and finalizing ideas when given specific criteria.

Guided imagery

Although, visual and auditory mental images are reported as being the most frequently experienced by people and even with visual images remaining the most extensively researched and documented in scientific literature, the term "creative visualization" is far less frequently used in scientific, peer-reviewed, and scholarly publications than the term "guided imagery", which research authors use commonly both to indicate the generation, maintenance, inspection, and transformation of mental imagery across all modalities, and in referring to the processing of visual imagery exclusively and specifically. Also, some authors use the term "creative visualization" interchangeably with "guided imagery". Meanwhile, others refer to guided imagery in a way to indicate that it includes creative visualization.

Furthermore, investigative, clinical, scientific, and academic authors frequently measure, analyze and discuss the effects of both creative visualization and guided imagery collectively and inseparably from the other mind–body interventions with which they are commonly combined, including meditation music or receptive music therapy, relaxation, guided meditation or meditative pr axis, and self-reflective diary-keeping or journalism, with the result that it is often difficult to attribute positive or negative outcomes to any one of the specific techniques.

HOW DO WE VISUALIZE

Start by picking a time during which you'll review your goals and visualize your success. Ideally, do this twice a day – first thing in the morning and right before you go to bed. The process typically will take 10 minutes or less. If you meditate, do your visualizations immediately after your meditation.

Visualization Techniques to Affirm Your Desired Outcomes: A Step-by-Step Guide

Visualization techniques have been used by successful people to visualize their desired outcomes for ages. The practice has even given some high achievers what seems like super-powers, helping them create their dream lives by accomplishing one goal or task at a time with hyper focus and complete confidence.

In fact, we all have this awesome power, but most of us have never been taught to use it effectively.

Elite athletes use it. The super rich use it. And peak performers in all fields now use it. That power is called visualization.

The daily practice of visualizing your dreams as already complete can rapidly accelerate your achievement of those dreams, goals and ambitions.

Using visualization techniques to focus on your goals and desires accomplishes four very important things.

1.) It activates your creative subconscious which will start generating creative ideas to achieve your goal.

2.) It programs your brain to more readily perceive and recognize the resources you will need to achieve your dreams.

3.) It activates the law of attraction, thereby drawing into your life the people, resources, and circumstances you will need to achieve your goals.

4.) It builds your internal motivation to take the necessary actions to achieve your dreams.

Visualization is really quite simple. You sit in a comfortable position, close your eyes and imagine — in as vivid detail as you can — what you would be looking at if the dream you have were already realized. Imagine being inside of yourself, looking out through your eyes at the ideal result.

Visualize with the 'Mental Rehearsal' Technique

Athletes call this visualization process “mental rehearsal,” and they have been using it since the 1960s when we learned about it from the Russians.

All you have to do is set aside a few minutes a day. The best times are when you first wake up, after meditation or prayer, and right before you go to bed. These are the times you are most relaxed.

Go through the following three steps:

STEP 1. Imagine sitting in a movie theater, the lights dim, and then the movie starts. It is a movie of you doing perfectly whatever it is that you want to do better. See as much detail as you can create, including your clothing, the expression on your face, small body movements, the environment and any other people that might be around. Add in any sounds you would be hearing — traffic, music, other people talking, cheering. And finally, recreate in your body any feelings you think you would be experiencing as you engage in this activity.

STEP 2. Get out of your chair, walk up to the screen, open a door in the screen and enter into the movie. Now experience the whole thing again from inside of yourself, looking out through your eyes. This is called an “embodied image” rather than a “distant image.” It will deepen the impact of the experience. Again, see everything in vivid detail, hear the sounds you would hear, and feel the feelings you would feel.

STEP 3. Finally, walk back out of the screen that is still showing the picture of you performing perfectly, return to your seat in the theater, reach out and grab the screen and shrink it down to the size of a cracker. Then, bring this miniature screen up to your mouth, chew it up and swallow it. Imagine that each tiny piece — just like a hologram — contains the full picture of you performing well. Imagine all these little screens traveling down into your stomach and out through the bloodstream into every cell of your body. Then imagine that every cell of your body is lit up with a movie of you performing perfectly. It’s like one of those appliance store windows where 50 televisions are all tuned to the same channel.

When you have finished this process — it should take less than five minutes — you can open your eyes and go about your business. If you make this part of your daily routine, you will be amazed at how much improvement you will see in your life.

Create Goal Pictures

Another powerful visualization technique is to create a photograph or picture of yourself with your goal, as if it were already completed. If one of your goals is to own a new car, take your camera down to your local auto dealer and have a picture taken of yourself sitting behind the wheel of your dream car. If your goal is to visit Paris, find a picture or poster of the Eiffel Tower and cut out a picture of yourself and place it into the picture.

Create a Visual Picture and an Affirmation for Each Goal

We recommend that you find or create a picture of every aspect of your dream life. Create a picture or a visual representation for every goal you have — financial, career, recreation, new skills and abilities, things you want to purchase, and so on.

