Being able to visualize and use mental imagery well holds the key to many aspects of mental discipline. Good visualization can be used to help manifest desires, elicit certain powerful mental states and influence the affect that previous life experiences have on our day to day living. While an ability to visualize is often assumed or taken for granted, unfortunately a lot of people have difficulty visualizing and are consequently unable to experience the benefits it can offer: I know because up until recently I was one of them. After some intense study I discovered some of the more important keys to visualizing successfully that are far less commonly found in material of the personal development nature. This article will explore some of these keys to visualization and look at how you can better use visualization to increase the quality of your own life.
Understanding Visualization
This was a big one for me. Whenever I had heard the word visualization I had thought of just that: a vision, a picture. Consequently I would try to visualize in pictures. I would test myself by attempting the task “visualize a Ferrari”, but was rather frustrated when I could only barely conjure up an image of a blurry, static, lacking in detail outline of the stationary motor car. A huge change occurred for me when I realized that a visualization is not actually supposed to be a VISUALization but rather, the creation of an experience. So what makes up an experience as opposed to a VISUALization? The answer is the use of ALL of our senses rather than just our eyes. As opposed to a visualization, an EXPERIENCE consists of factors that can be touched, smelt, heard, and tasted as well as saw. It is through the use of all of our senses that we can create awesome visualizations. But before we get onto that, there are some fundamentals about our brains that need to be understood.
Your Representational Systems
If you’re familiar with the work of NLP you will know that each individual generally develops one or some of their 5 senses more than others. As a result people tend to be more sensitive to, more responsive to and more inclined to utilize the faculties of that particular sense more than others in their interactions with their environments. For example some people are more apt at processing data through visual means, preferring to “see” things in order to understand them and communicating ideas through diagrams and pictures. Alternatively others are more in tune with their kinesthetic faculties and so prefer to process information through the touch and feel of things, often working well in more “hands on” capacities and requiring that affection be shown them through cuddles and kisses for example.
The big distinction for our visualization capacities is that we have to visualize in a way that accentuates the faculty that we ourselves utilize more often than the others. If you are a kinesthetic person, you might not get the full benefit of visualization unless you can create an experience based on touch and feel. How did it FEEL to have that experience? What physical sensations will you have during it? How hard or soft was the touch of that thing?” are questions that you will need to ask in order to effectively create or recollect an experience. Ultimately we all use all of the representational systems sometimes, the most important thing for you to know is your primary one. So, your first step should be determining your primary representational system. You can do that with the help of the article “Determining Your Primary Representational System”. (ADD LINK)
Now that you understand that we’re trying to create an experience rather than actually “visualize” and you know your primary representational system you’re ready to start visualizing more effectively. Here are some more tips:
Brainwaves
It has been determined that we can visualize most clearly when our mind in a certain state and our brainwaves are fluctuating at a certain frequency. This frequency is called an ‘alpha’ state. An alpha state is a relaxed state where our left brain, or logical, analytical mind is relatively quiet and our right brain, or creative mind is beginning to gain prominence. You can get into an alpha state (or at least a more alpha state) just by taking a few minutes to relax your body and breathing deeply. From this state your visualizations will be more clear, more creative and you will be able to maintain them more easily.
Don’t Close Your Eyes!
Take note this may vary between individuals and is more expressive of my personal experience. I found whenever I closed my eyes I couldn’t picture anything! All I saw was black and when I tried to picture things they were buried somewhere in that sea of blurry dark color and were prone to disappearing as soon as I could create them. This was also strange for me as I am more of a visual person and so I expected visual imagery to come easily to me. My visualization improved dramatically when I realized that I didn’t need to close my eyes but rather I could use my “mind’s eye” to picture the things I had to. I just look away into the distance and get going. At first I notice my eyes are focused on whatever happens to be in my field of vision but as my visualization becomes more detailed my visual focus fades and I find myself in a mini “trance” almost. From there, with my eyes still open, my visualization proceeds smoothly!
Integrate Your 5 Senses
Get into detail here. Let’s say you’re visualizing a positive past experience in order to learn more about the state you were in at that time (classic NLP stuff). You begin by implementing your primary representational system, let’s say its visual. You picture the things you saw at that time, the color things had, how bright they were, how focused was the image, how close were you to what was taking place (see “sub modalities in the NLP section) and so on. From there keep the picture rolling as a movie of what happened. It doesn’t necessarily have to be chronologically correct, as long as it has continual motion. Next look to the feelings (kinesthetic factors) that you experienced. What were you touching at the time? How soft or light was the touch? Where was it on your body? How much pressure was there? And so on and so forth. From there integrate the sounds. What things could you hear? Were there voices perhaps? Were they loud or soft? Were they high pitched or low in tone? Were they fast or slow? By now you should be starting to recreate this image very vividly and starting to physically feel in your body some of the things you felt at that time. Continue to add, anything that you could taste or smell also and you should have yourself a very realistic and examinable recreation of what happened.
Armed with this knowledge you will be able to visualize far more potently. Of course the final key is to practice. Ideally set aside a little time each day to dedicate to visualizing. Of course as well as improving your ability to do it, if focused that practice can also work towards attracting your desires, enhancing the clarity with which you can recount past fond memories and much more!
Enjoy!
Andrew Hansen
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