A well-known person in the professional development and neuroscience field recently wrote a blog post on using visualization to make your dreams a reality. In the post he said that when he was at university, his coach would have him visualize making free-throws or lay-ups. If you visualize "what it feels like, smells like, and looks like" to achieve your goal, he tells you that "your behaviours will start to be aligned with your goal."
Key Takeaway
Visualizing having successfully achieved our goal is just fantasy. It can backfire and can actually keep us from success. Instead, break down your goals into manageable steps, visualize these steps, and just start.
Sounds like magic? It is magical thinking. But this is the advice that many in the $10 billion dollar personal development industry give to vulnerable people and it doesn't work for most of us. The people that it does work for are those who don't lack motivation to begin with. But for the rest us who struggle with motivation, it can actually keep us from achieving our goals. And when visualization doesn't work, we blame ourselves which saps our motivation even further.
Here's why:
In sum, visualizing having successfully achieved a goal is just fantasy. But we continue to believe in the fantasy because we want to believe that there's an easy fix to our problems. We just need to find it. And the personal development industry obliges and makes billions selling us the fantasy.
Here's what works instead. And of course it's less sexy; the truth often is:
References:
Amabile, T., & Kramer, S. (2011). The progress principle: Using small wins to ignite joy, engagement, and creativity at work. Boston, Mass: HBR.
Kappes, H., & Oettingen, G. (2011). Positive fantasies about idealized futures sap energy. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47, 719–729.
Taylor, S., Pham, L., Rivkin, I., & Armor, D. (1998). Harnessing the imagination: Mental simulation, self-regulation, and coping. American Psychologist, 53, 429–439.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
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Well, visualisation, to me, is very important. Because it shifts the energy with which we approach a goal. It removes the self-made barriers that we may have applied. Once we fling open those barriers, a lot more opens up. Having said that, Visualisation alone cannot do the trick. Defining immediate term and long term action items is the logical follow up to the Visualisation. And these are concrete actions that i am talking about, not la la land steps 🙂
Good on you Vandana. If visualizing works for you, then continue doing it. But, the most important thing is to define concrete action items and then take those actions. That is what will bring you to your goal.
This sounds very wrong. You have to have an idea what you’re aiming towards. Do you know how many athletes use this technique? If you can’t imagine a positive future why would you bother with all the other more practical aspects of working towards it.
Thank you for taking the time to leave a comment Lucy. I agree that you do need a clear idea of your goal, but it doesn’t always require visualization. You can visualize your final goal if you like, but what’s more important is to visualize the steps you need to take to get to your goal. Athletes do use visualization successfully, but they visualize themselves running the race, or hitting that winning shot, and can often even feel their muscle twinges as they visualize. And the research is pretty clear: When you visualize yourself standing on the podium of success, without visualizing the steps you need to take to get there, your brain believes you have already achieved your goal. And that results in a loss of energy to work on the goal.
I think Dr O’Brien is confusing disciplined, organised and focused visualisation techniques with casual daydreaming which doesn’t work. A common mistake.
Most people visualize themselves just having already earned the $1M, for example. And this was exactly what the person in the professional development and neuroscience field I referred to suggested. I agree, that this type of visualization, which is undisciplined, unorganized, and unfocused, is fantasy. What does work well is visualizing the steps we need to take to get to our goal. This kind of visualization is disciplined, organized, and focused, and supported by research. I’ve posted some relevant research studies in the references.
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[…] envision a plan for the things you want to accomplish. Draw that plan, step by step. Visualization works when you have a plan for each step you need to take to fulfill your goal. Therefore, draw each step […]