Visualization

Hey, this is Leo from Actualized.org, and in this video I’m going to talk about visualization.

Let’s talk visualisation. I’m really excited about this video, because visualisation is a very powerful technique and tool we can use as self-development junkies. I hope you are one. If you are, we can use this tool to work directly on our subconscious and to start shaping and working with our self-image.

It’s an incredibly powerful thing and I want to get into all the details in this video. What I’m going to do is tell you what visualisation is, why it’s important, how it works. I’m going to give you a whole checklist you can go down to do a proper visualisation so that you’re getting every point correctly.

At the very end, I’m going to take you through a visualisation exercise, so that you know you’re doing it correctly. You’re going to do it with me here as you’re watching, and then you’re going to go away and be a visualisation master. Then you can go and practice, and get some powerful life changing, transformational results from using it.

The Explanation

What is visualisation? Visualisation is simply a technique where you sit down — quietly, by yourself — and use mental imagery, your own imagination, to start priming your subconscious mind with various images of the goals you want to achieve.

Whatever goals and ambitions you have in your life, whatever kind of life you want to create — if you’re like me and you really want to create a powerful, extraordinary life, live to the fullest, then this is where visualisation comes in really handy. Then those goals are going to get programmed into your mind, and then it’s going to be much easier for you to go out and take action on them.

That’s also the why of visualisation. Why do we care about visualisation? It’s because we are self-development junkies, and we want to accomplish big things in life. I don’t know if you’ve tried, but when you try to accomplish something big in your life, whether it’s losing a lot of weight, or improving your diet and nutrition, or starting a business, or improving your career, or whatever it is you want to do, starting an amazing relationship.

If you want to do any of those things and more, than you know you need to really put in something extra — extra effort, extra initiative. This is where visualisation is powerful. It gets your mind soaked in the imagery and the goals. It creates a sense of motivation, so that you can go out there and be inspired to do the things you do, rather than grinding through them.

If you’re going to grind through everything, then you’re not going to accomplish nearly as much. That is the why. Now let’s talk a little bit about the how. I’m going to go into a whole list of all the different steps you’re going to take. The how is basically what you’re doing here, on an abstract level, is that you’re using images in your mind to work on your self-image.

The self-image — I actually have a video on self-image, which is a very critical video for you to watch. You should watch it. I’m going to link it down below in the comment section, so you can find that really easy. Quickly here, to recap, the self-image is the worldview you create that resides in your subconscious mind.

These are the beliefs you have, how you believe the world works, how you believe the world is, what you believe is true, what you believe is false and most importantly, what you believe about yourself — what you believe your weaknesses are, your strengths, your capabilities or impossibilities for you. That’s the self-image.

The self-image holds you back from doing the things you really want to do in your life. The reason that is is because most people’s self-image is flawed and they have a lot of disempowering beliefs residing in there. It’s hard to work and shape that self-image because those beliefs are below the level of awareness.

A lot of times, you don’t have the awareness that you have these beliefs. You just don’t know you have them. Yet they’re there, and they are what’s controlling all the subconscious actions you take in your life. Most of your result in life stems from subconscious actions.

What It Can Do For You

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could take this flawed self-image, this disempowering self-image that has been accumulated since childhood and all the traumatic experiences that we’ve had and all that — couldn’t we take that and somehow reshape it and engineer it to be the way we want it to be, so that we can get the goals and objectives we want in our life actually realised?

Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a way to do that? There actually is, and visualisation is one of the most powerful ways I know to do this. It’s really about reshaping the self-image, that’s why this thing is so important.

Don’t worry if you don’t consider yourself a visual person, or a natural visualiser. I find that most people, when you tell them visualisation, it’s just a label. Don’t get too hung up on the label. Most people already visualise in their lives, they just aren’t aware of it, and they don’t do it consciously. What we’re doing here, the only thing is just taking conscious control of this process.

If you take a time from your past where you’ve accomplished something big or something successful, where you overcame a really big challenge, where you really accomplished and achieved a major goal, what you’re going to discover is the reason you were able to do that is because you were visualising your success, either throughout the process, but especially in the beginning phases.

