[EP 11] The Power of Visualization: Jack Canfield's Guide to Achieving Your Dreams

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Welcome to the Jack Enfield Podcast, where we explore how to use the principles and tools that unlock your human potential to create the personal and professional lives of your dreams and experience greater levels of health, happiness, abundance, fulfillment and meaning in life. I'm your host, Jack Canfield, and today we're going to delve into how to use the incredible power of visualization in the different areas of your life. From creating financial success, to achieving peak performance in business, in school, in sports and the performing arts, all the way over to releasing limiting beliefs, reducing stress, building self confidence, and even healing your body. Now, to start, let's understand what visualization is and why it's such a powerful tool for personal development. Visualization, as we'll be using it, is the practice of creating a powerful mental image of a future desired outcome. And it involves both imagining or seeing the end result in your mind and also engaging the other senses of hearing and physically and emotionally feeling the accompanying feelings to make the experience as real and complete as possible. So you want to imagine it as it's already completed. You'd hear the sounds you'll be hearing and you also be feeling the feelings you'll be feeling.

You're like an actor, you're creating those feelings inside your body.

So we have audio, visual and kinesthetic input. Now, visualization can be used to achieve greater financial success and we'll look at different areas of your life. So let's look at financial success first. Now, as you know, many individuals who are successful, who you have heard of, attribute their professional and financial achievements to the power of visualization. Take Oprah Winfrey, for example. Before she eventually became a media mogul, she used visualization techniques to envision her success, including the specific details of her talk show in addition to the impact it would have on people's lives. So she saw not only what she would do and what she would get, but how it would impact other people's lives. She visualized that, and her story is just one of the many fantastic illustrations of how clarity and specificity and visualization can drive success. It's about not just seeing the goal, but about feeling it, hearing the applause, and experiencing the emotions of success as if it's already happening. And you've probably heard about Jim Carrey, who in 1985, before he was a well known actor, wrote himself a $10 million check. Acting Services rendered. That's what he put on the line, Acting Services rendered. And he dated it 10 years into the future. Now he also used to drive up to Mulholland Drive in night where he would sit in his car and look out over Hollywood and Los Angeles and visualize himself receiving big paychecks for his roles. Now, 10 years later, in 1995, he received a movie role in Dumb and Dumber that paid him exactly $10 million. We see that happening all the time in my own life. My first mentor, W. Clement Stone, who co authored the book Success through a Positive Mental Attitude with Napoleon Hill, challenged me to set a goal that was so big that if I achieved it, I would know it was only because of using the techniques of affirmations and visualization. Affirmations. Repeating statements like, I'm so happy and grateful I'm now earning $100,000 a year. And then visualizing that life I'd be living if I had done it. So I did set a goal of making $100,000 a year. Now, at that time, I was making $8,000 a year. So this is like 12 times more.

Than I was currently making.

And I did the three things he taught me. First, I drew a $100,000 bill on a three foot wide piece of light green paper. And then I taped it to the ceiling above my bed. And every morning when I woke up, I would see it. And then as I looked at it, I would repeat my affirmation of I'm happily earning, spending and investing $100,000 a year. And then I would close my eyes and visualize living a $100,000 a year lifestyle. The furniture I would have, the art I would buy. The Navajo rugs I would collect. The car I would drive.

Eating dinner out in restaurants, which is a time I couldn't afford.

After 30 days, I began to have a hundred thousand dollar ideas.

In the shower, I had a book that I had published called 100 Ways to Enhance Self Concept in the Classroom. And my royalty payment was 25 cents per book.

And at that time, my average royalties.

Were only about $2,000 a year.

But the idea came to me in the shower after 30 days of visualizing this. If I could sell 400,000 copies in.

One year, I'd earn $100,000.

Now, that was the first $100,000 idea I'd ever had. Visualization was the cause of that.

Now, my wife, who was visualizing with me, realized that if we were a bookstore and sold the book for 695, which is the retail price, and kept the retail markup of $3, we only had to sell 33,333 copies to make 100,000, a lot less than 400,000. So I started the mail order bookstore. We had one product, one book, one my book. I took ads out in school newspapers and church ads and church programs and local newspapers and local magazines, and we started to sell books. I hired some high school kids to come in and wrap the books up and address them and send them out and so forth. And eventually my wife realized that when she bought things, there would be other little catalogs inside the box that they came in to sell other products. So we thought, well, let's add some other books. And that time, cassette tapes of self esteem products. And eventually we had an eight page catalog with 32 books, parenting books, teacher books, and cassette tapes on self esteem development. And then what happened was the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, where I was.

A graduate student, they had a counselors.

