The Power of Positive Pictures in Our Minds

We often hear that if we want something, we need to see it until we believe it. A quote from William James explains this, "There is a law in psychology that if you form a picture in your mind of what you would like to be, and you keep that picture there long enough, you will soon become exactly as you have been thinking." 

In my book Pathfinding I write, "Visualizing positive outcomes is using our imagination to create what we want in our mind's eye. I have used visualization techniques for many years, and I believe that the power of your "mental movies" to change your life is real, enriching and life-affirming. The stuff that dreams are made of is the stuff we visualize and believe can happen.

Shakti Gwain, author of the inspirational bestseller Creative Visualization, says that we can "use our imagination in a more and more conscious way, as a technique to create what we truly want." She goes on to say that creative visualization gives us "a key to tap into the natural goodness and bounty of life." As scientists now know from biofeedback technology, we can alter our heart rate and other functions through the process of visualization. Researchers are rediscovering how much our outer experience is connected to our inner experience.

"These movies-of-the-mind," says Adelaide Bry, author of Visualization: Directing the Movies of Your Mind,"help improve our health, expand our thinking and achieve goals wewouldn't otherwise believe we could." When we visualize, we bypass the limitations of our rational, logical, linear mind and tap into the limitless source of our creative, intuitive, left brain. On a practical level, this means our right brain consciousness does not know the difference between wishful thinking and reality. So, when we visualize - a right-brain process - our subconscious mind believes the mental images we project are part of our physical reality. This is why it is so important to visualize positive outcomes. Our subconscious will believe negative images as well

This implanting begins the day we are born, and we continue to add footage to these mental movies each time we think, act and visualize. When we visualize positive outcomes, make the mental pictures as clear, specific and real as possible. Form a precise image of what is needed...and play the mental movie several times each day. Visualize the same positive outcome. Replay those images until they become real. It may take weeks, months or even years to turn mental images into physical reality, but that is how the imaging process works. It takes commitment, patience, practice and most of all, belief in the power of positive imaging and trust in the process.

In my book, Success, Your Dreams and You, I wrote: "The answer to so many of life's questions is to think positively. It is the effort to hold positive thoughts, regardless of the appearances of outer circumstances, that enables us to create the future we want...And that future comes from the inner pictures we create in our visions...It's the stuff dreams are made of." Even though I wrote that fifteen years ago, it still rings true today.