If you started a business, or you maybe worked hard through college to get a job or a career, or maybe you worked really hard and got yourself a marriage or a relationship — the way you did that was because you were always dreaming in your mind about what you wanted. You had images, visions of what you wanted.

Then, what happened was that your life slowly, by you taking action, your life started to come closer to that image. If you were really good, then your life maybe even resembles that uimage perfectly right now. Or maybe it’s even better than your original image. Or it’s close to it.

This is the process of creation. This is how people create stuff. Everything in the world that has been created that’s meaningful, that’s big, that’s ambitious, that’s beautiful, any work of art, any business, any product, any industry, any service, it all started with a vision. It all started with an image in someone’s mind.

This is an important idea to understand and to buy into. If you don’t buy into this, then you’re not going to take visualisation seriously. I will show with the exercise we’ll do at the end just how powerful visualisation can be. This is something that is not to be underestimated.

The Importance Of Imagery

If you are somebody who wants to create stuff in his or her life, and you want to be extremely productive, and you want to be successful, this is especially important for you. To achieve those goals you have to be driven by it. You have to have a sense of inspiration and motivation. Imagery is the way you do that with your mind. This is supercritical.

Hopefully that proves to you that you already are a visualiser, and that this isn’t something foreign to you. This is just something that we’re really taking control of now, we’re really optimizing this process. Now we’re going to use it very consciously and deliberately to plant those ideas in your mind.

For most people, they do visualise, but it’s very random and sporadic. That’s the kind of results they get in their life. The results are very random and sporadic. We don’t want that. We want consistent, powerful results. That means we take this process under our control. Here is how.

In Preparation

Here’s the checklist you’re going to follow to do successful visualisation off on your own. Here’s how it works. Step number one is that you sit down, somewhere alone, in a quiet room where nobody can disturb you. You need some time by yourself. You’re going to have a timer with you, or a stopwatch.

What I like to do is just have an app on my smartphone, with a little countdown timer. That’s going to be important. That’s going to tell you how much time you’re spending on your visualisations. You’re going to need at least five or ten minutes for this process. That’s step number one. Five or ten minutes, a timer, and just sit down.

Step number two is you close your eyes. Step number three is you set a focus for your visualisation. What do you want to visualise? That means some sort of goal or objective, or purpose. Maybe for you, that’s losing some weight, or improving your business, improving your career, getting more money, or any kind of personal development goals that you have.

You set a goal and make sure it’s something specific and focused. Don’t pick ten different goals, or two different goals — just one goal, one focus for this session of visualisation. Step four is to calm yourself down. Our mind tends to be busy as we’re walking around the day, doing stuff, running our busy, hectic lives. Our mind is always thinking and turning.

We want to shut that off to do successful visualization. This fourth step, it’s not strictly necessary. A lot of times I’ll skip it if I’m short on time. I found that if you do it, it’s going to lead to a more powerful visualisation. You’re going to spend one or two minutes just doing some deep breathing, with your eyes closed.

Deep calm breathing, breathing nice and deep into your stomach, and then breathing out. You’re going to do that for two minutes, at most. Just to get yourself a little bit more calm and centered. If you can, put your focus in your body. Put your focus in your breath and everything you feel in your body, so that you’re right now in the moment.

Don’t think about the past or the future, be present while you’re doing this. That was step number four, you’ve centered yourself. Now it’s time to do the visualisation. You’re going to take your time and set five or ten minutes. Let’s say you set five minutes. You set five minutes, you click the start button.

How To Start

Now the five minutes are ticking down. What you’re going to start doing is visualising your goal. What is your goal? Let’s use a throwaway example so that we’re talking about something specific and not abstract. How about the goal of becoming a millionaire? Let’s say you want to become a millionaire.

If that’s your goal, now you start picturing it. What does it look like to be a millionaire? What kind of car would you drive? What kind of house would you have? What kind of work would you be doing? What would you be doing with your life? How would your life be different? How would you feel? Would you have a big smile on your face?

What kind of friends would you have? How would your family feel about you? You start thinking and visualising all this stuff. The key here is that you want to be filling your mind with the imagery, vivid imagery.