Conference, a conference for school counselors. And they said, you got this bookstore, why don't you bring your books over, we'll set up some tables and you can sell books that'll help the counselors. So we made $2,000 profit that one weekend. Now I thought if I could do 50 conferences a year, that'd equal $100,000 a year income. So we started having more and more $100,000 a year ideas. And then my friend Hanuk McCarty, who I'd gone to grad school with at the school of education, he called me up. We were talking, and because I was focused on the school, I said, what do you charge a day for school and service trainings that you do? And because I was doing them as well. And he said, Well, I charge $800 a day. I almost fell off my chair. I said, $800 a day. I was getting 300 at the time. I said, how do you get $800? He said, I asked for it. Radical idea. It was way outside my comfort zone. I thought people would think I was some kind of person that didn't care about kids if I asked for that much money. But I started visualizing asking for $800.

And I even practiced saying it in.

The mirror, repeating, my fee is $800 a day.

What's your fee?

800 a day. What's your fee? Then I got a call from a mental health consortium in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and they wanted me to come do a full day workshop on a Saturday.

They said, what's your fee?

And I remember going, $600. I was still uncomfortable about it. And they said, no sweat.

I said, no sweat?

What would have been sweat? He said, we had $1,200 in the budget. Well, from then on, I could ask for $800. In fact, I asked once for $1,200, and the guy said, well, we don't have that. We have 900. I said, I'll take it. Now, I never would have asked Hanuk that question if I hadn't set that goal and begun visualizing the outcome. Now, another thing that happened is when.

You visualize, you'll start to see three.

Things that will happen. Number one, you're going to start noticing.

Things in your environment that were always there, that can be solutions to your.

Goal, but you didn't really see them. So I'm in my grandmother's bathroom and.

I look down and there's a Reader's Digest there.

I've been in my grandmother's bathroom, you know, literally hundreds of times.

I never saw it.

She subscribed to it for years. On the COVID said, 8 million readers in, I forget, 81 countries, something like that. I thought, wow, if 8 million people knew about my book, certainly, you know, 33,000 people would buy it. So I decided I'm going to take.

An ad in Reader's Digest.

I called them up and found out they cost way too much. Literally more than $100,000 income I would have made because they said, you have.

To do it six times.

And it was like, you know, I.

Forget what it ended up to, but.

It was more than a hundred thousand dollars.

So that idea wasn't going to work. Then I was at the newspaper counter.

Checkout counter at the grocery store where they often have little newspapers, magazines, and there was a National Enquirer there. And I thought, wow, they said 12 million readers weekly and the ad rates.

Were a lot less.

So I called them up and still was more than I was able and willing to pay. But I kept visualizing myself in the Reader's Digest and the National Enquirer. I wrote an article for Reader's Digest, gave a talk in New York and at college, and this woman came up after I'd given this talk for 800 teachers. And she said, I'd like to interview you. And I said, well, who do you write for? She said, well, I'm a freelancer, but mostly I sell my articles to the National Enquirer. So the article got published, sales took off, and as I said, we had a eight page catalog, 32 products in there. At the end of the year, I had not made 100,000, but I made $92,328. That was way more than the 8,000 I made the previous year. Now, my wife said, hey, if it works for 100,000, you think it'll work for a million? So I said, well, I don't know, let's see. So we got a million dollar bill. You know, they actually were giving these out, some of the motivational speakers the time you may have seen one. And we copied that, made it much bigger, put it on the ceiling, did.

The same thing, had an affirmation.

I'm happily depositing my million dollar royalty check from my bestselling book. And I put that million dollar bill on the ceiling. And I close my eyes and I visualize it. Well, didn't make a million, made $1,130,328. So again, visualization works. It opens up your creativity. You start getting ideas like I did in the shower. You start noticing things like I noticed the Reader's Digest, I noticed the National Enquirer. And also you end up having more motivation to just jump out of bed and do the things that used to be scary. Another example of visualization leading to wealth is a friend of mine now named Andres Pira. He lives in Thailand and he's the author of a book called Homeless to Billionaire. And interestingly enough, Andres, when he was 19, inherited a thousand dollars or so from his grandfather's death, and he decided he wanted to get out of the cold. So he flew to Thailand and he ended up in Phuket. Spent all his money very quickly because he didn't have that much after the airfare and all that.

He ended up sleeping on the beach.

He would sleep on a beach towel, using his suitcase for a pillow.

He had virtually no money.

He was just surviving literally on about 25 cents a day worth of noodles. And some days he didn't have a cor order, and this woman running a noodle shop would give him a bowl of noodles out of just her compassion. And so one day he decided to text a friend and say, will you send me a hundred dollars? And the guy texted back, said, no, you were never that good of a friend, but I will send you a digital copy of a book, the Secret that he just read. So he read the book on his phone and it talked about visualization and the law of attraction. And he thought all of it was B.S. like, you just visualize what you want, feel the feelings of having it, and somehow it's going to manife. And he just thought it was BS but nothing better to do. So he visualized having a hot cup of coffee, which he hadn't been able to afford in weeks. And interestingly enough, he visualized the Warmth of holding the cup in his hands. He would bring it up to his face. He visualized smelling the aroma of the coffee. He visualized taking that first sip and feeling the warmth and the coffee in his mouth and the taste of it then going down his throat as he swallowed it. The warmth in his stomach, the burst of caffeinated energy that just extended out into his body. And he really got into it. He did it a few times. Now the next day he's sleeping, this guy comes over and shakes his shoulder and says, you know, I run this jet ski rental down the beach here, and I noticed you've been sleeping every day on this beach towel. It looks like you don't have any money. And something in me said, I should buy you a cup of coffee. And he handed him a cup of coffee. And now he goes like, well, maybe this stuff does work. And so he now starts visualizing a full course meal, which for him was like meat, vegetables, potatoes, rolls and butter.

