Visualization Doesn’t Work

Author: Niamh Arthur
Source: ezinearticles.com

Visualization is a concept that many people struggle with. It can be incredibly difficult to create a vision of things that haven’t happened yet, and even if you can create a vision, it’s usually not enough. Many trainers in personal development agree that it’s important that your visualizations feel real to you. But they don’t always show you how. Many people give up after trying once or twice to make a realistic vision of their future.

I think part of the problem is semantics. While the word visualizing suggests that you have to create a picture in your mind, not everything thinks this way. They couldn’t make a picture in their mind feel real to them if their life depended on it. So they will never use visualization effectively.

Clearly having a vision and images of the future works for some, but we need a broader concept so that people who can’t create mental pictures can still get the benefits of visualization.

To start you must change the way you see visualization. You need to find a word or concept that fits with how you think. I like to think of the broad concept as Experiencing. If I think on my future and goals images rarely come to mind, but I still experience what my future might be like using other forms of perception. I focus on the atmosphere around me rather than an image of my goal. For example, if my goal is to move to Hawaii I might think about how the sun feels on my skin, the interesting smells I get the second I get off the plane, the heaviness of the air. If I have a goal to buy a brand new car I focus on how the leather will feel on my arms, how nice that new car smell is. Sometimes I have a jumble of images in my mind, but I find it feels more real and I’m more emotionally connected to it if I create the atmosphere I will be in.

To understand this you must think about WHY people visualize. It’s more than just thinking about what your future could be, it’s about creating an emotional connection to your goals, it’s about attracting the outcome you desire through your focus on it. Visualizing is all about creating emotion, that feeling of attachment, exhilaration and excitement for your goal. So if the most important part is emotional, what makes you emotional? What feels real to you?

After you discover what creates an emotional response for you, decide how you can experience your future that way. If it’s through sound, you can imagine the sound of birds on the beach, of glass clinking at your favorite restaurant, of your kids laughing and playing on a family holiday. It might be through smell, you could conjure up that new car smell in your mind, the cool smell of air conditioning on a nice summer day, the salty smell of the beach, the smell of hot chocolate on a snowy day. It could be through touch, and this is my favourite. How does the air feel around you? How soft is the new couch at your lovely new home? How hard is it to push in the gas pedal of your brand new car?

If you start out by imagining the atmosphere your goals will give you (touch, sound and smell) images will often start to pop into your mind. You don’t need to have images, but your mind may fill them in to complete the experience. After experiencing your goals this way you will emerge happy, calm and looking forward to acheiving your goals. You will blast through obstacles as you really know what is on the other sie. And you will find that you attract these experiences to you faster than you ever thought possible.

Learn more about visualization and other empowerment and personal development techniques by visiting NiamhArthur.com, where Niamh Arthur will show you how to make personal development a part of your day to day living.

The Delusion of Always Wanting More

Author: Jason M Hebert
Source: ezinearticles.com

Programming- The word alone might instantly conjure up images of a scronny guy in glasses and suspenders in a dimly lit computer lab feverishly pounding away at a keyboard. But all you have to do is take a good, long look at the reflective glass hanging above your bathroom sink to see programming at it’s finest.

What is the first thing you do when you buy a dog? You train it. Why? Because you want to impress upon your pet the “correct” way of doing things before it knows any better. That way there is nothing for the dog to compare it’s decisions to. As far as it knows, there are no other options.

There are always other options. And luckily for pet owners, your dog is not intelligent enough to figure out these options for themselves, and even if they were, “you never bite the hand that feeds you”, in this case, literally.

Human beings, on the other hand, are programmed to continuously want more, and to have at least a slight level of dissatisfaction with what we do have, so that we keep working for more. Who are we programmed by? The people who employ us (because the more we work for them, the more money they make) and the people who want us to buy their products from them. And in some cases these people are one in the same.

To truly grasp the concept of what I am trying to get at here, we first need to look at the basics of human life. What do we really need? For generations, life was about mere survival- Finding enough food for the day and maintaining shelter. If these 2 needs were met, it didn’t even cross anyone’s mind 500 years ago that there was more. The only way you would even know you were broke when you had 5 dollars is if someone else had 50. When did basic needs in life change? When someone told us it did.

Compare what you have today to your ancestors- Abundances of clothing, lighting, heating & cooling systems in your home- These would have all been considered extreme luxuries just a couple of hundred years ago. You can find any information you could possibly ever need by punching it into a search engine- Something unimaginable not that long ago. Month long journeys by ship have been replaced by a few hours in an air conditioned plane being served beverages while watching your in-flight movie.

Very few people are happy with the amount of money they have. We are always comparing what we have to someone who has more. The idea of being dissatisfied with what you have is a complete delusion that affects society as a whole, and the only reason we aren’t consciously aware of how delusional we are is because everyone around us suffers from the same delusion as well.

And it’s not an accident. We’ve been spoon-fed this reality by those in control through media outlets since their inception. They’ve been programming us since we could walk, talk & hear to always want more, more, more. The constant advertisements to have a bigger house and a better car than your neighbor. The beauty products to make women look better and get an upper hand in obtaining a mate (or at least a good one). The list goes on and on. We’ve been programmed to never be happy with what we have.

This programming is not harmless. People lose their entire lives being enslaved to this delusion, always trying to reach a plateau that will offer nothing more than a desire to reach an even higher one. You will never be satisfied, because the problem was never in the plateau you were at to begin with, it was in your mindset.

You have to remove yourself from this mindset or you will be destroyed by it.

