Your Vision… Make it so.
For years now, top athletes have significantly improved performance by incorporating visualization. Mental preparation through the creative visualization isn’t just a fanciful notion that might help, it’s a requirement amongst top performers and it’s proven to work.
In 1937 Napoleon Hill published Think and Grow Rich, a book full of success principles rooted in timeless concepts and still widely read and recommended today. While teaching principles of monetary wealth and creative visualization, the ‘Think and Grow’ philosophy can be used to help people achieve their goals in all lines of endeavor.
Disciplined daily creative visualization is an important component of success along with setting and working your goals.
Don’t leave your success to chance or happenstance. Set goals, envision your success, take action daily toward that, and you will arrive.
~LeAura Alderson, writer, editor, creator iCreateDaily.com ®
Table of Contents
- Your Vision… Make it so.
- The Power of Visualization
- Vital Questions for Visualization
- Visualization with Daily Action Leads to Success
- Focus on the Good and it Will Grow
- Creative Visualization Methods
- Your Personal Creative Visualization Meditation
Audio Article – Creative Visualization:
“Visualization has taken its place as one of the key components of what goes into turning a skilled athlete into a champion.”
~Terry Orlick, sports psychologist, author, In Pursuit of Excellence
The Power of Visualization
There’s a story about an air force Colonel George Robert Hall, who was shot down over North Vietnam on September 27, 1965, and held captive as a prisoner of war for seven and a half years. During this long and tortuous imprisonment in an 7.5’x7.5′ cell in the infamous “Hanoi Hilton” with nothing to do, Colonel Hall began to develop his mental ability to vision.
Visioning Kept Him Alive
He visioned playing his best golf games in his head everyday for all the years of his imprisonment in Vietnam. It gave him something constructive to do with his mind while fueling the hope of returning home. Hope has been well documented as having the power to save lives, as told in Viktor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning.
When Col. Hall finally made it home after seven and a half unimaginable years, it was a heart-wrenching emotional day when he went to play golf on the course that helped keep him alive. He played a perfect game, better than his previous good score. Though unwell and still underweight, his mind was strong and had helped his body maintain the strength of muscle memory through the power of his daily visioning work.
More on Colonel Hall’s Story
You can read more about the outstanding post war life accomplishments of Colonel George Robert Hall‘s in his 2014 obituary.
Golf blogger, Charles W. Boatright shares his interview with Col. Hall and more on the mental game of golf and life.
Colonel Hall also penned his own book along with his wife pat, titled, Commitment to Honor: a Prisoner of War Remembers Vietnam. Here, Col. Hall answers the questions many still have today, including: “What was it for? Was the war against the communists in North Vietnam worth seven years of his life, and the lives of thousands of other young Americans.”
Sources for Col. Hall’s P.O.W. Golf Visioning Story
- More on the Golf Story on Snopes, titled Inner Golf.[1]https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/legend-in-his-own-mind/
- Zig Ziglar’s book,
- Winning, It’s All in Your Head, by Denis Waitley , audiobook recorded from a speech
- :A Second Helping of Chicken Soup for the Soul
“He [Colonel George Robert Hall] used his love of golf to sustain himself through horrendous conditions as a P.O.W. Colonel Hall, with other P.O.W’s., was able to train his mind in the field of science, math, language, and sports.”
Charles W. Boatright, owner EPSYGolfApp.com
“The mind completes whatever picture we put in it.”
~Zig Ziglar, author, salesman, speaker, 1926-2012
Vital Questions for Visualization
Paint this picture in whatever ways helps you bring it more fully to life. A member of the iCreateDaily community puts it this way:
Ask these questions of yourself:
“What is the mindset of the life I want to live?”
“What life do I want to live?”
Those are vital questions. If you are not clear on your goals… on your definition of a successful life, it’s well nigh impossible to achieve it. However, if you’re not yet clear, don’t worry. We’re all about embarking on the journey and clarifying it as you go.
“Visualization is mapping the mental blueprint for what is to come… for what will be.”
~LeAura Alderson, writer, editor, creator iCreateDaily.com ®
Visualization with Daily Action Leads to Success
The entire theme of the iCreateDaily brand is about showing up and doing the work daily. Imagining yourself living your goal is very much a part of doing the work. And remember, you don’t have to have it all figured out first. Set your intention for what you know you want so far, and head in that direction.
“Before you can become it, you must think it. Before you can be it, you must see it.”
~LeAura Alderson, writer, editor, creator iCreateDaily.com ®
Focus on the Good and it Will Grow
If your goal is to be a successful, best-selling author, but your image of yourself is that of an anguished, struggling author uncertain of how to become successful and overwhelmed with all that there is to do, it will be harder to reach your goal. This is where creative visualization comes in.
Imagine your life and how you will be living it and what you’ll be doing.
