EP 53 Visualization - Amy

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Getting as clear as you can and visualizing the step by step process. You're actually increasing receptors on the neurons that basically prime your brain to be more prepared for the reality of taking the action towards the goal that you want to do.

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Hey. Hey podcast friends. It's me, Amy. It's just me tonight. I'm on a solo trip here. Brian will be joining us next round and he is of course missed and obviously here in spirit. So we're just gonna do a little quick one tonight. Hope everybody's having a great week. Well, I've struggled with this, to be honest, gang. I started to do this earlier in the week and I kind of got a little snagged up. So I had to go and do a little research. And some of you, if you've listened to our previous podcast, you know that I like a little balance of woo woo backed up by neuroscience. And so I had to go do a little research. So tonight's topic is about visualization. Okay. Some people call it mental rehearsing and some people call it imagery. So I know in the sports psychology world it's, it's cons, they call it more like imagery work and you may have heard it more and be more familiarized with it from or familiar with it from sports analogies and sports training. So we know that for many years our athletes, our Olympic athletes, our NFL big players, and even down to just high school and kids on sports teams, coaches have been able to work with athletes to visualize them performing their sport. And by adding in the visualization to the actual physical practice, they're able to significantly increase their accuracy, their speed, their strength. Right. So now we also know that we've also had that carry over to musicians and performance speakers. You know, we've got everybody from man. I went into like some research on some of the people who've been pushing this and I think we could go all the way back to Plato and Socrates, to be honest with you. But you know, we can go back to hundreds of years ago. We can go back to our great leaders and inspirational speakers that have just come up in the last, you know, hundred years or whatever that were great founders of a lot of our successful entrepreneurs and company builders in America, I'm sure, all over the world. But you know, people like Jim Rohn, Jack Canfield, Bob Proctor, man. Florence Nightingale. What? Not Florence Earl. Earl Nightingale, Is that right? I think that's right. That seems like a movie star, but I think it was Earl Nightingale, Mark Victor Hansen, who wrote Chicken Soul for the Soup. Yeah. There's so many of our great encouragers and leaders and business educators who taught visualization. And I don't know where I came across the process, but I feel like I used it at a young age. I feel like we're naturally inspired as children with our creativity and our imaginations to use visualization. And then of course we end up losing that a little bit. But what I found really interesting is as with many things today, we're getting a lot of neuro science and imaging advances that show us how it actually works. And there is a little bit of a process. So it's not just, I mean, you can create a vision board and you, you can kind of see end game fantasy ideas and that kind of stuff that is helpful. But one of the things that came up in researching the neuroscience behind it is let's say you're going to set a big audacious goal or let's just say you're going to, you know, do something, any type of goal, right? This can be, this can be a goal that's considered more of a habitual goal or like imagery goals or a, I'm misspeaking on the term your identity goal. So it can be an immediate goal or your identity goal. The habitual immediate goal is like, hey, I want to run a 5K or hey, I want to run a half marathon or you know, some kind of more tangible, shorter term goal. It doesn't necessarily have to be short term, but you see what I'm saying there? And then the identity goal is more of a who you obviously think you are. I am an athlete. I am a runner, I am a public speaker, I am a business owner. I am a healthy person. That's more of that identity process. So you can pick which really kind of overlaps on which way you want to work with those. The immediate goal being more of like that outcome space. But either way, whether you're doing an immediate goal or you're looking at a larger picture goal, there are some steps and some ways that you can do to make it more effective. So one of the things that we were taught, or what I had the impression of early on was that you, and I think still a lot of people will teach this, that you envision that end goal like you envision getting the reward, the award at the end, the winning podium, the standing ovation, or the, the happy, you know, relationship and house and all the things, right, like the great body at the beach and the. All the end goal things that bring you all those warm, fuzzy, successful feelings. And that's a great way to start. It's a great way to create an understanding of maybe some of your why for these goals. But what we now know, interestingly, is if you only do that, you're actually already feeling the feelings of the achievement and that you shut off dopamine. Yes, Brian, I just talked about dopamine again. But once you achieve the goal, your dopamine drops off, your blood pressure drops. I mean, you're great, that's great. It's very healthy and wonderful. Serotonin and oxytocin are kicking up. You're all happy for it, euphoric, like you did the thing. Well, now what we're seeing, and we understand is that when people only focus on that, they actually lose