The Art of Visualization

The art of visualization helps you make your goals part of your subconscious reflex habits, like brushing your teeth or driving your car. Imagine that you’re driving home. Think about the steps you take. You start the car, turn left at the light on Main Street, take a right to the expressway, and head west to the foothills. These interim steps break down your final objective into easily segmented steps.

Psychologists call this interior model or template a “cognitive map.” The cognitive map gives you an image by which to check progress at every moment. If you expect to reach a landmark in less time than you are taking on this particular trip, you might speed up a little to get back on pace. Scientists refer to the process of adjusting your actions to fit your image of what is right as using a “negative feedback loop.” This doesn’t mean that you berate yourself when you get off track. It means you mentally correct to the target.

This week begin to utilize or increase your utilization of the art of visualizing your dreams, so that accomplishment of your goals simply becomes a habit!

—Denis Waitley

2. The Champion Within Article
Your Automatic Pilot to Goal Achievement by Denis Waitley

Every living organism has a built-in autopilot to help it achieve its goal, which is, in very basic terms, to live. In more primitive forms of life, to live simply means physical survival for both the individual and the species. This built-in mechanism or instinct in animals is limited to finding food and shelter, avoiding or overcoming enemies and procreation to ensure the continuation of the line.

Humans have intelligence and emotional and spiritual needs and capabilities, which animals do not have, and we often overlook the fact that human beings have a success instinct. Animals cannot select their goals; their success mechanisms are limited to those inborn goal images that are called instincts. The success instinct in the human being, however, has something that animals will never possess: the creative imagination. The human being is the only creature on the earth that can direct his or her future by choice. You are more than a creature; you are a creator. You choose what your reticular activating system in your brain gives credit to. And you choose what you are looking for in the future through the repeated use of your creative imagination. The way you perceive your world defines the world in which you live. To see it in its unlimited range of possibilities is to see with the Quantum mind.

The perceptions we hold of ourselves, or our self-images, determine the kind and scope of people we are; our self-images are our life, controlling mechanisms that dwell at the subconscious level of thinking. Responsible for autonomic body control, such as breathing and heartbeat, and also for storing conditioned reflexes (repeated skills or images), the subconscious can be compared to a navigational guidance system or automatic pilot. The conscious level of thinking, responsible for collecting information from the environment, storing it in the memory and making rational decisions, can be compared to an attorney or judge.

Guidance systems can be programmed to seek an image or target. They are installed in missiles and spacecraft, which are then guided by these highly sophisticated electronic systems to seek a target through the use of electronic data feedback. The homing torpedo, for example, is a self-propelled system that makes every correction necessary to stay on target and score a hit by constantly monitoring feedback signals from the target area and adjusting the course setting in its own navigational guidance computer. Programmed incompletely or nonspecifically, or aimed at a target too far out of range, the homing torpedo will wander erratically until its propulsion system fails or it self-destructs.

So it is with each of us. Set a goal or an image and this self-motivated system, which constantly monitors self-talk and environmental feedback about the goal, adjusts the self-image settings in our minds and makes every decision necessary to reach the goal.

Most of the information fed into your subconscious memory stays there. The billions of separate bits of input stored over a lifetime are all there awaiting retrieval, and can never be willfully erased by you. They can be overridden or modified over a period of time, but you are stuck with them for life. While performing brain surgery on patients who were conscious under local anesthesia, Dr. Wilder Penfield of the Montreal Neurological Institute stimulated certain brain cells with a weak electrical current. Incredibly, he found his patients remembering experiences that had happened to them many years before; it was as if each person had a videotape recorder in his or her head. One thirty-five-year-old woman recalled her fifth birthday party in vivid detail. She saw all the children around her in party hats; she saw herself opening her presents, including a Dutch doll with wooden shoes, and she blew out the candles on her cake and made a wish. On the basis of this work, Dr. Penfield theorized that every experience, sight, sound, smell, taste and touch registers a pattern in the brain that stays long after the actual experience is consciously forgotten.
Recent research suggests that the brain can function like a holographic projector, which uses laser beams to project and reassemble three-dimensional images. If you’ve been through the delightful experiences of Disneyland, Walt Disney World or Epcot Center, you’ve been startled and amazed at the “real-life” ghosts and characters. Though they are just an assembly of light waves, they appear so solid that you could reach out and touch them! It is this holographic capability of the brain that makes your mind such a potent force.

