The Power of Visualisation

Visualisation as an everyday routine

---

I’m that kind of guy who thinks about (almost) everything before I proceed to actually do the thing. This is though not only about me. To an extent visualisation is part of everyone’s daily lives. The strength of one’s visualisation powers is mainly conditioned by one’s ability to objectively reflect the reality and imaginative ability. The stronger those attributes are, the more plausible recreation of future events may be visualised. Visualisation is of course not only used as a “planning” tool, but also as some kind of “comfort zone” guarding our consciousness from any dire events that are going on in our lives.

Source

Visualisation’s applicability

---

As I outlined in the previous paragraph, I think that there are two main applications for the visualisation.

Pre-living the event

Even though many of us actually take advantage of coming in unprepared and spontaneously dealing with the event, it’s usually better to deal with whatever has to be dealt with already prepared. Even the most spontaneous of us do profit from planning at least some of the events.

Source

What effectively happens when we visualize the upcoming event is that our brain tries to logically process the most likely outcomes along with the way that has led to the outcome. Doing that it has sort of pre-lived the upcoming event. Pre-living the event is more than just preparing for it. The difference is following: for example when you want to tell someone something, there are two ways how to prepare for it. A) You create a basic curriculum about what you are trying to convey, thus going into the conversation more prepared. B) You lay down for a hour, trying to imagine possible ways that would lead to desired outcome. You try to think about possible answers to your statements. If then in the actual event the reality matches your imaginative counterpart even slightly, you not only came in prepared, you have ALREADY BEEN THROUGHT IT…well…sort of:P.

This whole knowledge came from our ex-coach in Ultimate Frisbee. When he was telling me what I should have done here and there, my answer usually was that I play for only 1 year, therefore didn’t have time to go through all those possible happenings on the field. When the new one struck me, I failed to react accordingly, because before I managed to process it, it was already too late. Well to this he used to say “You fuckin have to imagine it dude. The time spent on the real field is fuckin one thing, but the time you spent on the field in your fuckin’ head is as important!” Then when I during that tournament made an epic layout the after totally getting into the head of the guy I was defending, all I heard from the side-line was “That’s the way! You visualized the fuck out of him!” He was correct, the night before I really did try to imagine a similar event and when it happened on the field, my body “knew” what to do.

Source

Also it is said, that the results of visualization may be more concrete, than the one I outlined. As @sirwinchester wrote like 5 months ago (gave me a bit of trouble finding the article so give it a read:D) the mind might be connected to the muscles, thus enabling you to, sort of, muscle up just using your brain. I wouldn’t call it a “connection”, but it sounds logical to me, that when the brain sends the message to the body saying something like “we will need to be fucking prepared, because exhausting times are coming” the body will of course react.

Comfort Zone

On the other hand, visualisation can also work as means of escaping from the bitter reality. Sometimes we feel weak and the life is rough. But there is a place where we can always hide, and that is hidden inside of our head – the little paradise of ours. Not only we can visualize an event trying to avoid all our mental biases, in order to create the closest thing to reality we can, but we can also do the very opposite. The way how to temporarily fool ourselves and make us feel better is totally subjective matter. I have already found my way, but it wouldn’t be of any use to you. You have to find your own:).

Source

Summary

---

Visualisations is a super-powerful tool. Whoever did not yet try to use it in ways described above, I strongly recommend doing so. If you think you have rather shitty imaginative ability, do not fear. Imagination isn’t anything else but a logical processing, but that will be a story for different article. I you will, tell me about your experiences with visualisation. I’d gladly hear them out.

---