And dessert and all that.

He just, every day he would visualize eating that whole meal in a restaurant. And a few days later he's walking down the beach, there's a man walking toward him. And the man stops, says, you look familiar. I think we maybe went to the same high school in Sweden. And he said, yeah, I went to high school in Sweden. He named the high school. He said, yeah, that's me. He said, well, I think I was.

A year or two ahead of you.

He says, you got time, I'd love to buy you lunch. Let's talk. So now he gets this lunch, everything he wanted. The meat, the vegetables, the potatoes, the dessert. And he's thinking, oh my God, this.

Stuff really does work.

So now he said, well, what I really want is a job. So he starts visualizing having a job.

And a few days later he notices.

There'S this place that rents condos, you know, timeshares.

And so he goes in and he.

Asks if they need anybody.

And they say, yeah, we need someone.

Outside on a sidewalk that can just guide people in, get them to come in. And they taught him how to do it and what the rap would be.

And so he starts doing that.

Now he's got a little salary, he.

Gets a little tiny apartment, rents a.

Moped, and he starts reading other self help books, including my book the Success Principles. And he keeps affirming and visualizing his dreams. Now he's like, wants to be a salesman because the salesmen are the ones making the money, getting their commissions.

So one day he's out there just guiding People in.

The guy comes by and he says.

You know, I'm only here for a.

Couple more hours before I have to.

Catch a plane back to Europe. Is there a salesman that can show me a.

A potential condo that I could do a timeshare with? And he said, I'm sorry, all the.

Salesmen are out there, they're showing, you.

Know, properties to people. But I know a place if you're.

Willing to ride on the back of my moped. And a guy says, sure, I'll take you there.

I mean, I'll go with you.

He goes there and brings the guy back.

The guy wants to do it and.

The manager is there by now and he offers him a sales job because.

He loves his motivation.

After a while doing this, he starts.

Realizing the people making the real money are the ones building the condominiums.

So he starts imagining himself as a builder. To make a long story short, he becomes becomes a contractor and a builder of condominiums. And eventually he becomes a builder of resource. And he's built a number of resorts and hotels and now he's 35 or 36 at the next point.

He has 19 businesses and he's worth about $1 billion.

As I said, he wrote a book.

Called Homeless to Billionaire.

And a few years ago I got.

To go meet him when he invited.

Me and Joe Vitale and Mike Tyson, the boxer and a former Miss Universe to come to Bangkok and co present at a success conference he put on in Thailand to pay it forward. So you can see visualization works. I always say the principles work if.

You work the principles.

Let's talk about the power of visualization in education. There's a guy named Patrick Taylor.

He was a president of Taylor Oil.

Down in New Orleans. He's a billionaire and unfortunately died just recently.

But he wanted to give back.

He wanted to help kids in the inner city that were poor. And so he decided that if kids were from a family below a certain level of income in New Orleans, he would pay for their college education. And if they had a 96% attendance rate during the middle school and had a B average through high school, he would pay for their college education.

Now he knew that just making that.

Offer wasn't going to work. He knew the power of visualization. He used his own business to build his billion dollar enterprise. So the first level of intervention.

These kids had never been to a college.

They didn't know what a college looked like.

So how could they visualize it?

So what he did was he took them, got them on a bus and they went to two different universities. Some of the kids went to Tulane. Some kids went to the University of New Orleans and got to shadow a student for a day. They would go to their classes. They would go eat in the school cafeteria. They would go to the sorority or fraternity if they were in one of the dorms. If they weren't, they go to the gymnasium, the library, you know, the laboratories and so forth. If there was a museum, they got to see what it was like to be on a college campus. Then when they went back to school, every day for the next year, teachers would lead them through a visualization of being a college student. So imagine you're getting up out of your dorm bed, going to class, you know, and you're hearing your student teach. You know, teachers teach. You're talking to your. Your friends. You're going to the cafeteria, you're eating this great food. You can feel it nourishing your body. You're having fun with your friends, you're telling jokes. You're going to the gym, you're working out. They go to all the details of what it would be like to be a college student every day for a year. Now, before Patrick Taylor's intervention, these kids had a 16% high school graduation rate. And after Patrick Taylor taking them to the university so they could see what it looked like, and then getting to remember and feel and visualize it every day for a year, 84% graduate straight.

So they totally reverse it.

