Context: Explorational Visualization

Visualization is a very powerful tool for exploring the feelings and sensations of a particular situation. Visualization is often brought up in the context of trying to achieve or get something, like imagining getting some reward so to almost manifest it. Ironically, this can be very counterproductive, since if we are experiencing the feelings and sensations of what we are visualizing, experience the glory of winning before doing the necessary work can make us complacent. If anything (assuming we’re trying to achieve a goal), we want to be like Michael Phelps and visualize failing such that we know how we would feel if we missed our goal, which can be extremely motivating. Visualization is an explorative tool, a way to simulate how we would feel, not a manifesting one (with an exception for “fake it till you make it”).

Often in the visualization of goals, people only think about the actual obtaining of the goal, rather than life after it. They visualize winning the race, instead of what it would be like to have won that race many months ago. They visualize getting a million dollars, instead of the life many months or years after. Even if they do think of that life, they approach it as if it’s their first day in it, rather than what it would actually feel like on the 200th day of that lived experience. Visualization is useful for motivating us to prepare for our goals (in visualizing the feelings of failure), and also for evaluating the motivations behind a goal and whether it will really lead to the outcome that we expect.

We will be using visualization in the program to try and best simulate how we would actually feel living a proposed life. This allows us to gain a better sense of whether the things that we think we want would actually bring us the lasting positive experiences we hope for.