See Yourself Doing It

by Graham Denton

"Visualization" may sound like a New Age parlor game, but it can actually be a good method for planning your success, since it helps you in distinguishing pipe dreams from realistic goals. Everyday language itself points to this fact. When you say "I can see myself doing that," you're implying that you understand what it would mean to do that, and that you can see the possibility take shape in your mind's eye. That's all visualization is, practically speaking--getting a picture in your mind's eye of something you want to happen.

D. Forbes Ley, author of The Best Seller, relates visualization to success in a novel manner. Like most writers on the technique, he advises you to begin by relaxing. Get comfortable, close your eyes, clear your mind--and then form a clear mental picture of what you want to accomplish. But then, going a little further than the average success guru, he gives some unusual advice: You should visualize not results but associated activities. You should make the visualization as vivid as possible, by involving all your senses. And you should "state" your visualization in the present tense.

Say you want to retire to a Malibu and take up beachcombing. That's not a bad dream, but it's not very precise--and it's not, when you come right down to it, very visual either. Ley's more finely-tuned advice might be something like this: "Picture the setting sun glancing on the water as you walk barefoot in the surf. Hear the gulls overhead and feel the water rush around your ankles as your heels sink into the wet sand. Taste the lime and salt on your tongue as you sip a Margarita. Squat down as your eye catches a twisted shape in the sand. See yourself reaching down and picking up a wave-polished stick, and wondering whether it has been brought here from Mexico or from China." A little lush, maybe, but you get the idea. See yourself doing something, not just getting something. If you picture the doing vividly enough, your subconscious will take over and provide the getting. Or, more precisely, it will prepare you mentally to set goals that can lead to your desired success. As Ley explains, "Thoughts lead to action (subconscious activity), which lead to methods (goal setting) for the realization of goals and success."

But you must visualize the doing in the present tense, that is, as if your goals have already been achieved. Otherwise, your mental picturing can easily become daydreaming--or, even worse, a way of worrying about what you don't yet have. It's the difference between thinking "I would like to be on a Malibu beach some day" and thinking "I'm on a Malibu beach right now." Your subconscious reads the "right now" as something to work on. It can only read the dream of "some day" as something that's not urgent.

As Ley puts it, "See yourself in your chosen success." And leave it up to your subconscious to take it from there.