Scientists agree that the human nervous system cannot tell the difference between an actual experience and one imagined vividly, emotionally and in detail. Many of your everyday decisions are based upon information about yourself that has been stored as truth but is just a figment of your imagination, shaded by your environment.
During every moment of our lives, we program our self-image to work for us or against us. It strives to meet the objectives we set for it, regardless of whether they are positive or negative, true or false or safe or dangerous. Like a videotape recorder playing its cassette, its sole function is to follow instructions implicitly, based upon previous inputs/

—Denis Waitley


Seeds of Belief: Attitude is Everything by Denis Waitley

Your attitude is either the lock on or key to your door of success.

It’s not what you are that holds you back, it’s what you think you’re not.

A smile is the light in your window that lets others know there is a caring person inside.

The most important three words you can say to yourself: “Yes, I can!”

If you believe you can… you probably can.

If you believe you won’t… you most assuredly won’t.

Belief is the ignition switch that gets you off the launching pad.


4. The Winner's Edge Coaching Tips
Accelerate Your Abilities by Chris Widener

In today’s fast-paced life, the wins usually go to those with exceptional skills and abilities. The old quote is true, “The race is not always won by the swift and the strong, but that is the way to bet.”

With this in mind, and with your desire to become increasingly successful, here are some ways to accelerate your abilities, thus enabling you to achieve greater and greater things.

Become dissatisfied with your current state. Growth for growth’s sake is good. Those who will achieve much are those who say to themselves, “I want to grow. I want to be better. And I am willing to do what it takes to get there. This current state is not enough!” This dissatisfaction will create for you an insatiable drive to do what it takes to get your abilities to the next level.

Visualize the benefits of increased abilities. Put them at the forefront of your mind. This will saturate your mind with the motivation that it will take for you to do what it takes to increase your abilities. What good will come out of my increased ability? How will I be better off as well as the others around me? The answers to these questions act as the carrot before the horse, moving you forward.

Understand your weaknesses. If you want to improve, one of the best ways is to start with some area that you aren’t particularly good at. This is the “shoring up method.” Sometimes it is easier to improve something you aren’t good at than something you are. And the gains will still look great for your overall situation! Take some time to consider what areas you are weakest in and focus in on them for a while. The results will obviously be much more pronounced than getting better at something you have already somewhat mastered.

Attempt greater levels of what you are already good at. Another tack to take would be to stretch yourself in an area that you already have some skill and ability in. What areas do you excel in? Now understand that when you leave the weaker areas weak and make extraordinary gains in one area, then you will be moving more toward “specialist” rather than “generalist.” That is okay, but needs to fit in with your overall goals.

Commit time each day to improvement. Steady improvement is the way to go. In fact, you may not see improvement for days or weeks. You may feel like you are failing each time. But alas, eventually you will get it and your skill will increase to the next level. The key is day in, day out, spending time working on improving. Even five minutes a day equals a half hour a week, 2 hours a month. That adds up! Remember, Practice, practice, practice.

Seek out and spend time with someone who has greater ability than you. One of the best things to do to increase your ability is hang out with people who are already more skilled than you. Watching, them, studying them, interacting with them, even competing with them will make you better. As in sports, to improve, you play with people better than you, not worse. They will raise you to a new level. Who around you can you get involved with who will help you with your ability?

Take a class or hire a coach. Go to school my friend. Take a course at a local college or vocational institute. Take a class online. Hire one of the many coaches available today. Pick a specific skill you would like to improve upon and find someone who is a specialist in that area. At the very least, pick up some audio or videotapes to help you grow.

Be the tortoise, not the hare. Slow but sure. Take your time, do it right. Keep going in the right direction. Learn your craft correctly. Don’t give up quality for speed. The whole idea of acceleration is this way: Slow start, work up to high speeds, go the distance. Luckily life isn’t a sprint but a marathon!