Visualization and why it works

[Tim Brownson]

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.

[z1freeride]

The one problem I see with visualizations is fantasizing. Sometimes people take visualizations too far and just day dream. Fantasizing, in my opinion, inhibits personal development. It promotes procrastination.

I really like this article (and it's free):
Do You Live a Fantasy Life, or Do Your Fantasies Control You?

[Ilya]

Great excerpt, Tim.
It got me thinking about the term visualization. As I see it, it really has several meaning even in the context of PD. I can think of at least two I will cover below, but maybe there is more. And it seems that many people confuse these meanings. I'm mentioning it because there is more than one answer to the question "why visualization works". And the answer is different depending on the context.
You see, you had to mention the Law of Attraction and to make sure that you are not talking about it.
But really the mechanics of a visualization to use the LoA is different from the mechanics of physical skill improvement visualization your excerpt is about.

One can make practicing a physical skill more efficient by using visualization. As you wrote, it happens because until the electrical impulse reaches the muscle, all action happens inside our nervous system. So there is not much difference between an action happening in real world and in our imagination. What visualization lacks is the feedback from the real world. But for the mental and physical skills it isn't that important. I guess, the effects of gravity, friction etc, are well ingrained in our neurology.

A visualization in order to use the LoA does not necessarily involve a practicable skill. Most impressive LoA application for many is manifestation of physical objects. I'm not going into LoA debate in this forum, but an easiest version of it is perception adjustment. It's like when you buy a car of a certain color and suddenly the streets are flooded with the cars of the same color. The attention got shifted towards noticing these cars and filtering out other vehicles.
Of course the same can be done with visualisation. One can prime their mind to notice some particular objects at the price of the other.
As a side note, it is interesting what things are filtered out if we direct our attention towards something. Effectively some things will disappear from our life. Are there any techniques to specify what those things will be? Or will it be just some random things?

Anyways, visualization is really seeing some images inside our minds. It can be directed towards different goals. And depending on those goals, it will work differently - the different neural pathways will be established.
Paying attention to that can make visualization even more efficient than it already is.

[Matt Willard]

Lately I've been using visualization to further reinforce the work ethic I'm trying to build. Today I was on a roll, cleaning everything, and when I stopped to take a breather (mopping does that to you), I reaffirmed the belief I'm trying to build, that "most work is fun or easy". Cleaning up was definitely involving, so I guess I can consider it "fun". I'm eager to see how my efforts are affected as I continue to use visualization.

[n_vizion]

Quote:
"Each time you re-think it though it grows in strength as the physical pathway becomes more and more well defined."

Great point. It's not sufficient to think an affirming thought or create a positive image in your mind once or twice, you have to see it some many times that the mind accepts it as already happening.

[lasti]

Originally Posted by z1freeride

The one problem I see with visualizations is fantasizing. Sometimes people take visualizations too far and just day dream. Fantasizing, in my opinion, inhibits personal development. It promotes procrastination.

I really like this article (and it's free):
Do You Live a Fantasy Life, or Do Your Fantasies Control You?

Well, fantasizing isn't worse than playing computer games or any other unreal activity of that kind.

[shivraj]

Originally Posted by z1freeride

The one problem I see with visualizations is fantasizing. Sometimes people take visualizations too far and just day dream. Fantasizing, in my opinion, inhibits personal development. It promotes procrastination.

I really like this article (and it's free):
Do You Live a Fantasy Life, or Do Your Fantasies Control You?

Main difference between visualization and fantasizing is,
Visualization is backened by purpose and direction with clear mental picture of end result while fantacizing is nothing but some wishful thinking with out any focus.

[z1freeride]

All I'm saying is that, in my opinion, I think for many people it is easy to fall into the fantasy trap when somebody tells them to just visualize things.

However, I question this basketball experiment. Does anybody have the original experiment? Was the improvement short-term? Or long-term (consistent)?

It seems to me that if this example is true, then visualizing helps in improving a skill you already have.