the motivation to get to that goal because they're kind of already wrapped up in that end game feeling of already achieving it. So one step to get into this space of visualization is to, yes, do the end goal, see the thing you want, see it, get as specific and as lovely as you want it to be, hone it in as close as you want it to be, make it as real. The people, the smelling, the things like make it as real as you can be. But from there, back it up and see it step by step. How did you get there? Whether it's a day by day process, week by week, month by month, year by year, how did you build up to that space? What did it take you? The work that went into getting to that end goal and make your visualization process as specific and detailed as you can. Even the obstacles like we need to see the problems that could arise, the challenges, maybe difficult people or embarrassing moments or threats to our ego that could pop up. How are we going to deal with that in those situations? Visualizing that and readying ourselves, right? So what we know is we all know. I don't know if we all know, but a common term, the Hebb's Law, right. Is what the things that fire together, wire together. And that is just stating that when our brains are forced to create a neural connection, you have a coactive neuron firing that creates stronger connections and that leads to less resistance of the firing of that process. So the more you visualize and think on something, the less effort your brain perceives it to be and thinks it's normal. It's also going to allow more flow and relaxation through the body. So if you take a visualization process. Let's take it back to sports. If you take a sports, kids are playing, they go, their body's kind of familiar with it, maybe it's new, but then they go and they start visualizing the accuracy. They visualize the whole process and the steps and how they'll breathe and how they'll overcome an opponent or what have you, or a failure. Like, I know Michael Phelps is well known for visualization. And he would visualize the obstacle problems, things that could go wrong during the Olympic trials, like various things going off kilter, goggles filling up and that kind of thing, and how he would work through that, which led to less threat in the body when and if that happened. And it also allows our bodies to be our nervous systems to be less on guard in those nervous states of being on stage or performing all that. To say, getting as clear as you can and visualizing the step by step process, you're actually increasing receptors on the neurons that basically prime your brain to be more prepared for the reality of taking the action towards the goal that you want to do. So we have the big end goal. We're going to break it down step by step, as specific as you can get. You're going to even see obstacles and problems that come into these things, right? How you would handle it, what you would do. You can create vision boards, action boards. You can do cue cards, sticky reminders, all these things, right? But after visualizing and creating this step by step and as specific as you can get, process to the end, game of success. It is important to, to put it into an action. Let's say it's something as simple as, I don't know, let's take it out of the sports realm. And let's say you're going to have a difficult conversation with a co worker at work, and you go to bed and we'll talk about timing here in a second. And you visualize who you want to be and how you want to show up. Maybe some of the confrontational things that could happen. What's the end point of what you want to say? What are some of the struggles that could come up during it and how you might react to that. And then you get up the next day. Well, then go through the process, like, talk it out. Do some. Do some physical movement with it. Move your hands, stand the way you want to stand when you're talking to them. You know, maybe you're not going to stand confrontation with your hands crossed. You're going to. You're going to stand with your hands open or just softly clip cups. But taking a physical action to reinforce the visual goal, whatever it may be. If you're going to be a runner and you're going to visualize yourself becoming a runner, you're going to visualize yourself prepping your shoes, your running clothes, your. Your electrolytes and water in the morning, you're charging your watch, you're setting out your socks and shoes at the door. All of these things, right? You visualize that. You then visualize getting out and actually doing the run. And you're getting so specific, like you're gonna, what time of day? How is the light hitting you? What, is it chilly? Is it humid? Then you're gonna visualize the course that you're gonna run. Is there a challenging spot that you need to be prepared for? It's a big hill or a traffic area that you're gonna have to deal with, right? So any of the things you're gonna get really specific on, great. But going up the next day and then doing the actual action follows that up and. And reinforces it. So we know from studying things, like there was a study that hap that they did, and I'm just remembering it. I don't actually have it in front of me, but they did a study with people who were going to work on their squat and they're going to build quad muscles, right? So your thigh muscles. They had a group of people that just did the visualization process, but they got really, really specific and they really envisioned their quads engaging and they're pushing through these squats. And then they had a group that did just squats, and then they had a group that did squats with visualization. I don't remember all the Statistical numbers.

