KEY POINTS:
Your reality is always created twice, first in your imagination, then in real life.
Many inspired people know how to tap into this phenomenon. In the third part of our nine part series: "What's Your Secret to Success?" we unpack the "third power" that our inspired people seem to have...creativity, imagination and the ability to simulate reality until it happens for them.
Nevertheless it is not enough to just wish, or write down a vision, or a dream. You need to visualise with all your senses - you need to live and act as though you have
already achieved your goal every day.
Taste success, smell it and feel it coursing through your veins. You need to do this daily until the vision is so strong that it permeates your every thought and your actions become extensions of the dream.
I recently met an extremely successful 18 year old racing driver called Dominic Storey. He symbolised for me the art of single minded focus on one goal- to be the next Kiwi F1 driver. In fact, in his mind he is already there. He qualified on pole at the A1GP event in Taupo this year and also set the lap record for Toyota Racing series. He is now being invited by some of the top clubs in Europe to get closer to his dream.
There is already a long history of Olympic athletes and all manner of
successful people from all walks of life who have this all senses "vision" that
propels them forward against all odds.
You've heard the expression "tasting success" - feeling those endorphins coursing through your body! Well it's based on fact. It is possible to create something out of nothing.
It is possible to endure all kinds of drudgery and meaningless tasks in the pursuit of a dream. From the great actors and actresses who waited tables while working towards their big break, to humanitarian leaders doing menial task to help others around them, to the sales person who has to start with very little client base and tools, but knows that the role is getting them closer to their dream every single day.
People who can create "moving pictures" in their heads, pictures of themselves ALREADY achieving their powerful purpose or dream are much more likely to achieve their dream finally.
Arnold Schwarzenegger said that it's all in the mind. "Before I won
Mr Universe, I walked around the tournament like I owned it. The title was
already mine." No doubt he took the same approach to his movie career, his
real estate assets and becoming Governor of California.
It is important to visualise your goals many times during the day. There is power in focus and repetition.
Everybody says to visualise your goals, but few people invest the time in creating a strategy or creative framework for their everyday thoughts to cling to.
Find a method that works for you. Create a framework for your thinking.
Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen (in their book The Power of Focus, published by Random House) talk about "mental rehearsal." They illustrate with a great example about a famous study conducted in a US university. They divided basketball players with equal shooting records into three groups. Group A practised shooting foul shots for thirty minutes every day for a month. Group B did not touch a basketball, but instead visualised in their mind successfully shooting foul shots for thirty minutes every day. Group C did neither.
At the end of thirty days, Group A had improved their ability by 24 percent. Group B, which had not touched a ball in thirty days, had improved an amazing 23 percent. And Group C showed no improvement.
This example illustrates the value of creative visualisation.
Creating Visualisation or Dream Boards
Some people, who enjoy the visual approach, create dream boards. This entails spending an afternoon cutting out visuals (pictures, words and other representations) that depict the culmination of your goals.
This can be a family and friend affair and ends up to be a lot of fun. Put on the music. Arrange for no distractions, pairs of scissors and glue and go to town putting your dream job, holidays, car, house, feelings and habits down on the board to look at.
Some people have enough mental power and focus to do this without a vision board. Do you?
Once these dream boards are completed, be sure to put them where you
can look at them and live them on a regular basis.
It's not enough to have pictures to focus on. You need to add emotion to the images to give them power. Ask a mentor, or someone who is already good at this to show you how it's done.
Affirmations
Affirmations are statements repeated to yourself or aloud - anywhere,
anytime, normally stated in the positive as having already occurred.
For some people this sounds a bit extreme, and for many, who are not focussed in the first place, this can be an utter waste of time. Affirmations are useless unless they are developed from a sound understanding of yourself (your talents, beliefs, values and your powerful purpose).
At the very least you should learn to watch what you are thinking about and avoid bringing yourself down by thinking negatively. This is a first step.
The next step would be to focus on something you want to do / need to do and then just experiment for a week or so by constantly reminding yourself how important it is and that you are making progress towards it. The simple act of reminding yourself will create action that you did not previously create. You will be inspired to action.
If you combine the power of visualisations and affirmations and create at least 10 minutes a day for creative and strategic time that is absolutely necessary to boost your performance - you will see powerful results -in the form of focus and action - it's not magic in many cases, but pure focus.
Dominic, our racing driver thinks, eats, sleeps and lives his dream -he is already there. Watch this space because he is going to make it.
As business leaders, home makers, policy makers, and working people we can add this focus by starting with 10 minutes a day- in between all the other responsibilities.
Master the ten minutes and you will move on to twenty minutes. Soon you will see action in area's that will inspire you onto other goals that you at first thought were too lofty.
Opportunity Mindset
Once you have established that you can take charge of your brain, you
understand what drives you, what you are good at, are passionate about
and your core purpose, you will be able to set your mind on "scan mode".
In scan mode your mind is programmed daily on your powerful purpose, your achievements and your passions. This creates a strong self-image and puts you on alert for opportunities.
The scanner enables it to automatically "pick and choose" opportunities that are appropriate to your highest goals from your environment. The glass will also be half full most of the time (especially once you have understood the powers of gratitude and being receptive and perceptive to others around you- this is the subject for another post!.)
* Dwayne Alexander, our goal guru is founder of LiveMyGoals, the social network for goalgetters.