When we were writing the very first Chicken Soup for the Soul? book, we took a copy of the New York Times best seller list, scanned it into our computer, and using the same font as the newspaper, typed Chicken Soup for the Soul into the number one position in the “Paperback Advice, How-To and Miscellaneous” category. We printed several copies and hung them up around the office. Less than two years later, our book was the number one book in that category and stayed there for over a year. Now that's a pretty solid example of a successful visualization technique!

You want to take your visualization to the next level, right?

Index Cards

We practice a similar discipline every day. We each have a list of about 30-40 goals we are currently working on. We write each goal on a 3x5 index card and keep those cards near our bed and take them with us when we travel. Each morning and each night we go through the stack of cards, one at a time, read the card, close our eyes, see the completion of that goal in its perfect desired state for about 15 seconds, open our eyes and repeat the process with the next card.

Use Affirmations to Support Your Visualization

An affirmation is a statement that evokes not only a picture, but the experience of already having what you want. Here’s an example of an affirmation:

I am happily vacationing 2 months out of the year in a tropical paradise, and working just four days a week owning my own business.

Repeating an affirmation several times a day keeps you focused on your goal, strengthens your motivation, and programs your subconscious by sending an order to your crew to do whatever it takes to make that goal happen.

Expect Results

Through writing down your goals, using the power of visualization and repeating your daily affirmations, you can achieve amazing results.

Visualization and affirmations allow you to change your beliefs, assumptions, and opinions about the most important person in your life — YOU! They allow you to harness the 18 billion brain cells in your brain and get them all working in a singular and purposeful direction.

Your subconscious will become engaged in a process that transforms you forever. The process is invisible and doesn’t take a long time. It just happens over time, as long as you put in the time to visualize and affirm, practice your techniques, surround yourself with positive people, read uplifting books and listen to audio programs that flood your mind with positive, life-affirming messages.

If you would like a step-by-step, comprehensive approach for defining your goals, creating affirmations for them and living the life of your dreams, Just add your dreams!

Repeat your affirmations every morning and night for a month and they will become an automatic part of your thinking... woven into the very fabric of your being.

How to Spend the 10 Most Important Minutes of Your Day

Harness the Subconscious Mind with Visualization Techniques

Visualization – seeing the goal as already complete in your mind’s eye – is a core technique used by the world’s most successful people. Visualization is effective because it harnesses the power of our subconscious mind.

When we visualize goals as complete, it creates a conflict in our subconscious mind between what we are visualizing and what we currently have. Our minds are hard-wired to resolve such conflicts by working to create a current reality that matches the one we have envisioned.

Visualization activates the creative powers of the subconscious mind, motivating it to work harder at creating solutions. You’ll also notice new levels of motivation and find yourself doing things that normally you would avoid, but that will take you closer to success.

The third way visualization boosts success is by programming the Reticular Activating System (RAS), which serves as a mental filter for the 8 million bits of information that are streaming into our brains at any one time.

The RAS thinks in pictures, not words. Daily visualization feeds the RAS the pictures it needs to start filtering information differently. As a result, your RAS will start to pay attention to anything that might help you achieve your goals – information that it otherwise might ignore.

Live in the Moment

Although a daily practice of visualization is vital, we don’t need to spend all day thinking about our goals for this technique to work. In fact, spending too much time in visualization can rob you of something essential – living in the moment.

Daily rituals help to establish the right balance between thinking about the future and living in the moment. Start by picking a time during which you’ll review your goals and visualize your success. Ideally, do this twice a day – first thing in the morning and right before you go to bed. The process typically will take 10 minutes or less.

If you meditate, do your visualizations immediately after your meditation. The deepened state reached during meditation heightens the impact of visualization.

For greatest effect, read your goals or affirmations out loud. After each one, close your eyes and create the visual image of the completed goal in your mind.

To multiply the effects, add sound, smells, and tastes. Most importantly, add the emotions and bodily sensations you would be feeling if you had already achieved your goal.

This is a powerful visualization technique.

Research has revealed that images or scenes that are accompanied by intense emotion will stay locked in our memory forever. The more passion, excitement and energy we muster during visualization, the more powerful the results will be.

Once you have visualized each goal as complete, it’s time to release. Let go of your goals, and spend the rest of your day being in the present moment.

Be Present Instantly

An easy way to instantly become present is to focus on your bodily sensations. It’s impossible to focus on our bodies and be in the past or the future at the same time.

For example, focus on your left foot right now. What are you feeling? Pay attention to the sensation for a minute. Then notice what you’re feeling in your right foot, and spend a few moments really feeling the sensation. If you were able to pay attention to your feet, congratulations. You were absolutely present.

If you find your mind drifting to the future throughout the day, you can use one of the more basic visualization techniques. Just let go of any fears or worries that arise. Shift your thoughts to what you want the future to look like when you get there. Then bring your awareness back to the moment. Improving visualization will improve these two correlated skills as well. The greater the details of the mental images you create, the greater the skill. Creative visualization is a critical ability to have to expand your mind.

As the saying goes, “Today is a gift—that’s why it’s called the present.” Use visualization techniques to achieve your goals, but invest the majority of your time enjoying the gift of today.