The Power of Visualization
The year was 1990, and a 28-year-old man with big dreams found himself struggling financially and out of work. He dreamed of someday becoming a famous actor, but he had dropped out of high school and at times found himself homeless. However, every night he would drive to a quiet spot and visualize movie directors wanting to hire him and he imagined famous actors and actresses saying “I like your work”. He visualized this every night.
Despite his struggles, the young man took things a step further. He wrote himself a check for $10 million for “acting services rendered” and dated it five years into the future. He carried that check around in his wallet for years. Then, exactly five years later to the month, the man’s vision came to life. That man’s name is Jim Carrey, and in November 1995 he was cast to play the lead in the film Dumb and Dumber, for which he would be paid $10 million.
Jim Carrey credits his success to hard work, belief in himself, and his visualization practice. He believed that if he could imagine it, it could come true. Research has shown that visualization is a powerful tool that can help to rewire our brains, improve our performance, and lead to greater successful outcomes. Today, I would like to share with you some of that research that demonstrates the superpowers of visualization.
You have probably heard about famous athletes using visualization to enhance their performance. But how does visualization work?
According to an article in Psychology Today, brain studies reveal that thoughts produce the same mental instructions as actions. Mental imagery, or visualization, impacts cognitive processes in the brain in similar ways to actual experience. In other words, if you visualize yourself swinging a golf club, your brain lights up in similar ways to if you were actually swinging a club. In this way, the brain is getting trained for actual performance during visualization. Visualization creates new neural pathways. Let me say that again, by simply closing your eyes and visualizing something, visualization creates new neural pathways!
A study conducted by the University of Chicago was done where people were split into three groups and tested to see how many basketball free throws they could make. The first group practiced free throws every day for an hour. The second group just visualized themselves making free throws daily. The third group did nothing. After 30 days, they were tested again.
The third group that did nothing, did not improve, as expected. The first group, which practiced free throws every day for an hour, improved 24%. While the second group, that just visualized making free throws, improved 23%, without ever even touching a basketball! Dr. Abigail Brenner writes that visualization allows you to tap into your subconscious and program it to look for and guide you to whatever you tell it. It is like when you learn a new word, and then you suddenly start hearing it all over the place. When you focus your subconscious on something, whether it be a skill or something you want to create in your life, your subconscious begins working it out for you.
Dr. Jennice Vilhauer says that psychologists have been using visual imagery for years, as a way to help people enhance performance at skill-based activities, create desired emotional states, and achieve life goals. This is why I use visualization exercises with the people I’m coaching. I was surprised to hear one client of mine report that after we did a public speaking visualization, he found it so useful that he has done it every single day for the past six months!
The Journal of Consulting Psychology published a visualization study conducted with job seekers. The first group of job seekers received traditional career counseling and interview coaching. The second group of job seekers received the same career counseling and interview training, but they were taught how to use visualization techniques. Two months after the training, 21 percent of those in the first group had found new jobs. But in the group that learned visualization techniques, 66 percent found new jobs.
One woman who was terrified of interviews said,"Before I used visualization, I felt like a scared puppy, but now I feel like a lion". She reported getting a job with a higher salary than she had.
Natan Sharansky is a computer scientist who spent nine years in prison in the USSR. To pass the time while in solitary confinement, he played himself in mental chess, saying: “I might as well use the opportunity to become the world champion!” Several years later in 1996, Sharansky actually had the opportunity to play Garry Kasparov, the world chess champion. And guess what, Sharansky beat him!
Now, before you bust out that checkbook and start writing yourself $10 million checks, just remember Jim Carrey’s advice. You can’t just write a $10 million check and go have a sandwich. Visualization is a powerful tool, but you still need to put in some hard work too.