The next point is that you have to be very detailed and as vivid as possible with your images. Your images aren’t going to be as vivid as real vision. They’re not going to be that vivid. They’re going to be murky and hazy. Some of us are better at visualisation than others. What I find, and what’s been really proven and documented, is that as you do visualisation, you get stronger because it’s like a muscle.

You’ve got an imagination muscle in your head, and you’re flexing it every time you sit down to do visualisation. First you might start off, and it might be a little hazy. Just work through it and try to get as much detail as possible. A good trick is to start to use multiple senses. Even though this process is called visualisation that doesn’t’ mean it only pertains to imagery.

Definitely have the images there of you being a millionaire, but also have the sounds. Hear it. What does it sound like to be a millionaire? What does it feel like in your body? What kind of emotions does it bring up in you? Senses of touch, even smell and taste.

Maybe you see yourself going and having a nice, really expensive meal at some restaurant, and you’re tasting that meal and smelling it. Maybe you’re touching things. Maybe you’re feeling the smooth, slick metal body of your expensive car, and you’re running your hand across it. Stuff like that. You want to get as much detail in there as possible. That’s going to make it seem more real.

That’s the trick here. The more real this feels to you, the better. It’s going from the conscious mind into the subconscious mind, and it’s programming itself in there as you do this visualization.

Visualize The Present

The next step is that you want to visualise in the now, in the present moment. Here, we’re talking about being a millionaire, so what that means is that instead of visualising yourself being a millionaire ten years from now, which is nice, what you ought to do is visualise yourself being a millionaire right now, right this second.

You’re a millionaire right now. Picture yourself being a millionaire right in the moment. This is a very important point. Many people get this wrong about visualisation — you want to visualise about the present, not the future. The future is better than nothing, but the present is even better than the future.

Your mind will buy into it even more. You’re basically tricking your mind with this process. To really trick it, make yourself feel like you’ve got it right now. Soak in the emotions. Soak in everything you’re feeling. This should be a very emotional experience, not a logical experience.

That’s basically the process. You sit there for five minutes, or maybe ten minutes, your timer goes off and that’s it, you’re done. If you want, you can do another round of visualisation after that, maybe on some other goal that you have, or you can get up, open your eyes and do whatever you’ve got to do, run your errands and run the rest of your life and your day.

Be Consistent

A couple of points, very critical. This whole visualisation process doesn’t work unless you do it every single day. If you plan on doing visualisation where you do five minutes here, ten minutes the next day, and then you skip a week, and then you do another five minutes — might as well not even try. Don’t bother. You’re just going to waste your time, because it’s not going to work.

The whole point here is to reprogramme your subconscious mind. The subconscious mind is reprogrammed through repetition, the way a dog’s mind is. That’s literally how it is. To do that, you’re going to have to do this consistently. That means weeks have to go by of you consistently doing this visualisation, every single day, like clockwork.

I do it every single day, like clockwork. I don’t miss a day, because I know how important it is for me to be seeding these images of my future in my mind. I’m very ambitious, I have very big goals, and I know I’m not going to achieve them unless I do this. For me, this is top priority.

Structure your day around this. Do this in the morning. Maybe do this in the evening. Do it at lunchtime, whenever you can. Make sure you don’t skip. The other caveat I’ll throw out there is the point about resistance. When you’re visualising in the now, your subconscious mind is going to start coming up with all sorts of resistance to you doing that.

For example, if you’re visualising that you’re a millionaire right now, and you’re actually not a millionaire, and let’s say you’re only earning fifty thousand a year, that’s your salary and you’re never earned more than that, and you have no idea about how you’re actually going to becoming a millionaire — if you start visualising that you’re a millionaire right now in the moment, your subconscious mind is going to rebel against you.

It’s going to say “Woah, wait a minute. What are you doing here? You’re not a millionaire. You can’t be telling yourself you’re a millionaire. This is hogwash. This is wishful thinking, it’s fantasy. This is not reality. We need to be realistic.”

What you’ve got to do is push through it. This is the training process. When you’re training a dog, the dog is not going to obey you. That’s the training process. It disobeys and you train, and you give punishments and rewards. The same thing here, where your mind is disobeying you and resisting, you need to drill into it even more, with even more intensity.

