For many years, people have said that if you visualize success it will eventually come true. This principle has been followed in athletics, business, and education to name a few. It is commonly applied to wealth where people believe that if you visualize yourself rich, you will eventually become rich (e.g. Think and Grow Rich, The Science of Getting Rich).
The Wall Street Journal published an article called Can You Get Rich by Visualizing Yourself Rich? by Robert Frank. Robert Frank dug into the idea of visualization and what it means to visualize success. Robert included a story about Sara Blakely, the billionaire founder of Spanx, because she is a strong proponent of visualization.
Sara said, “I believe you can take mental snapshots of your future and visualize success for yourself. If you mentally see yourself in a scenario, you’ll start to make decisions in your life that get you there.” Robert also explained that there are many critics that say visualization is just a flight from realism. What do you think? Does visualization really lead to success?
Does it Work to Visualize Success?
Many people and organizations have visions and vision statements. They use those visions to guide their employees to success. Visualization is similar to having a vision or vision statement, but it goes a little deeper. So let’s take a look at visualization.
What is Visualization?
Have you ever imagined in your mind how a situation will go before it happened? You probably thought about how the scenario would play out, comments people would make, and the room or environment in which it would happen?
If you have ever done this, you have visualized the situation. When people visualize success, they run through scenarios in their mind where they are successful over and over again before the situation actually happens.
People do visualization in a number of ways. Here’s just a few:
- Visualize what you want and then write it down 15 times a day
- Sit in a quiet location and run through a situation in your mind several times before it actually happens
- Just before you are about to go on stage, in front of your boss, etc. take a quick moment to imagine yourself being successful
It is probably clear from the examples that the main ingredient to visualize success is to imagine the scenario in your mind before it actually happens. [Read more…] about How You Can Visualize Success