In fact, the program was so successful that the Louisiana state government adopted the program for any kid in that poverty level.

Now, another example took place in the.

Marin county schools, which is north of San Francisco. My friend Jerry Jampolsky did an experiment with raising reading scores among students who were falling behind, and he used the power of visualization to do that. He had these kids imagine going into a movie theater, and in the lobby there was a big sink with a hose. And they were to unzip their head, take out their brain, and then take the hose and wash out their brain, wash all the negative thoughts coming out like dirt flushing down the drain. All their negative thoughts and beliefs, like, I can't read well, I'm not smart. I. I don't understand this. It's hard to me, you know, I'm.

Dyslexic, whatever it might be.

And then once they got all that out, the brain was nice and shiny and clean. They put their brain back in, and then they would zip their head back up. They'd walk into the theater, they take a seat, and then they'd see the lights dim and a movie starts on, and it was a movie of them reading well on screen. After a while, they were to stand up, walk into the screen, into the body of themselves reading, reading well, sounding out the words, enunciating clearly, understanding everything they read. And then they were sent home with an audio of that guided visualization with the instructions to them and their parents to listen to it and visualize themselves reading well every day. Now, the parents were enrolled to make sure that the kids did it every day for one month. And result at the end of those 30 days, there was an increase in their reading level of 1.5 years, 1 1/2 years increase in just 30 days. Now, the control group who didn't have the intervention, they increased their reading scores only by 30 days. So this is an amazing result. And one year later, the kids in the experimental group were still one and a half years ahead of their previous reading scores or everyone else at that same level. So now they were ahead of everyone else. Now let's look at how to use visualization and health and healing. We know that it can be a powerful tool for health and healing, so let's take a look at it. How can it accelerate the healing process? I want you to consider the case of Anita Moorjani, who I've also interviewed for one of our podcasts. And she's the author of a book called Dying to Be Me. And she experienced a near death experience while she was living in India. And she was in the hospital due to her having what the doctors thought was a terminal cancer. She was under 85 pounds, she had tumors inside of golf balls coming out the side of her neck. She couldn't swallow, she was in a great deal of pain. And what happened was she flatlined. And so clinically she was dead for a bit of time and. But they brought her back. And after she came back to life, she'd had this near death experience where they talked to her about that she had been a people pleaser. And when part of the reason she had gotten sick was she had made other people's needs more important than her own through visualization and a deep connection with her inner self. She visualized her body healing at a cellular level. And miraculously, she made a full recovery and has written several books about it. Her stories inspired thousands of people. So we know that visualization can help with healing. Let's look at some other examples. Tiger woods, you probably heard about his automobile accident and he used visualization to recover from the injuries. He also mentally rehearsed his golf swing while he was in bed, during his rehabilitation after the car accident and when he returned to the sport, as you know, he performed exceptionally well. Back in the 70s, when I was still. I guess I was in my early 30s, there was a doctor, Carl Simonton, and his wife, Stephanie Simonton, and they wrote a book called Getting well Again. Their technique was to teach people to visualize little Pacman going around through the bloodstream, eating up all the black cancer cells. So let's say you had cancer in your lungs. You would imagine those as black cancer cells, and then you would imagine these little yellow Pac men coming in and eating them all up. And that was a very, very powerful bit of healing that occurred, and research they did with it, that accelerated the healing quite a bit. I share a personal experience with you. So way back when, I ran a center called the New England center in Amherst, Massachusetts, and we had a guy there named Jack Schwartz, and he had talked about an American soldier who witnessed the following event. During the Vietnam War, A Korean soldier had stepped on a punji ship, A stick. Now, punji stick is a sharpened bamboo stick that will literally go through the bottom of a boot and go right through your foot and stick out. The top is that sharp and that strong. And he witnessed someone doing that. And the punji stick came up through his boot, in through his leg, through his foot, rudder out the top. And he thought the guy would be in real trouble. But what he witnessed was the guy sat down, took off his boot, put his hand over the wound, closed his eyes, and looked like he was meditating. And then after a little time, you know, not a long time, like maybe 10 or 15 minutes, he took his hand off the wound. He noticed a scab had formed. And then as he kept watching, a scab fell off. And then there was pink skin underneath. And the man stood up, put on his boot, and walked away. And later, this man who observed it.

Asked around and found out that the man who had healed himself basically was a Buddhist, and he was adept at meditation and visualization.

When I heard that story from Jack, I was very inspired by that.

I wondered if it really worked. And within a month, we were taking the group to a nearby pond as an afternoon, and we were running workshops.

There in the afternoon, Just a little break to have some fun. And I stepped on a broken beer bottle in the shallow water in this pond. And I come out, there's this large gash on the bottom of my foot and this blood coming out.

And you could look in, and there was all this like, you could see the flesh, what looked like nerves and veins and stuff. It was pretty, pretty intense. It was bleeding profusely. And I sat down, I wrapped my.