Once you realize the reality of your situation and shed the idea that you need more, you will have exactly what you need… Just enough.

Jason M Hebert

http://jayabstract.blogspot.com

What is Draining Your Resource Pool?

Author: Tracy Brinkmann
Source: articleage.com

Imagine that your body is a car. Your fuel is obviously the food you put inside it, much like the gasoline you pump into the tank of any Ford, Chevy or Dodge etc. This fuel is converted into energy to propel you along your life’s course, physically and mentally. The car uses the spinning motion of the engine to generate electricity for the lights, radio, power windows, power brakes, sensors, air conditioning, safety equipment and so on. When you use more and more of these pieces of equipment on your car, your fuel is depleted faster and faster. Most of us have experienced the fuel drain when driving a long distance running the air conditioning on full blast versus how much fuel is used when the air conditioning on is not on. Or the drain on the engine when climbing a steep hill with air conditioning on versus much easier the car seems to negotiate that same hill without the air conditioning on.
These same principles work on you in your daily life. As you go though your daily activities your level of energy needs rise along with your fuel consumption. If your working hard on a stressful job you use up energy quickly and your fuel level decreases. Pausing for a good meal, pumping fuel back into your ‘tank’ raises your level back up. But one thing we need to know is that it is not always what we do that has a drain on your pool of fuel.
Every action you take of course has a drain in your pool of resources. But one thing many folks do not consider is actions you do not take can have a serious drain on your fuel tank, mentally, and emotionally. Taking away energy that could be put to far more productive use. Think about if for a moment, you get up early, take an invigorating shower, and you are off to work. You listen to good music or positive motivational material on the way to work. You are feeling great as you pull up to the office. Getting to the door you open it and there it is, the disorganized room that you have been meaning to clean up for some time. This instantly has a depleting effect on your energy reserves, bringing them down. To build on this, on your way to lunch later you remember that you need to get your oil changed, more than seven hundred miles ago. More energy gets drained away.
These are only a couple simple examples. What if you have parents that live more than a thousand miles away and you realize that they are not going to be around much longer? Or, you are working on that big project and keep putting off that one task that really is not the most appealing to you, yet is critical to the completion of the project. These are just a couple more things that will drain your energy away and yet you are not ‘doing’ anything. So you can see it is not only what you do that depletes your energy, there is also what you do not do. They distract you, make you feel guilty, and siphon away at your fuel reserves. All this energy would be far better used on accomplishing your goals.
If you flip open the hood of your car you will see power cords and fuel lines connecting the engine to all the individual components of your car. This same principle works in your life, all those inactivitys have a ‘power cord’ to them draining your battery of its precious resources. Watt by watt, gallon by gallon all these power cords and fuel lines to things like unreturned phone calls, needed oil changes, disorganized desks and homes, unappealing yet necessary tasks undone, late bills etc., all of these will slowly (or often quickly) deplete your fuel tank. What you need to do is sit down and identify and eliminate all this drainage from your life. Below I am including a few things that are common drains on your energy resources:
Spending too many hours in front of the Television
Car needs an oil change or other service/repair
Disorganized desk, office, home, garage
Clothing that is tattered or in need of update
Home d้cor that does not nurture your values/preferences
Negative people
Not being in a supportive relationship
Being in a relationship that needs to end
Working with people that result in you compromising your values
Lack of proper or needed office equipment
Overwhelmed with the mass of information that is bombarding you
Avoiding conflict or confrontation
Consistently stressful work leaving you exhausted/unsatisfied
Not enjoying your job
No personal interests that stimulate your mind
Having a health issue that you are not getting help with from a qualified professional
Not getting regular physical/dental check-ups
Partaking in food that is not good for you too often
Too much month at the end of the money
Paying bills late
Paying taxes late
No plan for your financial future
Insufficient insurance coverage (life, home, auto etc)
These are but a few examples to get you started on your own list. Once you sit down and compile your personal list of items stealing from your energy pool, count how many there are. Now do you see where a lot of your energy is going? While you may not be taking action on these, you will still be expending energy on them by way of them stealing it from you. Suppose the list above was your list and each one of them represented two watts of power. Now if you only have one hundred watts to work with each day, these twenty-three items would be stealing forty-six watts from your daily one hundred. Forty six percent of your energy is depleted as a result of your inactivity, leaving you with only fifty-four of your original one hundred watts. This will obviously have a serious impact on what you can get accomplished in your activities towards your goals, dreams and desires.
But now that you realize these are stealing away from your ability to reach your goals. You can reapply some of that stolen energy to get them accomplished and cleared off of your to-do list. The simply action of beginning to work on these items, that are distracting and draining you, will give you a tremendous relief. As you take care of these one by one you will begin to additionally feel a sense of accomplishment and a boost in your energy. This boost will be a motivating force for you to take on and clear off the next item. The action on the next item will again fuel your relief, sense of accomplishment and give you yet another resulting energy boost. Through the action on each item the cycle will begin again, until you have pulled the plug on all your energy draining items.
Imagine what you will be able to do when you go from fifty-four watts up to ninety or even your full one hundred. You will feel better, you will work more effectively and efficiently and you will get more done towards your goals. Mostly I personally believe the biggest win is that you will enjoy your life ever so much more.
Think Successfully & Take Action!
Tracy Brinkmann is an goal setting and success counselor. Through his company Success Atlas, he provides goal-setting, motivational & educational material, & training via live presentations as well as digital/audio products.
Sign up for his free e-Zine http://www.successatlas.com