Why Visualising Alone May Not Bring You Success

Visualising is one of many ways that can be employed to enhance the direction and intensity of an individual’s focus on achieving their ambitions.

However, just as a dream is a ‘pleasant run through’ of a desired outcome, similarly, visualising can create an enjoyable experience of what it is you wish to achieve … but is it enough.

Yes, it is a good starting point, and certainly gives you direction, but if you haven’t got a strong belief in the possibility of this experience being achieved, then you’ve probably gone as far as you can.

Let’s look at the steps you could take to give yourself the best opportunity for achieving success.

As a starting point, consider the major ambitions you have in place for yourself as you progress in, for example, your career, or your relationship, your health, or a particular goal you have in life right now.

It is likely you will uncover quite a list of ambitions.

So, having identified what you wish to achieve, you need to prioritise, because it is important to devote your mental energy to one ambition at a time to ensure you explore each fully to allow an equal chance of success.

Having selected the most important ambition for you at present, let’s look at the steps you can take towards achieving this.

Repeat each of the following steps as many times as you wish until you are happy with the outcome before moving to the next step.

Step 1

Ask yourself “what is it I actually want here” –  not having a clear understanding of what it is that you actually want is not useful in empowering yourself towards achieving the desired result.

Keep asking yourself the question until you get an answer you are happy with. Quite often what you start out believing to be what you need or desire turns into something quite different by the time you have teased and played with it.

This exercise is similar to a simple brainstorming session, the difference here being you are the only participant. So, like any such session, don’t discard a thought or idea – it’s quite likely that idea might have been lurking below the surface for some time, but was being over-powered by what you outwardly (and actively) believed you wanted.

Step 2

Ask yourself what you believe is preventing you from attaining your identified ambition. This will intrigue you as you will no doubt get a mixture of responses that reflect your:

• doubts – is this really what I want … what if it doesn’t work out …
•  limiting beliefs – I can’t do this because … this has never worked for me before …
•  conditions – I might be able to achieve this, but only if I give 'x' up …
•   resources – I can achieve this, but only if I had 'y'…

For most of us, there will be a combination of the above responses, but you will discover that one or possibly two are stronger than the others. That’s OK. We are all different, with differing experiences and beliefs to draw from our past.

The important thing here is you may well discover what prevents you from attaining success in general – an insight into your own personality and how you identify roadblocks, which is, of course, a major step forward towards achieving success in all aspects of your dancing.

Step 3

Meet your doubts head on. With your ‘roadblocks’ now identified (in a quiet place) visualise achieving your ambition. Perhaps run it as a movie – make it full of vivid colour, let it ring out loudly, allow the feelings it brings with it to intensify.

All too often we let our roadblocks – our doubts and fears – take control and hold us back.

Allow the sense of achieving to overpower the roadblocks to success, until you no longer doubt your ability to realise your ambition. Amazingly, meeting your doubts head on with strong feelings of success can turn a situation around, providing you with a very positive outlook where once before there was doubt.

Step 4

Unfortunately, some beliefs you may have can be limiting and difficult to overcome, and can come from deep inside you just as much as they can be learned from significant others (even if well-intentioned).

If you can identify a belief that is continuing to hold you back, treat it as if it were a person and ask it what its intentions are. Sounds silly but, believe it or not, this actually is an effective way of self-analysing, and can uncover some very interesting things about yourself you may not even have been aware of.

Quite often such a belief reflects a simple desire in your unconscious mind to keep you safe, so your task is to find a way to combine this belief with your intention to achieve; a common bond so to speak, to create an even stronger driving force towards achieving your ambition – your conscious ambition working in harmony with your unconscious desire to be protected from failure or ridicule.

Of course, if you have beliefs that are hard to identify, or appear quite self-destructive, it may be worthwhile seeking advice on how to reframe these limiting beliefs towards being generative beliefs – ie beliefs that work for you towards positive growth, rather than holding you back.

Step 5

Often people hesitate to move forward towards growth, fearing they may lose something valuable in the process. So, as a suggestion, when working on the process, determine what you would like to keep from the present situation – ie in moving forward what positive aspects would you like to take with you.

This way, attaining your ambition becomes more real and less threatening. At the same time, if you discover you need new resources to aid your progress look to keeping what works for you in conjunction with discovering new resources.

What you will get is a bag full of positive resources – physical, mental and emotional – that you can access towards achieving other goals as you continue to grow.

Step 6

The age-old story – don’t bite off more than you can chew. Put simply, move forward at a pace that works for you – too slow and you will possibly lose interest, too fast and you may disengage for fear of being overwhelmed. In any case, the best rule of thumb is to challenge yourself sufficiently to allow progress.

Interestingly, at this point you may find the original ambition is not what you have now. In other words, the steps to this point have led you to assess and re-assess not just the ambition, but how you focus on a range of things, your beliefs, your relationships with others, even how you manage your day to day life.

This is a good thing – you are growing as a person, not just a business owner.

A final point – it’s OK to be uncomfortable with change, to feel unsure of where you are heading. If you are not experiencing such emotions, chances are you’re not serious about growing as a business owner or even as a person.

Who knows where you may end up, but you know with confidence that once this journey of personal and business growth has begun there is a journey to be had … the destination will identify itself in time, but the journey is the key to success.

So, enjoy the success that comes with fully exploring and embracing your vision. It’s amazing how ‘lucky’ you will be when your vision is backed by confidence, skill, determination … and a clear awareness of where you want your ambition to take you.

Want to learn more about how you can more effectively address your ambitions for success in business and in life?

Contact us on admin@9pillarlifestyle.com.au or Click Here to organize a 30-minute discovery chat.