T shirt around it for some pressure and held my hand on it.

I did it for about 15 minutes.

And as I was doing that, I.

Visualized the cut healing.

And I visualized myself walking around barefoot, totally healed. Now, about 15 minutes later, I unwrapped.

The T shirt and there was a.

Clean, what looked like a pink scar where the cut had been.

And I put my sandals on and I carefully walked home on it. And believe it or not, the next.

Day, I played barefoot on this foot that looked like it should have had stitches, but it didn't need them.

So that blew me away. And I'm going to share one other.

Technique with you that I learned. It's called the Abraham Lincoln Memorial Visualization. And I taught this to my friend Raymond Aaron.

Some of you have heard of Raymond.

And he's a motivational and inspirational speaker and author and lives up in Toronto, Canada.

So here's how it works. So imagine if you've seen the Lincoln.

Memorial, there's a statue of Abraham Lincoln is 19ft tall, 19ft wide. So it's huge, about three times, four.

Times higher than a person would be.

So what you do is you. Let's say, you know, something needs fixing in your body, you've got a broken bone. Like for Raymond, it was a broken leg he had. For someone else, it could be, you know, you have a kidney that's needs help, or your liver's, you know, got too much fatty tissue in it, or your heart's palpitating way more than it should, or you've got a strained ligament in your knees, whatever it might be. And so what you do is you imagine you're.

Well, you're not imagining you're sitting in.

A chair and a safe, quiet place. And then you close your eyes and relax. Then you visualize yourself sitting opposite you in a chair. And then what you do is you imagine that you sitting opposite you growing in size till it's the size of this Abraham Lincoln statue, 19ft high. Then what you do is you walk over. Just get out of your chair and you walk over to the. The bigger you. It's not like the. The Lincoln Memorial statue of Abraham Lincoln. And you notice there's a workman's door entrance on the side of the wall of this huge. Now you. And you open the door with a special key that you have, and you.

Go in and then you turn on.

A light so you can see all the insides of this memorial statue. And it's like the inside of a building where all your parts are. Your bones, your muscles, your ligaments, your heart, your kidney, your liver, your spleen, your intestines, your butt. You know, everything up your. Your brain, your heart, all that. Now what happens? You notice anything that needs fixing, anything that needs some support, needs healing, and start with whatever closest to the door. As you go in, you just go that area of this enlarged. You and use whatever transportation device you need to get there. It could be scaffolding, ladders, stairs, an escalator and elevator. And then you closely examine this area that needs healing and kind of identify what it needs. Obviously, if it's a broken bone, you can imagine taking that bone and putting some chicken wire there and then maybe putting some plaster of paris, some cement, painting it back to the color of a bone. So you're basically healing the bone, making it whole again. If it's an organ, maybe it needs some draining of some toxins that are in there. Maybe it needs massage and scent, light and loving energy. But you do whatever it needs. Maybe you unclog blockages that might be in. In, you know, in your esophagus or your intestines or blood vessel. You strengthen, weaken ligaments. You drain areas that need things taken away.

When you.

When you finish that have a completion for that healing, it's a thought, could be an action or thought. A specific thought might be, heal quickly and fully, my dear swollen ankle. An action might be a hand motion or a body motion to indicate that you're completing the healing. Like that. Now, then you look upward and identify the next item in your body that might need healing. And you just keep going through all that until you've healed every aspect of your body that you think may need it. If there's tension, maybe you relax it through massage. For high blood pressure, you might want to think about going down to the basement of the statue in the boiler room and in order to adjust the valves of the pressure. If you've got osteoporosis, you might wish to pour concrete into the bones to strengthen them. For a headache, you might wish to create a small hole and allow the high pressure to escape for fever, you might want to pour ice on your body or into your body, or else just turn down the thermostat. So you just keep doing whatever needs to be done to heal parts of your body or your whole body. Then eventually you go down to the maintenance store, put away all your tools, walk out and lock the door. And then go back to your chair. You sit down. You're facing this huge now healed you. And you take a deep breath of gratitude. And you smile. Smile at the large you, your large you smiles back at you. And then in your imagination, shrink this body down to your normal size. And then imagine merging the two. It comes back into you healed. You're sitting in that chair. Just sit there for a moment.

I taught that to Raymond Aaron, and he had a healing that happened so much quicker than his bone should heal.

He went to the doctor.

Doctor said, I've never seen anything like this. What'd you do? He told him. The doctor kind of scoffed at it because they often do. But I've taught this now to hundreds, if not thousands of people that have accelerated healing in all kinds of parts of their body. So let's look at visualizing to improve performance. Now we can improve sports, theater, public speaking, the arts, music. We see actors and athletes and musicians, professional speakers, all using visualization to mentally rehearse their performances and their actions, which enhances muscle memory and peak performance. Your body cannot tell the difference between a real event and a vividly imagined event, which means you can imagine rehearsing and getting better. I was working in a seminar many, many years ago with Gene Houston, who's a expert teacher of this kind of work. She had some visual artists come up and she gave them five minutes to draw or paint a leaf. And then she took them through a guided visualization where they went back to art school for a year and studied.

