The Art of Visualization | Jim Kwik

Now, this is part of a 10-day bonus that we gift you when you purchase your copy of Limitless, my new book, Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life. And this is kind of like an audio-video summary primer of the book that you get to go through. I know a lot of people like to listen or they like to watch To be able to learn things. And I wanted— I want you to help me make this book the most read book on your shelf. A lot of people buy books and they sit on your shelf, but they become shelf help, not self-help, because you don't read it. So this podcast episode is a portion of the 10-day program you get as my gift for ordering a copy of Limitless at limitlessbook.com. So make sure you do that if you like this material so you can get the entire program called Quick Start so we can spend 10 deeper days together. Are you ready to begin? Are you ready to unlock the power of your visualization to become limitless? Let's start. Welcome back to your Quick Start program, Unlocking Your Limitless Brain. I am your coach, Jim Kwik. Now in this session, We are going over the third part of how to unlimit your mindset. So in the previous sessions, we talked about 2 tools to unlimit your mindset. The first was the power of belief and your self-talk. The second one was the power of asking new questions to get new answers and new possibilities in your life. Now in the book, we cover so many details on how to unlimit your mind. To the exact beliefs that will empower you, to how to ask these dominant questions. In this session, I want to pull one more tool out of the book, and that's the tool of visualization. Visualization. Because here's what I want you to remember: the human brain doesn't know the difference between something you vividly imagine and something that's real. Have you ever had a very intense dream that wakes you up and your heart's beating out of your chest, or maybe you have trouble breathing? That's because the mind doesn't know the difference. Between, again, something vividly imagined and something that's real. Researchers will have a subject look at a dog that comes into the laboratory and see what parts of their brain light up. Then they'll take the dog out and give them an assignment saying, I want you to visualize a dog coming into the laboratory and just imagine it. And they'll see what parts of their brain lights up. And what do you think happens? The same part of their brain lights up. There was a study done at the University of Chicago where they took 3 groups of people and put them on a basketball court, and they just had them do free throws and saw how many points they scored. And what they did at the end is they went to Group A, B, and C and gave them different instructions. They said to Group A, for the next 30 days, I want you to practice for an hour a day. Go on the court and practice those free throws. They said to Group B, I don't want you to go out on the court, but I still want you to practice every single day, but without touching a ball. I just want you to practice in your mind. See yourself, visualize yourself successfully throwing free throws. And they went to Group C and said, we don't want you to practice at all. For the next 30 days, don't even think about basketball. Don't touch a basketball. They followed up 30 days later, and they saw surprising results. Group A, who practiced each day for an hour a day on the court, they improved 24%, right? Because practice makes progress. Practice makes progress. Group C, which was the group that didn't touch a basketball and they didn't even think about basketball, there was no progress. No practice, no progress. What was striking though was Group B. Those individuals that didn't go on the court, they didn't put on their sneakers and throw the ball, they just practiced successfully in their mind, They improved 23%, just 1% less than the people that actually went on the court to practice. I mean, this is evidence that your mind is powerful. You'll find that athletes— and we've talked about it in previous sessions, like Roger Bannister— they would visualize themselves having success. And so you'll find the great athletes, they don't just do physical training, they mentally train themselves to see the result. In advance. So in this lesson, what I want you to do is practice the art of visualization. I want you to imagine the perfect day. What would a limitless day be like for you from the moment you get up to when you go to bed? Because if you could see it here, you could create it out here. Because what you vividly imagine, you're rehearsing. One of the challenges is a lot of people use their visualization to get The results they don't want in life. And by visualizing it over and over again, they're actually preparing and rehearsing for failure. Meaning that phrase that a coward dies a thousand deaths, a hero dies only one. Because the coward in this metaphor is visualizing all the things that could go wrong, all the things they're fearing, and then their attention goes there and they're mentally rehearsing failing on stage or failing on that exam or failing when they're going to meet that person on that date, and they're practicing in their mind. So that visualization is very, very potent. There was a study done by Ellen Langer out of Harvard University, and she was spending time with seniors at senior centers. And she said to herself when she was visiting these senior centers, this is not a great place necessarily to live your final days. You know, it's very bleak. And what she wanted to do was an experiment experiment. She took 8 guys out of the center and put them into a monastery. And now this was in 1979, and she decorated the monastery as if it was 1959. What does that mean? The television was black and white and had 1959 programming. The magazines were from 1959 instead of 1979. She even went so far as to remove the mirrors out of the room so the subjects couldn't see their own reflections. And she did an audit and assessment about Where they were before they entered the monastery. She tested for things like physical strength. She tested their senses, their sense of hearing, their sense of sight. She also tested their cognitive abilities, how good their focus was, how good their memory was. And she told them, I just want you to pretend that it's 1959. Live for one week as if it's 1959, not 1979. Wow. And she came back just one week later, and she was amazed at the transformation. What had happened after just one week of being in that environment? Well, first of all, these gentlemen actually performed better on strength tests. Their senses had improved, their sense of hearing and their sense of sight, after just one week. And on top of that, their cognitive abilities, their focus, their memory was actually enhanced. Just after 7 days before they went into the monastery, they took a photograph of each of these subjects, and they also took a photograph of them afterwards, and they showed them to focus groups, and they asked them one simple question: which is the more recent photograph? And 100% of the focus group chose the older photograph, meaning they all looked younger because they just imagined themselves For that week. They called this study the Counterclockwise Study, and it's a testament to the power of belief, imagination, visualization. Because here is your lesson: as you're going through and constructing your limitless day, you're rehearsing that, and your attention goes there. Remember that your feelings are the language of your body and that your thoughts are the language of your mind. My goal for you to become limitless is to imagine your perfect day, your perfect moments. I want you to imagine it, visualize it, see it, feel it, believe in it, and then work daily for it. Here's your assignment: In the comments, I want you to share with our community what does a perfect day look like for you? What is your limitless life? Why are you part of this program? What do you see and hear? hear and want to feel more of as you're going through this book and in this program. Imagine it, see it, feel it, hear it, believe in it, and then work daily for it. That's the success formula. Now, I can't wait to see you in the next session because we're going to talk about the second M to becoming limitless, which is your motivation. How do you overcome procrastination? How do you provide yourself with energy to be able to learn and reach your goals. I'm your brain coach, Jim Kwik. I'll see you in the next lesson.