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Except that I do remember the people that did visualization with the squats had the biggest percentage of increase of output and musc over a period of time. But what blew my mind was that the people who did not do squats and only visualized still had a 13% increase of muscle fiber in their quads from only visualizing. Come on. And I know that there are many, many researches and things out there that show this in various areas of accuracy and speed around sports. I don't know for sure. I think like musicians and things too. There's a lot of that that's out there about how piano players visualizing the keys and how to play like significantly increased their accuracy when they went to actually perform. So we know that visualization works. We know that that priming of the neural circuits and those connections in the brain, building those stronger connections helps your body and your brain be more familiar, use less effort and creates less stress and threat in the body, right? And again followed up with an action. One of the other key factors to kind of honing in and really taking advantage of visualization is your timing. You can do it any time of the day. There is no like perfectly set time or even time length, right? So there's people who show positive performance changes when they're just doing a couple of minutes. Some people do it, you know, even longer like a long meditation process and they're doing the visualization. But what we do know that you have an increased likelihood of creating a learned space in the Brain if you will do visualization either before, right before as you're going to bed, when you're about to drift off, you're in that relaxed calm state that, that brain wave that opens our brain up to our thoughts, up to like creativity and possibilities. And then the other time is just in the morning, you know, so waking up in the morning and not jumping out of bed, but allowing yourself to kind of linger just a little bit in bed while you. For me I usually will say some prayers and then work on a visualization. And that can be as simple as just wanting to have a successful day. Like get to work on time. Thanks mom. And you know, take care of my, my clients and who I need to show up for and how I want to physically work through my day and how I want to feel at the end of my day or it can be even something bigger. You know, how if I'm visualizing my, my long term future with more public speaking and a larger audience for my coaching clients doing those, doing your visualization that time right before bed and right in the morning, it connects to that. Well one they said like reading on some of the research I've been like if you do it before you go to bed, you, during your deep sleep, you're actually working out more of the processes of something you were thinking about just before you went to sleep. And then working it out in that deep sleep creates even a deeper connection of your, your nervous system and your brain to be better prepared for the familiarity and the neural connections become a little more accustomed to the physical expectation of whatever you're visualizing. And then the morning, that morning phase, I, I think you're just in still in that space where your brain is a little bit in that dream state. And then what they call, I know like Nidra, Nidra yoga is like this but it's the non sleep deep rest that is, that's been shown even for like, like heavy study periods or times when you're trying to learn something new. If you will learn something for that 52 minutes to 90 minutes and then take a break and have you can do that non rest. Whether you lay down and just do some breath work, you take a long methodic walk where you're not having to think that our brains absorb the education material even better. And so same thing with visualization in the morning that if you're doing it during that time you're still in that deep rest phase. And so you're more likely to prepare your nervous system, your brain to be prepared for the physical Action, but don't forget the physical action. You've gotta take some sort of process and make it reliable. And you know, this goes into play with your self confidence and self efficacy. We can think all the things, we can do all the pep talks, we can do all the journaling and writing, but if we don't actually take, take action and prove to ourselves that we can do these things, there's a little bit of your psyche that will always kind of call your crap on that. So make sure that whatever it is you're doing, walk through a physical action of it. Yeah. And you can reset neural circuits like just doing this three to five times a week. You don't have to do it every single day. Although there is a little bit of support. It's just like everything else. The more you do it, the deeper it's set into the norm for your body and for your nervous system. I will say I do this with, in a sense, so just back into the, Let me backtrack a little bit, but into the visualization process and getting as specific as you can. I do trauma in the body work on people and when I'm working with them, I will have them go in and visualize a happy place. Right. So in a moment, in a feeling, and I get them to go as specific as possible. The sight, the sounds, the people that were there, the light, the wind, any kind of anything they might smell, any. Anything that can make it as specific as possible. I think there is a pretty significant correlation to that with our visualization process and using that in that end game concept. Right. So that, that end dream setting us up for oxytocin, serotonin, happy space, but then also training the nervous system to go into that step by step process with preparing it for a little more of the stress. And so when I'm working with people in somatic release, I take them in and