Have you ever heard of the Visualize Yourself to Success practice? You picture yourself accomplishing your goals and meditate on those images to lay the groundwork for actually achieving them. Supporters claim it has helped them do everything from win professional athletic competitions to lose weight and stop smoking.
I don’t make any claims about whether or not this works. In my own experience, I cut straight to putting together a project plan. Visualization may not be a value add technique for me because I suffer from a rare brain disorder that makes me sincerely believe I can do anything I set my mind to, with the exception of complex math and any tasks that require it. (I blame my mother for making me believe this. Thanks, Mom!)
Perhaps a pessimist would benefit more from visualization exercises?
[Consider this fair warning, the following story is kind of gross. Faint of heart/stomach, turn back now!]
One of my best friends from college used a variation of a visualization exercise to get over ex-boyfriends. After a break up, she would make the offender a bowl of chocolate pudding and then deliver it to the guy with an “I’m sorry for overreacting, let’s still be friends” apology. Then, she would ask if she could get him some of the pudding and while he was eating it, she would pretend the chocolate pudding was…something you would find in a dirty diaper.
Gross? Yes! Effective? Absolutely. Whenever she felt even a remote longing for the ex, she could simply visualize him consuming the pudding over and over. It is pretty impossible to be attracted to someone who just ate…you know.
What do you think? Can visualization exercises (and their slightly psychotic variants) better position you to achieve your goals and cope with loss/disappointment or is it a pie-in-the-sky practice?
Image found here.