This is a very critical point. Don’t worry that you have resistance. Especially when you’re visualising about the present, and you’re really making yourself feel it. You have to just fantasize about it, and let yourself be in fantasyland for a little while. You’re not spending the rest of your life, or the rest of your day even in fantasyland — you’re just spending five or ten minutes.

Shut off your critical mind for five or ten minutes while you’re doing this exercise. This is very important. With that, if you do this process, and you do it consistently, you’re going to get some amazing results. You also have to have the right expectations. It might take you at least two to four weeks to start seeing some of the results of this visualisation.

Then you can continue doing visualisation even longer. The more you do it, the more benefit you’re going to get out of it. It’s like a meditation practice. Personally, I do it for twenty or thirty minutes every single day, and I’ve done it for almost a year now, straight. I only missed maybe one or two days from that whole period. It’s that important to me.

Go ahead and try that out. That’s the core fundamentals of visualisation. What I want to do now is give you an actual demonstration of how to do a visualisation. I’m going to guide you through one right now.

Setting The Tone

This is a live exercise. Go ahead and do this with me as I’m speaking. This will be powerful and it will drill into your mind how visualisation is supposed to work. Go ahead and find yourself a comfortable seat with your back up straight, sit comfortably and relaxed. As you do that, close your eyes and just listen to me talk. Let me guide you through this visualisation.

As you’re sitting there now, with your eyes closed, start to feel your body. Get in touch with your body, all the different parts and how they feel. Now really notice your breath. Take control of that breath, and take one deep, nice slow breath in and then exhale. As you exhale go ahead and relax your whole body.

Take another nice deep breath in like that one, then exhale and relax your body even more. Feel your mind shutting off and getting very calm and still. Feel your whole body sensing itself. Get your mind completely into the present moment. Imagine there is no past. You have no past at all, no personal history whatsoever.

Forget about the future completely. Imagine you have no future at all. All you are is what you are right now. Just the present, right now, what’s happening right now. Go ahead and take one more nice, deep breath in at your own pace, and as you’re exhaling that breath relax your body completely. Make your mind very still, very centered, very clear.

Your mind isn’t thinking any thoughts. It’s just being aware of everything its feeling in its body. Go ahead and feel the soles of your feet. Go ahead and feel your upper thighs and your butt, sitting on the cushion or the surface. Feel your back muscles, all the way from your lower back, up through your spine, to your shoulderblades.

Go ahead and feel your arms. Feel the awareness and sensation going from the shoulders of your arms down through the elbow, and the forearms and into the hands. Now feel it go through your fingertips. Now shift your awareness to your neck muscles, and move it slowly up all the way into your jaw and facial muscles.

Now relax all of your facial muscles and your jaw, completely. Finally, feel the very top of your head. The very point at the very top of your head, put your awareness there. Now your whole body is relaxed and nice, calm. Your mind is very still.

I’m going to guide you through a visualisation now. Keep your mind as still as it is right now, just as focused. Keep your eyes closed, and breathe comfortably at your own pace.

Start Imagining

I want you to imagine in vivid detail the following scene: Imagine it’s a Saturday morning. The weekend has come, and you’ve got your whole Saturday free to yourself. It’s early morning, you feel full of energy. You wake up really early in the morning. You decide that today you’re just going to spend the whole day golfing.

You woke up with the sun. You feel full of energy. You’re focused, laser focused. You feel totally calm. You walk out onto that golf field. It’s still really early in the morning. The sun is now up., but it’s shining in your eyes, nice and bright, that bright morning sunshine. The air feels kind of cool and brisk. You’re dressed nice and warm, so you don’t feel cold.

It’s just nice and refreshing. Feel the slight breeze across your face, as you’re out there on the grass. Feel your feet. Your feet have golf shoes on, and they’re sinking into the wet grass. The grass is a little bit mushy, and it gives way to your weight. Notice how green the grass is — it’s such a bright, rich green.

The sun’s rays are hitting that grass, and every blade of grass just sparkles. You see the little dew drops on every blade of grass. As you’re standing there admiring the grass, you also take a nice, deep breath in with your nose, and you start to smell it too, that crisp, grassy air.

