This post is part of a series on goal setting. If you’re just getting started with us, here is a link to all of these posts so you can start at the beginning!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Have you ever wondered what the difference is between the successful and the massively successful?
In the last post, we discussed how to use affirmations to keep your motivation levels at their peak. But what if I told you there was a way to take this step of positively affirming your goals to an entirely different dimension?
That process is called visualization. Visualization is not a difficult process. In fact, in the last post’s action step, I asked you to do a little bit of visualization when imagining yourself as if you had completed your goal.
The subconscious mind plays an enormous part in the reality that we manifest. The orders that our mind gives to our body determines the actions that we take, the thoughts that we think, even the decisions we make.
How many times has your heart beaten today without a single conscious thought? How many breaths have you taken? How has your food digested and turned into energy without you making a decision for it to do so?
All day long, your subconscious mind works like a drill Sargent at basic training, barking orders to your body and your conscious mind that they obey like obedient military recruits.
That drill sargent, however, isn’t someone else. It’s not another person. It’s not your mother, your father, your spouse, or your peer group. That drill sargent is you. And you can reprogram your drill sargent.
In our conscious world, we can make decisions and take physical actions as a result of those decisions. Decide to wiggle your right index finger. There, you just did it.
In our subconscious world, we can have this same effect on our inner drill sargent, giving him a new set of orders that he will demand of our thoughts, our actions, and our decisions. It just works a little differently.
A drill sargent’s focus is on outcomes. His goal is to turn new military recruits into trained soldiers, and he will use any means necessary to achieve that outcome. What is the definition of a trained soldier? Whatever his superior officers tell him that it is.
Chances are, that drill sargent went through hundreds of hours of training, making sure he fully understood his objective. It is imperative that he achieve his mission, otherwise, the military commanders will have sub-par soldiers on their battlefields. If the commanders decided that their soldiers needed to have different characteristics, they’d retrain the drill sargents, and they would start turning out differently equipped soldiers.
Our subconscious mind creates our reality. If we want a new reality, we just need to retrain our subconscious. Teach it exactly what we want it to turn out for us in our lives. This is what visualization can do.
To put the power of visualization into effect in achieving the goals you’ve set for yourself, take these simple steps.
Close your eyes.
Imagine your goal as if it is being completed right now. Not after you’ve finished, but the process of actually taking the final step and finishing your goal.
Play this moment in your mind like a movie. When you do, use all of your senses.
- Vision – What do you see? Notice the details. Light, darkness, indoors or outdoors.
- Smell – Where you are, how does it smell? Any familiar odors or scents? Fresh cut grass, sweat, oil on your equipment.
- Hearing – Do you hear any noises? Is there cheering, clapping, talking?
- Taste – Is there any taste or flavor involved? Feeling quenched or thirsty?
- Touch – How does your skin feel? Hot, clammy, wet? Any textures against your skin from your clothing. The feel of your equipment in your hand. Head gear you might have on?
- Intuition – Any feeling in your gut?
The world’s most elite athletes understand the power of visualization. Jack Nicklaus, one of the all time greats in the game of golf, may have been one of the first to put it to use. Now, an entire field, sports psychology, teaches athletes how to achieve greater physical gains by first visualizing their results.
Visualizing yourself successfully achieving your goals will help your subconscious recognize more opportunities for you. It will build your confidence in your ability to succeed. Perhaps most importantly, it will clearly define what success looks like for you. Perhaps you’ve never been in the shape that you want to be in, so you don’t know how it really feels to have six pack abs, but you can visualize it! You might not know how it feels to make $100,000 in a year, but you can visualize getting large paychecks!
It’s important to set goals that stretch you, and sometimes that means that you need to set goals that you don’t yet know how to achieve. For these goals especially, visualization is the ultimate key to success.
Today’s Action Step
Go through your list of goals. Close your eyes and visualize each of them being completed. Allow yourself to feel the feelings you will have when you cross that line. It should feel exciting, fulfilling, and rewarding, so enjoy it!
If you haven’t done so already, please click here to visit and like my new Facebook page for Andrew Schultz Training!
Have a joyful day!
If you enjoyed today’s post, please consider subscribing by entering your email address below. Free daily motivation, delivered automatically to your email inbox!