out of a happy space and a stress space and then we correlate that to what's happening in the body. So I think you also need to be aware of how are you feeling in your body while you're doing your visualization work. Recently in some training with one of my clients, in some relationship work and getting her to overcome this repeated behavior pattern of being in these types of relationships that really weren't healthy and they were, they always ended up being toxic. And one of the things we talked about was how her body felt in that scenario and, you know, identifying the tightness in the throat or the sick, sick feeling and the stuck feeling in your belly. Or the tight shoulders, or the heart racing, palm sweating, recognizing what your body is doing in a stress threat situation and then training it for a healthy situation. So for her, you know, just referencing back to the relationship, one of the things that I'm working with her is that she grew up with unhealthy relationships being an example for her. And that threat and fear was normal for her nervous system. And so when she was in any opportunity to be in a healthy relationship, it felt unusual, it didn't feel normal. And her body and her brain, her psyche was kind of seeking out this unhealthy somatic response, as this is what I was trained to understand relationships are supposed to be like. But knowing now that she can kind of process the body of what she would feel like when she imagines and visualizes a healthy relationship and her body is relaxed and her breathing is normal and she doesn't have tightness in her throat, she doesn't have this feeling of threat. And now she can visualize the feeling of a relationship with the identity and in her body of what that feels like. And I think we have to do that with everything we would do. Like if you're going to run, if you're going to stand on stage and do this presentation, or you're going to do a performance for this, or you're going to have this confrontational conversation with somebody, putting your mind through the end game, the step by step process, getting as specific as you can, doing some physical practices around it, but then also tie in the somatic response. What is your body telling you? And how do you train your body to accept that the visualization process is safe, it's rewarding, it's happy and it's good. Like, where do you want your body to feel like when you're running? What do you want your body to feel like when you're having this conversation with somebody? That's going to be a successful conversation? What do you want to feel like when you're presenting on stage? Bring the body into your visualization process. I had another client that was processing some grief and some fear around a big move. And they have a home in where they're moving from that they built and redesigned and they just love it. And she's really struggling with a little bit of that grief of giving up this space that they built and finding that in where they're moving to. And one of the things that we walked through wasn't just visualizing the light and the layout or the color or the appliances, which are all fine to visualize but it was really more about what did you feel in this kitchen? Like, what was so special and magical about this home, in this kitchen? What did that tell your body and how did you feel in yourself, your emotions, but also in your body when you walked through in your kitchen and hold on to that expression and visualize that into your next space? And it was, it's not only helpful for her to have just hope, but it gave her that connection of what she's really grieving or thinking she had to grieve or fearing that she was going to have to grieve when now she knows that I can take that feeling and move forward with it. And I think that that will help. I think that that helps with your, your visualization process entirely. When they talk about feeling into whatever it is, you know, feel what it's like to do this, feel what it is to this. It's not just having the physical thing or going through the steps, but it is like feeling that security or that love or that comfort or that connection or the empowerment, that strengths and how does that show up in the body? So just a quick recap, bringing your awareness into your body. Visualize your end game, but make the sub goals, right? The step by step process. Focus on the little details of the day to day, week to week process to carry out whatever it is that is required to reach your goal. Be prepared for any obstacles or unexpected things that could come up and how you might deal with those things. And familiarizing your brain with what to expect, right? And then reward yourself, by the way, in your vision, in your visualization. Allow yourself to have that feeling like let's say you're a runner and you're going to visualize. I'm going to reach that stop sign or I'm going to reach this mile marker. And give yourself. It just has to be a little cheers, a little pat on the back, a little, yeah, I did it. And then keep going to the next one, right? So those little moments of wins within your visualization, it helps build those deeper neural connections as well. And then when you're done with the process of doing like an evening and morning visualization process, you're letting your body feel what that feels like. You're familiarizing your nervous system, the neural connections. Get up the next day and take a little action. Do something, one thing that either embodies it or puts forth an action towards achieving your goal. Tell yourself and your psyche that it can trust you to do the things that you're envisioning. All right, friends, thank you. For joining me tonight. I hope this was helpful. I hope you received something good from it and we will see you on the next podcast.

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