The wind just feels so refreshing and crystal clear, that crystal clear morning air. Your body totally relaxes as you breathe that in. Your mind is completely still. You have no thoughts of work or family, or friends or any obligations, or the past or the future. You’re just enjoying yourself on the golf course right now.

You hear birds chirping in the morning, as they’re rising with the sun. There are birds all over, all around, in the trees, flying around in the grass. You just bask in that, you bask in the sunshine. You feel the sun’s rays warming your skin. Now you look ahead, all the way down the golf course.

You see yourself. You’re at the driving point, at the very beginning. Hundreds of yards away, you see that little white flag, the hole. The golf course just looks so peaceful, green, calm and beautiful. There’s nobody else out here. You’re the only one.

You just feel good. You just feel so good in your body. You don’t even care about the game. You don’t care about your shot. You don’t care about how many strokes you make. You just feel good for being out here.

Now you take one of the balls, and you put it down on the tee in the grass. You bend back up, grab your driver in your hands. You hold it in your hands, get a nice grip on it. You feel the leather of the driver, the grip, it’s nice and soft. You feel it on your hands, just the perfect grip, your favourite grip.

You set it down right next to the ball. The head of the driver is right next to the ball. You’re all lined up. You look at the ball, then you look forward, at the white little flag all those hundreds of yards away. You just feel so good. Everything feels so perfect.

You’re all lined up for the shot. The club feels just the perfect weight in your hands. You just lift it off a little bit from where it was resting. Now you’re ready for your swing. You swing like butter. It’s so smooth and effortless. Like you were born to make that swing. You just pull the club back, and you sweep it forward right through the ball, and arc it all the way across for the follow through.

Your driver just hits that ball crips, right in that sweet spot. That sound, you hear that perfect sound of the perfect hit, right at the center of the club with that ball. You just nailed it. The power behind that drive is just perfect. You look out and see that ball flying through the air, that nice long, high arc. Then it disappears into the bright sun.

Then you see it plop down right on the green, right next to the flag. You just smile, because that was the perfect shot. This is the perfect morning. Go ahead and bask in that for a few more seconds, and then we’re going to bring you back.

Coming Back

On the count of three, you’re going to take a few more deep breaths, and then you’re going to bring yourself out. You’re going to open your eyes. You’re going to come back nice and refreshed, feeling good. One, two, three.

Go ahead and open your eyes. Welcome back. How was that? That was a visualisation. If you did that, and I hope you did, then I hope you also felt the real power of that. I use this one example of golf — maybe you’re a golfer, maybe not. I’m not actually a golfer. I don’t golf, but to me, that was just a peaceful and good scene to illustrate the power of visualisation.

I wanted to use something everyone could really feel and buy into. I hope you got the vividness in there, that I wanted you to get. Now I want you to really imagine, what would your life look like if all those big goals that you have in your life — your weight goals, your business goals, your career goals, your relationship goals, whatever — if you visualised the way you visualised right now, with this golf scene, if you did that for all your major goals and everything you want in your life and you did that on a daily basis, consistently, repeatedly.

Do you think that would help you to accomplish those, or not? Do you think that’s worth the ten or fifteen minutes it takes to do this? Do you think that’s worth it to you? Do you think it’s worth to master this technique yourself, so that you can run this on yourself? I hope so. It definitely is. I want to encourage you to give it a shot. Try to make a habit of it, and see how far visualisation can take you. It can take you very far.

Wrap Up

This is Leo, I’m signing off. This is it for how to do visualisation. Go ahead and post me your comments down below. Please like this. Click the like button right now. Please share it. Throw it up on Facebook or wherever you like to share videos. Show it to your friends.

I’m going to direct you to my newsletter at Actualized.org. Come and sign up. I’m releasing new articles, new videos, new exclusive content and goodies for my subscribers every single week. This is exclusive content that you can’t get anywhere else, plus it’s free.

What I’m doing is giving you the techniques and knowledge and wisdom you need to master yourself, to understand yourself on a deep level, so you can have the amazing life you want. I want to show you how to create that kind of life.

If you’re interested in that, go ahead and sing up because there’s a lot more great stuff coming and I feel like I’m just getting warmed up. My best content is yet to come. Sign up and you’re going to be on board for all that.