ProjectX, asked about visualization and why athletes use it successfully? Here is small part of an e-book I wrote on beliefs and values pertaining to visualization. If ProjectX or anybody else for that matter would like a
free copy of the full version that retails at $4.99, e-mail me at
tim@adaringadventure.com
Cheers
Tim
Let’s set off with the easy approach. Have you ever heard of visualization? Of course you have. Everybody’s heard of visualization and everybody partakes in it whether they realize it or not. How it works though is an altogether different matter. What I’m not going to get involved with here, is the ‘Law of Attraction’ That’s not to say I do or don’t believe in the ‘Law of Attraction’. It’s just that it has a tendency to polarize people and that’s not something I like to do, well not here anyway. In any case, I want to take a closer look at the mechanics of why visualizing works without necessarily delving into concepts and theories that cannot be proven.
As I said before, the brain has difficulty in distinguishing between what’s true and what’s imagined. There is an oft-cited example of an experiment conducted by Australian Psychologist, Alan Richardson. He took some basketball players and split them into 3 equal groups. One group was told to practice their free throw technique twenty minutes per day. The next group was told to spend twenty minutes per day visualizing, but not attempting free throws, and the final group wasn’t allowed to either practice or visualize. At the end of the test period, the different group’s skill levels were measured. The group that had done nothing remained as they were, but both the other groups showed similar degrees of improvement. The people who only visualized playing basketball were able to perform almost as well as the ones who had actually practiced with a ball and on a court.
“How can that be so?” You may be thinking.
Firstly, the people that weren’t visualizing would miss some shots. Each time they missed they had in effect, practiced how to miss. The people that were visualizing would be hitting every basket so they were building up the feelings and memory of how to be successful. There was a story from a few years back that involved Hall of Fame basketball star Larry Bird. He had to narrowly miss a free throw during filming for a Cola advert. Apparently he hit 27 consecutive baskets before he finally missed close enough for them to use it! His muscle memory was so ingrained that it was harder for him to miss than hit.
Imagine walking home from a new job one day and you suddenly realize that there is a meadow of long grass that will cut 20 minutes off your walk. If you live in New York you’re going to need a great imagination for this one.
The first time few times you walk through you can barely see which way you had walked the previous day. However, after 10 or 20 times you can clearly see a pathway starting to form, and after 100 times all the grass is worn away and there’s a farmer with a shotgun and large dog waiting for you at the end. Let’s presume our gun-toting friend is a big softie and he allows you to use that route as long as you want. What are the odds that next time you try a slightly different direction? Slim to none would be my guess. After all, you know this way works and you have a lovely easy path to navigate, why risk going another way?
On the other hand, if Farmer Giles starts taking pot shots at you and sportingly lets the dog try and shoot you too, before releasing it to sink its gnashers into your rear end, then you’ll probably find a new way home once you are released from hospital.
The next time you’re walking home you opt against reacquainting yourself with Fido and spot another meadow further along the road. The same process then begins to take place only this time the original path you made has started to grow back.
That is pretty much what happens when we form thoughts in our mind. The first time we have a new thought it is a weakling of a thought that has sand kicked in its face by stronger thoughts and beliefs. Each time you re-think it though it grows in strength as the physical pathway becomes more and more well defined. Not only that, but if it is a belief that contradicts one that you currently hold, the older belief starts to atrophy and die.
This also explains why we tend to have the same thoughts over and over again and people often have difficulty snapping negative loops of thinking. The pathway has been established and it’s just easier than trying to think about something new and form a new connection in the brain.
Visualization is an incredibly successful and simple way of speeding up the process by fooling the unconscious into believing that you have already done something before you have.
That’s what the basketball visualizes were doing, fooling their own unconscious into thinking they know how to hit basket after basket. Of course this in and of itself will not turn you into an NBA star, you do actually have to practice as well, but it will help you succeed more quickly.
All you need to do to be successful at this is to visualize yourself doing something, as you would like to do it. Profound stuff, huh? Worth the cost of this eBook alone I bet you’re thinking.
Seriously though, that is all there is to it. There have been whole books written about visualization and all the different methods but it all boils down to seeing yourself perform a task successfully. How long you do it each day will affect the speed of change and it’s really not advisable visualizing your success for 20 minutes per day and then spending 10 hours worrying about failing and replaying negative stuff in your head. It kind of defeats the object.