Visualisation works...

One of the tools many hypnotherapists use is visualisation. Visualisation is the most powerful tool we have at our disposal—one of our best assets and it’s totally free! Like anything, it can take a bit of practice to get good at visualising, but it’s an enjoyable experience. I liken it to a kind of organised daydreaming’—one of my favourite pastimes as a child.

The power of visualisation is becoming more and more respected. Albert Einstein talked about it being a powerful and useful tool. He once said, ‘Imagination is more important than knowledge.’ He is well-known for having used creative visualisation to come up with solutions. He also famously said: ‘We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.’

Many athletes visualise achieving their goals and they find this helpful for them to reach peak performance during competition time. The famous international champion golfer Jack Nicklaus once said, ‘I never hit a shot, not even in practice, without having a very sharp in-focus picture of it in my head.’ If you ask most sports people, they will tell you that an important and vital part of their preparation is mental. They will visualise their performance step by step as being flawless and perfect, from start to finish. Many successful sports people and high performers ‘fast forward’ in this way and picture themselves winning that gold medal, coming first in the competition, clinching that all-important business deal, giving that perfect speech or performance, and enjoying the crowd’s adoration and applause.

Results from extensive brain research show that if you mentally rehearse an action, the same mental activity takes place as if you are actually physically doing the activity. Mentally practising in this way prior to an event will actually enhance your performance.

Picturing or imagining a desired result being already actualised tricks the subconscious mind into believing that you have already achieved the outcome. This powerful part of the mind doesn’t differentiate between fantasy and reality. This is the reason it can still hold so many thought patterns that were picked up in childhood (even though they are totally outdated and often limiting and unhelpful to us now). If you regularly mentally rehearse a required outcome in your life and see or imagine yourself in your mind’s eye as having already achieved it, the mind will work day and night to close the gap between where you are now and where you want to be. When I say ‘work day and night,’ this means your subconscious mind will start opening up your consciousness to opportunities and ideas and when you take them, your life will start to change in a magical and positive way! Your 'mental filter' will begin to open up and show you resources that were always there but previously went unnoticed. When you start to act on these ideas and opportunities, the pathway will open up even more, having a domino effect and pushing you forward. To get different results in your life you need to start thinking about what you want, rather than what you don’t want.