All kinds of art.

Then she had him come back. It was about five minutes of visualization. Then draw the leaf again. And it was like one leaf a kindergarten had drawn and the other one, like Picasso, or not Picasso, but Rembrandt or someone, Michelangelo, had drawn it. Then she had a violin, Linus, come up and play a piece of music. Then she had her imagine going back to music school and getting all this instruction and practicing the instruction and then.

Coming back and then she played the violin again.

It was like a different person. And so what happens is your body cannot tell the difference between a real rehearsal and imaginary rehearsal, Real instruction and imagined instruction. We see actors and actresses using this all the time. I read recently where the actress and singer Zendaya, who's a multi talented performer, may have seen her in TV shows like Euphoria and films like Spider man, the Spider Man Homecoming movie. And she said that she mentally rehearses her scenes and envisions success before she.

Ever gets up in front of the camera.

I mentioned Oprah Winfrey earlier. I had the privilege of knowing her personally. Now for 17 years I've had dinner at her house, she's had dinner at mine. She's known for using vision boards to visualize her goals and I recently learned from her that she created a vision board for her role in the film the Color Purple. And before even auditioning she went on to learn she did that.

Then she went on to earn an.

Academy Award nomination for her performance. I got to hear Matthew McConaughey speak at an Oscars afterparty in LA, I think the year before the Pandemic started. And diamond was an Academy Award winning actor for his films like Dallas Buyers Club and Interstellar. And he spoke about creating a vision board too, featuring all the roles and.

Achievements he aspired to in his career.

And he also uses visualization to focus.

On the types of characters he wants to portray and to develop those characters in his mind. Ellen DeGeneres, comedian, actress, former host of the Ellen DeGeneres show other example of visualization.

She often spoke about how she used.

Visualization to manifest success in her career. Let's look at sports. So you've definitely heard of Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian in history and.

He'S won a total of 23 gold medals.

Known for his meticulous visualization team. I real worry before every race he would totally close his eyes and mentally rehearse every aspect of the race and from the dive into the pool, each stroke he would really just experience each stroke.

He took his flip turns all the.

Way to the finish, how he would finish. And he visualized executing perfect strokes and overcoming any challenges that might emerge during the race. Muhammad Ali, three times world heavyweight champion, considered one of the greatest boxers of all time. Known for his bold affirmations like I am the greatest. But what most people know is he would visualize himself winning fights with precision and grace. He would mentally rehearse every fight, every strategy, every thing he was going to do in the order he was going to do it before he stepped into the ring. You may remember Carrie Strugg. She was an Olympic gold medicine of gymnastics. Best known for her iconic performance in a 1986 Olympic athletics performance where before attempting her final vault at the team competition, Kerry was dealing with a serious ankle injury. Yet she visualized a perfect landing in her mind. She then successfully ran down, executed the vault and landed perfectly and secured the gold medal for the US Team. Jack Nicklaus, one of my heroes, known as the Golden Bear, won 18 major championships. He would say he visualized every shot before he would take it. In fact, when he was at the tee he would visualize all the shots he was going to take between that tee and the green and then sinking the putt and so forth. And he often talked about the role of visualization also in helping him maintain composure when he had to make critical shots under pressure. May have heard of Carly Loyal Lloyd Better. She's a two time Olympic gold medalist who scored a hat trick in the 2015 FIFA Women's World cup final. Uses very detailed pre game visualization routine. She visualized herself making successful passes, scoring goals and contributing to the team's victory. She also imagines overcoming challenges and staying focused during the match which can be quite difficult sometimes under fire. Arnold Schwarzenegger I I always admired him.

Him.

