Richard Webster - Creative Visualization for Beginners

Introduction

A mans life is what his thoughts make of it.

Marcus Aurelius

Creative visualization is the ability to see with your mind. It is an ability that everyone has, though some people are naturally better at it than others. Every time you daydream you are visualizing. Whenever you think, you create an image in your mind. Heres an example. Think about a friend you had in elementary school. Notice the images that immediately come into your mind as you mentally relive some of the fun times you enjoyed together. Recall a time when you felt proud of yourself for something you had done. Again enjoy the images and feelings that come into your mind.

These images are in your memory and you are recalling them. However, you also constantly create imaginary pictures in your mind about events that have not yet occurred. Imagine two teenage boys going to a party. One boy visualizes himself walking into the room and having no one to talk to. The other visualizes himself walking in confidently, and meeting an attractive girl. Which one do you think will have a better time at the party? Both have visualized a situation in the near future, and their mental pictures will decide what happens. You can virtually guarantee that the first boy will have a miserable time, while the other will have a fabulous evening. Their thoughts become self-fulfilling prophecies.

Have you ever imagined what your life would be like if you could have, do, or be anything you wished? This is making positive use of creative visualization. People might call you a dreamer, but if they do, they have no idea of just how powerful daydreams can be. Woodrow Wilson, the 28th President of the United States, wrote: We grow great by our dreams. All big men are dreamers. They see things in the soft haze of a spring day or in the red fire of a long winters evening. Some of us let these great dreams die but others nourish and protect them, nurse them through bad days till they bring them to the sunshine and light which comes always to those who sincerely hope that their dreams will come true. It sounds as if Woodrow Wilson used creative visualization.

Your brain is an incredible instrument that can bring you anything you desire. The twelve billion cells that make up your brain possess unlimited potential. Popular belief says that we use only about ten percent of our brains capacity. However, it has been estimated that if we had one new thought every second from the moment we were born to the instant we died, we would not run out of space. The potential is limitless.

The incredible power of the human mind was demon strated to me in a dramatic way when I was sixteen years old. I was working in a bookstore during my summer vacation. One of the other temporary workers was a psychology student who conducted a rather cruel experiment to demonstrate to me that the mind controlled the body. One morning, we were standing by the entrance when one of the ot her workers arrived.

Are you feeling okay? the psychology student asked her. Youre looking a bit pale.

The woman looked surprised. No, Im fine, she said. She went to her office and closed the door. An hour or so later, she came out into the store, and the student again asked her if she was well.

Im fine, she said, but this time she sounded less sure than she had before. She returned to her office. About thirty minutes later, she reappeared and said that she was going home because she wasnt feeling well.

I felt rather uncomfortable with the experiment, but the psychology student was jubilant. He tapped the side of his head.

The power of the human mind, he said. Its incredible.

The woman who went home feeling unwell did so because she had accepted the suggestions that the psychology student had given her. He twice suggested that she wasnt feeling well. Because her mind accepted this, she imagined that she must be ill. Her body then acted on this thought and made her unwell. This demonstrated that her mind was controlling her body.

That was my first introduction to visualization. In that case, the psychology student deliberately implanted a thought. However, we unconsciously implant thoughts all day, every day. Unfortunately, most people think more negative thoughts than positive ones.

A couple of years later, I attended an Outward Bound school. This is a three-week-long adventure program, designed to stretch people to become more aware of their abilities. One of the activities was to cross a river by crawling hand-over-hand along a rope suspended twenty feet above the river. Some of the participants were able to cross the river with ease. Others found it more difficult, and a few refused to even attempt it. Why was this? The reason was fear, caused by thinking about falling into the river. This thought was so powerful that they were prepared to endure the taunts and comments of the people who had done it, rather than attempt it themselves. Their minds were controlling their bodies.