The more you practice living in your future self, the more real it becomes and the easier to walk right into the set that your mind has constructed… in the present.
“Your future becomes your present more quickly through visualization.”
~LeAura Alderson, writer, editor, creator iCreateDaily.com ®
Your New Employee
Your subconscious mind is employed in working on your dreams, even while you’re sleeping and otherwise engaged, but only if you’re putting in the daily work to make it so. If you need to set out on a journey from the east coast to the west coast—even if on foot—you will arrive if you keep on going, but only if you keep on going. And… you will arrive more quickly if you incorporate visualization into your daily practice.
“Success is not a mystery. Success is history; the history of showing up daily.”
~LeAura Alderson, writer, editor, creator iCreateDaily.com ®
Creative Visualization Methods
Visualization Meditation – a Great Way to Start Your Day
A good time to employ visualization is in the morning, such as in meditation. If you’re not yet meditating there are numerous resources online to help you cultivate the daily practice of reflective imagery, aka, creative visualization. You can download an introductory free meditation here, or access many on YouTube.
Tony Robbins describes the power of the process of visualization in a simple formula. For the entire explanation, you may enjoy his video. For the abbreviated concept, it’s this:
Belief + Potential + Action = Results + Belief = Greater Potential…
Greater Potential + Greater Action = Greater Results = Greater Belief = Greater Potential…
The bottom line? The more you believe in yourself, and build your dreams through daily action, the more results you will experience and the more you will believe in yourself. The more you do, the more you can do.
Bedtime Visualization – A Great Way to End Your Day
Visualization is also a productive and relaxing way to end the day as you drift off to sleep. You may even notice a shift in type and quality of dreams as you practice going to sleep while visualizing your next level of a successful life. You may also notice awakening with greater clarity and focus. It’s a good idea to journal your experiences as you implement new practices.
“If we do not know where we want to go, we cannot arrive.”
~LeAura Alderson, writer, editor, creator iCreateDaily.com ®
“Inhabit the emptiness with complete surrender, and a miraculous something will emerge from the apparent nothingness.”
~Marianne Williamson, teacher, author, b.7/8/1952
Your Personal Creative Visualization Meditation
Set aside some reflective time. You may want to be out in nature, or indoors with some uplifting music playing or at a favorite coffee shop. Next:
Write down your goals and dreams:
- Identify your goal
- Envision yourself living that goal
- what will you being doing when you’ve arrived?
- how will you look, think, feel, stand, talk?
- who will you hang out with and associate with?
- what will you do with your time?
- how will you feel about yourself?
- What kinds of actions are needed to achieve your one year goal? Break these down into quarters, months, weeks and days.
Now each morning and/or at night before going to sleep (or other time best for you), spend at least 5-20 minutes reading over your goals and then visualizing them. Twenty minutes is a sweet spot. In my family we like to do this to uplifting music with headphones and a Keynote (or PowerPoint) slide show of visuals, each with their own “vision board”.
Goals for Each Area of Life
I prefer to do mine on my Keynote slideshow because it’s easy to update and evolve it, plus easier to find images online to add to the slides. I have a slide that represents each one of my goals, generally having to do with the overarching areas of my life. E.g:
- Creation & Vision
- Growth – business and personal
- Health & Wellness
- Family & Relationships
- Wealth & Finances
- Contribution & Service
- Spirituality & Inspiration
This is essential training for creators to create the life you wish to live. If you haven’t yet started setting and working your goals, you may find the 90 Day Goals Journal will create the structure you need to organize and complete your goals.
RELATED: Visioning Tools
Let us know if you have any questions relative to anything in this article. We love to hear from you and respond to all emails.
“Write your own future… it’s yours to pen.”
~LeAura Alderson, creator iCreateDaily.com ®
“Visualization is simulation.”
John Assaraf, magnate, author, b.1/1/1961
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Hello! I’m LeAura, owner and co-creator of iCreateDaily.com®. As an autodidactic philosopher, generalist, personal development advocate, entrepreneur, writer, editor, author, ideator, media publisher, and podcaster, I’m passionate about helping others achieve their best possible life! Our small family of entrepreneurs, writers, investors, educators and creators own and run websites around topics we enjoy, such as gardening, health and fitness, creativity and pets, with more to come.
While my greatest teacher is Life… my formal training includes certifications in mediation, fitness, and strategic intervention coaching, including marriage and family. Today, the synergy of creating websites, articles and podcasts, brings together all my favorite things: family, learning, growth, creating, connecting and contributing. To share these with you is a privilege, that serves my lifelong aspiration to help others.
My personal areas of creativity are in writing, masterminding, ideation, synthesis and bringing ideas to life through business and entrepreneurship, all with a pervasive spiritual foundation with a focus on elevating the lives of others.
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