[peroquantosnombres]

How often do you have to visualize something though to have it happened?
I've visualised things only once and they've happened...

[Tim Brownson]

@ Ilya - A well reasoned and considered response, thanks. I am one of teh few people that is on the fence with the LoA. I get that there is much that we don't know about the abilities of the human brain, but I'm also a tad cynical of some of the claims. That being said, I TRY and stay open-minded about it.

@ peroquantosnombres - I have no way of answering that, but I'm guessing that what happened to you was more likely to be coincidence than because you visualized something. Once isn't enough to get it into your neurology imho. Having said that, one really traumatic event can burn itself in immediately, so what does that tell us? I've no idea ;-)

[z1freeride]

Originally Posted by Tim Brownson

@ Ilya - A well reasoned and considered response, thanks. I am one of teh few people that is on the fence with the LoA. I get that there is much that we don't know about the abilities of the human brain, but I'm also a tad cynical of some of the claims. That being said, I TRY and stay open-minded about it.

@ peroquantosnombres - I have no way of answering that, but I'm guessing that what happened to you was more likely to be coincidence than because you visualized something. Once isn't enough to get it into your neurology imho. Having said that, one really traumatic event can burn itself in immediately, so what does that tell us? I've no idea ;-)

I'm still curious...do you know where that basketball experiment is from? Thanks.

[Tim Brownson]

@ z1freeride - not sure what you mean mate? Which country or which University or where you can read about it?

I'm sure if you Google it you'll find plenty of info.

[Kaspian]

I'm not sure about the basketball experiment, but there are other visualization experiments described in the book Your Body Has a Mind of Its Own by Sandra Blakeslee and Matthew Blakeslee.

One experiment talks about darts done by William Straub at Ithica College. He divided 75 students into 5 groups: Control (no practice or visualization), practice only, and three different groups doing mental training programs plus practice. After two months, the control group average scores were unchanged, the practice only group went up an average of 67 points, and the three visualization + practice groups went up 111, 141, and 165.

Alvaro Pascual-Leone at Harvard Medical University did an experiment with visualization only using a simple piano playing exercise to measure improvement. He found that visualization alone worked about the same as practice alone.

[z1freeride]

Originally Posted by Tim Brownson

@ z1freeride - not sure what you mean mate? Which country or which University or where you can read about it?

I'm sure if you Google it you'll find plenty of info.

I did google it and I just find people referencing this "study." I want to see the original study. Where did you hear about it? Is it just hearsay? I can't seem to find the original study by the dude himself.

[Eisho]

Originally Posted by z1freeride

I did google it and I just find people referencing this "study." I want to see the original study. Where did you hear about it? Is it just hearsay? I can't seem to find the original study by the dude himself.

I found this on Edmund Jacobson, who apparently inspired Richardson:

- - - -

NEUROMUSCULAR STATES AND MENTAL ACTIVITIES

Following the availability of reliable measurements, Jacobson returned to the relationship between the mind and the motor system. A series of studies, published in the American Journal of Physiology between January, 1930 and April, 1931 measured muscular contraction during the imagining and recalling of various forms of activity. These findings gave form to the hypothesis that participation of the motor system is inseparable from the thought process. In 1927 he observed that well-trained subjects, after becoming thoroughly and deeply relaxed, all reported a period of diminution or disappearance of conscious processes. They could not simultaneously relax and reflect. He later elaborated:

"Tension is part and parcel of what we call the mind. Tension does not exist by itself, but is reflexively integrated into the total organism. The patterns in our muscles vary from moment to moment, constituting in part the modus operandi of our thinking and engage muscles variously all over our body, just as do our grossly visible movements. If a patient imagines he is rowing a boat, we see rhythmic patterns from the arms, shoulders, back and legs as he engages in this act of imagination. The movements…are miniscule".

- - - - -

His study indicates that while imagining an action your body - at a micro level - is replicating the movement.

It seems to me though that in order to replicate the correct body mechanics you would already need to be able to do the action (successfully). Otherwise your replicated mechanics would be incorrect.

Eisho