A No-BS Approach To Visualization

If you want to change your life, you need to change your beliefs first.

But what comes before even beliefs is knowing where you want to go.

Without a strong—and by that, I mean emotionally strong—motivator, you won’t have any need to change your beliefs.

Motivators are either negative or positive; there’s no such thing as a neutral motivator.

Today, I won’t cover negative motivators—but that’s a good topic for another newsletter.

Instead, I want to look into a much more sustainable motivator: Visualization.

A No-BS Approach To Visualization

When most people hear “visualization,” they think of vision boards, The Secret, and other woo woo shit.

I’m not discounting any of those things, by the way, as I’ve done or watched them myself. But I can also see where non-believers come from.

It seems… a bit impractical.

Just say some positive words to myself and I’ll become rich? Yeah, okay.

Just put together a collage and I’ll buy a house this year? Wow, sure.

All I’m sayin’ is I get it!

But luckily enough for you, dear cynic, I know a couple practical uses of visualization.

They’re simple, distinct, and both as powerful as the other.

1. Visualize past positive experiences to inject positive evidence into your negativity.

If you struggle with negativity, it’s because your brain was hardwired to focus on the negative.

This is called the Negativity Bias, and all humans naturally have it.

It sucks, I know.

But we can do something about it when we’re well enough to.

The simple act of recalling old accomplishments can inject positive experiences into our otherwise mundane daily lives.

This has to be forced at first, because you’re literally rewiring your brain.

Do it daily—or as much as you can—though, and you’ll notice yourself saying “that was nice” more often to yourself.

2. Visualize future events that are likely to happen.

Instead of shooting for the stars with your visualization, try to lower the bar a bit:

• visualize yourself taking a bath when you get home

• visualize yourself picking up a coffee on the way to work

• visualize yourself getting into your favorite PJs (this includes nudity) and watching your favorite movie

Okay, so those all of those are self-care items—maybe I need to practice some extra self-care this week—but you get what I mean.

The idea is to visualize something that’ll lift your mood, and if it has to be practical to be believable, then by all means, do that.

Today, Visualize Something.

I’m sure you saw this recommendation coming.

If you haven’t already, take a moment to seriously visualize either:

• something from your past that makes you proud to this day, or

• something you can look forward to at the end of today or this week

And then note how you feel afterwards.

That’s all visualization is: an emotional regulation tool.

At least to me.