I've actually learned to love him. If you haven't seen the Netflix documentary called Arnold, It's a four part series. I strongly encourage you to do that. But what I learned from watching that the seven time Mr. Olympia guy he was widely regarded one of the greatest bodybuilders in history. But he was known for his mental focus and visualization. He would actually mentally picture each muscle contracting and growing during his training sessions, believing that the mental connection played a crucial role in his physical development. So another example. Tom Brady Considered one of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history. Seven super bowl victories. Also known for his intense mental preparation including visualizing the game scenario. Scenarios he would visualize each play he was going to do. He'd visualize reading the defenses. He visualized what he would do if he was on the goal line and when you are to go with five seconds to go. He'd visualize the fields on a 30 yard line. He visualized himself in every possible scenario and what he would do. And he visualized imagining successful passes. He created a mental map that would enhance his decision making and execution to all the games. Serena Williams Grand Slam 23 Grand Slam titles Visualize hitting every stroke perfectly. I was surprised to find that Usain Bolt Holt, who's widely considered the fastest man in the world, holds multiple world records in sprinting. Also known for visualizing his race in great detail before he stepped onto the track. He mainly rehearses his start, his stride pattern, his finishing kick and creating a mental blueprint for success. Now my favorite indicator of the power of visualization in sports is a piece of research that was done with some college kids using basketball. So I divide these college kids into three groups. One group was not to touch A basketball for 30 days. The second group was to practice shooting file shots for 30 minutes a day for 30 days. And the third group, just to visualize shooting file shots, not touch a basketball, but just visualize shooting file shots for 30 days, each basket, nothing but net. Every shot they made was perfect. Now the results were the group that didn't practice at all, didn't touch a ball. No improvement, same scores. The group that practiced for 30 minutes showed a 24% improvement in their file shooting. And the group that just visualized never touched the basketball improved 23%, virtually the same as the group that practiced. I would have loved to have seen a group that practiced and visualized probably would have got even a greater improvement. They found recently in some research done with skiers that if they would wire them up, put all these electrodes on their body, and have them just imagine skiing down a mountain, every turn they would take, every mogul they would go over, et cetera. What they found was the same muscles that would fire off when they were actually skiing would fire off when they were visualizing. So literally, the visualization would fire off the same muscles so they would have the same experience as if they were actually doing it. As we said before, your body can't tell the difference between a real event and a vividly imagined event. My live seminars and trainings, I do something called a skyscraper visualization. I'm going to describe it as I describe it. If you want to stand up and do it, you can. You'll see the experience of it.

So what you do is this. I have people stand up. If you want to do it, you can do it along. You stand with your feet shoulder width apart. You close your eyes, and you imagine you're standing on top of the patio or a terrace on top of the tallest skyscraper in the whole world. Like you're 105, 110, 115 stories up. And this patio that you're standing on has no railing. You start by looking down at your feet, notice what you're standing on, what shoes you're wearing. Is this patio or this terrace made out of marble, cement, asphalt, wood, tile? What's it made out of? And then you imagine, is it daytime or nighttime? Is it windy or calm? Is it cold or warm? You know what's happening as you're standing up there? What sounds can you hear? Maybe birds flying by, helicopters, Sound of the air conditioning system working? Street noises way down below, traffic.

And then I ask you to walk to the edge of the terrace, put your toes right up against the edge and look down.

And if you're doing that, look down.

And just notice how you're feeling in your body. And then I ask people to walk.

Or crawl back to the terrace.

And then I ask them to open.

Their eyes and tell me what they experienced.

And people say, I felt queasiness in my stomach.

I felt myself pulling back from the edge. I felt myself feeling dizzy. I felt my hands sweating. I felt my breathing getting more shallow or faster. My question to them and to you is, what was. Where was your body really? Well, it was standing up in a very safe place called your room or wherever you are. And the reality is your body, as I said, can't tell the difference between a real event and a vividly imagined event. So you can experience that and know how real it is that our images create changes in our body, and we can those. And if we image and imagine the positive things we want, we get the positive outcomes of. Of increased motivation. We get a positive outcome of increased self confidence. Because where does self confidence come from? It comes from surviving a risk. And when you're visualizing doing something like being good at basketball, asking someone out for a date, and they say, yes, and it's a great date, applying for a job and getting it, getting a raise, getting your dream home, giving a speech, and the audience gives you a standing ovation, it was in your mind.

Mind.

But because your mind can't tell the difference between a real event and a vividly imagined event, your body can't tell. What happens is you just survived a real event. And so you can begin to build up that self confidence because you can do it through imagination as well as doing it in real life. And when you go to do it out in the world, what happens is you feel much more self confident. I remember I was giving a speech, I was really young, I was in New York, and I was following Norman Vincent Peale. You know, one of the great speakers of all time, wrote books. I think Donald Trump went to Norman Vincent Peale's church in New York. This guy was like a big deal. And I'm like in my early 20s and I was nervous. So I remember going into the men's room, going into a stall, closing the door, kept my clothes on, just sat down on a seat for the privacy of it. And I visualized myself giving a really great speech and the audience jumping to their feet, giving me a standing ovation. And then I went out and I gave my speech. And because I'd already got a standing ovation, I had much more confidence. I gave a great speech. And in fact, I did get a standing ovation. It's pretty cool. So again, you can increase your success by imagining it as already having happened. I said it's going to increase your self confidence, it's going to build your motivation, it's going to increase your perception.

Of things that will help you.

You've got this thing in your brain called the reticular activating system. It gets activated to see the things out there that can support you. Opportunities, resources, books, people that maybe you never saw before. And you'll also have, you know, greater self confidence to do the actions and it will draw you toward it. It's like the vision. You're working from the vision and the vision draws you toward it. You're using the Law of Attraction, which I'm not going to go into now, but basically it's one of the main tools that makes the Law of Attraction work, is you're changing your vibration. Now, as we begin to wrap up, I want to discuss just how you can incorporate visualization into your daily lives.

When should you use it, how often.

