Do you all have a superpower inside of you? It’s called the power of visualization. It is important to know how to use the power of visualization!

Visualization is a technique that aims to harness the resources of the mind, imagination, and intuition to enhance wellness.

It is a mental capacity that we have to imagine an object, a sound, a situation, an emotion, or a sensation. Depending on its intensity, this representation can trigger almost the same physiological effects as reality would. Therefore, visualizing pleasant moments brings the body in a real state of relaxation. In addition, it is possible with this technique to transform the negative into the positive.

How to Use the Power of Visualization

For Mentalotherapy, to visualize is to project oneself into one’s own imaginary cinema room by constructing an image and a sound, a taste, a smell, or a physical feeling. This often involves creating a mental screen in the mind and then entering a state of consciousness to visualize the desired situations. It’s a bit like imagining a movie screen showing a movie.

In fact, just a reminder, you are the master of your inner world, of your own world: You are the boss! In that sense, you are the Director, the director, the screenwriter, and the main actor, so you decide everything, and you have to be convinced that you are going to be successful.

Visualization is a simple exercise used by yoga, sophrology, NLP … athletes often use it as a mental preparation technique.

It is based on imagination. It consists of creating a situation in the mind, a kind of dream that will be easily reproduced by the conscious mind over and over again.

The Power of Visualization

The visualization allows:

– to increase our concentration and our memorization;

– manage pressure, stress;

– to plan for success, therefore to give oneself every opportunity by “allowing oneself” to do so;

– gain confidence;

– mobilize our mental resources to achieve our goals;

– to return mentally in possession of what we want;

– to push our limits;

– to change the negative into the positive;

– to connect with our deepest aspirations;

– to build our life by aligning our thoughts with what we want to achieve;

– to create the success or success that we are aiming for …

How Does Visualization Work?

We are talking about visual images but not only. All the senses are activated to create mental images; the emotional also plays a role.
Visualization helps deceive your brain. This is because the use of mental imagery causes your subconscious to receive the vision, the induced mental construct, as a reality. The unconscious does not differentiate between the imaginary and the real. For your brain, you really have had the experience.
For example, if you are stressed and afraid, the more you train yourself to visualize your success in the exam or the project …, the more your brain will consider it as real and accept this situation as existing. Visualization allows you to de-stress, to have more confidence, you program the unconscious in positive waves.

The Visualization Board

The power of the vision board is to give you the will and the courage to take on new things and achieve goals. It is, therefore, limited in time and can be modified throughout the course.

Before embarking on the creation of a visualization board, first take stock of your objectives, whether professional, personal … Once your objectives have been defined, support yourself (digital, sheet A4 or A3), you can then paste images, words cut out from magazines or found on the internet that represent your current aspirations. Leave your imagination free; the important thing is that you like it and look like you. When your painting is finished, put it somewhere where you can see it often. Each day, take a few minutes to contemplate it and soak up it.

The vision board is a benchmark that allows you to positively review your goals, modify them, realign them with life circumstances.

The Two Main Types of Visualization

Realistic visualization suggests realistic images of a situation, usually taken from everyday life. This scene can include people, places, moods, sensations, flavors, smells, anything that is part of our real experiences.

Symbolic visualization uses symbols to express an emotion, a sensation, a situation. For example, sorrow is symbolized by a bottle filled with tears; a lion symbolizes strength, nature, the wild state, the sea inspires travel, freedom, snow recalls the magic of Christmas …

The Two Modes of Visualization

In Mentalotherapy, we distinguish two modes of visualization:

Creative Visualization

In this mode of visualization, the individual mentally constructs a film in which he is the main actor, the screenwriter, and also the director. The individual has the ability to put the actors and places he wants. He makes them act and speak according to his wishes. It is an interior creation. Thus, the individual creates a scene by incorporating positive affirmations in order to orient his subconscious in the desired direction. The principle here is to experience what we want to achieve mentally; it is to see ourselves in action, movement, achieving, or experiencing what we want to see materialize. Here, the individual uses his imagination to express his aspirations and ambitions by giving them a coloring.

It is about building a sequence of several scenes related to our dreams, our projects, and our set goals in creative visualization. There are three techniques in creative visualization. These techniques follow a process.

– The first technique is to visualize what you need to achieve your goals. And you already see yourself with the resources, assets, talents, skills you need to achieve what you want.

– The second technique is to visualize yourself succeeding perfectly, achieving exactly what you want. In this technique, see yourself at work, doing what you have to do to achieve your ends; see yourself as a hero, on stage, deploying yourself to achieve your goals.

– The third technique: It’s about seeing yourself celebrating your victory, the achievement of your goals. It is the enjoyment of the desired situation; we are already delighted with the result, the benefits of our achievement.

Contemplative Visualization

In this mode of visualization, the individual contemplates what others have and dream of having them. His visualization is oriented towards what he has seen in others. For example, he visualizes the car of Christiano Ronaldo or the house of Lionel Messi; he lives in his mind the life of another while seeking to achieve this way of life. In this visualization, he is trying to do an imitation. Others inspire him. He refers to the standard of living of others of which he takes as a model. He does not himself develop the visualization of the life he wishes to lead. As a result, he is not a creator but rather a copier, an imitator. With this mode of visualization, the individual sees himself in the other; he wallows in the life of the other; he sees the other as an idol, a reference, a model, his ideal, depending on what ‘he wants to achieve personally in his life.

In short, in contemplative visualization, the individual does not create scenes properly; he only tries to put himself in the skin, the spirit of the other by trying to reproduce and reach this life of the other that he idealizes. With this mode of visualization, it may even happen that the individual ultimately takes on the habits and attitudes of his idol’s life. For example, like a footballer, he sees himself playing or behaving on the playing field like Christiano Ronaldo. Or, he sees himself adopting the style, appearance, signs of Lionel Messi.

Contemplative visualization is not inherently bad. But when it doesn’t fit our identity, our values become a source of confusion in our lives. It robs us. Instead of copying and pasting, the ideal is to imitate and adapt the imitation, applying it according to our “me” and our inner world. If not, anyway, it is obvious that by dint of putting ourselves in the shoes of our idol, we end up becoming his double or erasing our identity from the profile of our model to such an extent that our life is identified with that of the one we imitate. […].

To the fertility of your subconscious,

Thomson Dablemond

Personal Development Coach

Author, Speaker, Mentalotherapist