Should you use it? And why is it crucial to involve all of your senses? Now, visualization, I believe, is most effective when done regularly, meaning, like every day is ideal. Make it part of your daily routine. I do it in the morning and sometimes I do it at night as well. Right before you go to bed is great because then your subconscious is playing with that image, coming up with ways to help bring it into fruition. So find a quiet space, eliminate any distractions like turning off your cell phone or turning your regular phone. Sit up straight but still comfortable. And you close your eyes and begin to relax by taking some slow relaxing breaths. And a couple of standard techniques are breathing in for the count of six, like this. Then out for a count of six. Or even better, inhale for the count of six. Like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, exhale for the count of eight. 1, 2, 3, 4th, 5, 6, 7, 8. Why? When you exhale longer than you inhale, it sends a message to your body to relax. I don't know the physiology of that, but I know it's been researched and it works. Now the other kind of really breathing you can do is called box breathing. So you inhale for four counts, you.

Hold it for four counts, you exhale.

For four counts, you hold it out for four counts, then you inhale just so you remember. Let's do that twice together. So here we go.

Inhaling.

Hold, exhale, hold it out, inhale.

Again.

Hold it in, exhale out and hold it out. Now Let your reading come back to normal again.

That's how you want to kind of set the space. And then to accelerate the achievement of any goal, just imagine that you're already there.

Vividly.

Imagine that your goal is already accomplished.

And as I said before, engage all your senses.

See it.

Imagine hearing the sounds you would hear, like the sound of an engine of your dream sports car revving up, the.

Sound of applause, or the sound of.

Your teacher saying, congratulations on getting an A on your test. And also feel the feelings of success, exhilaration, pride, or relaxation as if it were happening right now. You kind of have to be an actor and create that feeling. You know, put a smile on your face, feel your chest puffing up. Whatever it is that is going to.

Help you feel that feeling.

And that will deeply imprint this desired outcome on your subconscious mind. I recommend you see it as a.

Movie rather than a still picture.

And make sure to add in as much detail as possible. The more detail, the better. Daytime, nighttime, are you inside or outside?

What are people wearing?

What's the decor of the room you're in? If you're inside, what's on the walls? Or is there art there? Drapery occurrences? Is there a table?

What's on it?

The more detail, the better. And always make sure to add in the soundtrack and then make sure to feel the feelings looking out through your eyes. You want to see. Don't see you out there. That's called disassociated. See what you would see inside of.

You if you were skiing down a mountain.

You'd see your tips of your skis, you'd see your hands on your poles.

As you make those turns.

That's called associated.

It's more powerful. Make it as clear as possible.

Now, some people, when they visualize, it's.

Not like 5D metric, Golden Maris, Super.

Scope, Dolby Atmos sound, etc. It still works. Only about 15% of people are eidetic.

Which means they see like, you know, amazing imagery. Most of it. It's kind of almost like we're thinking.

It or intending it, but you're getting.

Some sense of seeing it.

The question is, how long should you visualize first time? It'll take more time to create the visualization like you're making a movie. Took 10 years to make. Avatar took about 3 hours to watch it. So once you create that image, you can just bring it up like a slide. It's just a movie.

Like, you know you're going to watch a TV show you watched before you've stored in your in your your memory.

Bring it up like a television show.

Watch it for a minute or two. That's enough.

More.

It could be better, but you don't have to do much more than that. But do it every day consistently, and.

Do it consistently for 30 days to start.

If you miss a day, I want.

To encourage you to make the next.

Day day one again.

As I mentioned, visualization is going to open up your reticular activating system, which is a filter in your brain, is going to determine what gets through in your consciousness. You're going to see the things that match your beliefs. So you want your beliefs to change by believing you're going to get what you see. And your deeply filled needs also determines what gets through the filter and what you visualize over time. So see the things you didn't see before, you're going to see them.

Books, resources, opportunities.

As I said, you're going to get increased motivation and you can visualize short term goals, like goals you want to have happen two weeks from now. You can visualize one year goals, five year goals, or you can visualize bucket list goals, things you want to achieve.

Before you die and maybe you'll have a bunch of each.

I usually have about 21 things a year that I visualize short term midterm in seven different areas of my life.

You can also visualize the intention for your day tomorrow.

So the night before, visualize how you want that day to go.

You can mentally rehearse, you know, performance, whether it's giving a speech, giving a talk, asking for a raise, having a difficult conversation with your son and repetition.

Again, 30 day principle.

Do it over and over and over for at least 30 days. You're going to create new neural pathways in your brain if you do that.

So we've explored the uses, the value.

And the positive effects of visualization visualization in various aspects of your life, once you remember the mind is a powerful tool.

And by harnessing the power of visualization.

You can absolutely accelerate the achievement of your goals and create the life you dream of. So thank you for joining me on the Jack Canfield podcast. And if you enjoyed today's episode on visualization, please subscribe, rate it and leave a review. And now that you know why and how, make sure to take time every day to visualize your dream life. Look forward to seeing you next time.