Visualization
While knowing what you want is a useful skill in life and a great way of thinking to move things forward and to improve your circumstances, there is a vast difference between knowing as a logical activity and visualizing as a means of bringing the emotions of that circumstance closer to you.
To really feel, and see and to build a clear picture of how you want your situation to be is a greatly more powerful way forward.
For many years I struggled enormously with my moods, allowing the feelings of guilt and shame from my past, the untaken opportunities, and the regretted behaviors to cause me pain and great sadness. I allowed the baggage and the discomfort to come along with each day, permitting the past to not only distort, but even damage the present moment that I was in. It sometimes felt as though I was actually inviting it to join me for the day!
Can you imagine yourself doing anything so silly as encouraging a group of people you either dislike, find uncomfortable to be around or simply cannot bear, to be with you for hours at a time and at your own request? No of course not! I didn't think you were so foolish so it must just have been me and my crazy ways of thinking.
Starting slowly and with small attempts at recovering myself, I used to talk with friends who had made the move from where they had been emotionally and in a place they did not want, to stepping gradually into a space that was more supportive, more true to who they really were.
They explained that a significant part of their own improvement had come from the act of foreseeing or envisioning the situation that they wanted to create for themselves. A friend who was constantly struggling with unfulfilled relationships began to create a picture in his mind of himself and a beautiful woman who would understand him, share her dreams with him, and with whom he could develop a safe and loving relationship.
Over a period of several months working with this picture he attracted several good women into his life, and eventually one with whom he entered into a truly loving relationship. In this new relationship he found himself feeling safe and cherished for the first time in his adult life.
A young couple who were living in a cramped first floor apartment in the city, and making barely enough each month to cover their rent and utility bills, wanted desperately to make the break to the suburbs where they felt they could spend the same amount of money on a small house with a garden. Keen to start a family together, but unsure that the city was the right place for them to bring up a child in such shabby surroundings, they were encouraged to work with visualizing the kind of place they wanted to be in.
They began to cut pictures of living spaces, homes and gardens from magazines, postcards, street scenes of small communities, and any images that they felt represented the sort of place where they wanted to move to. They placed the pictures on several notice boards around their apartment and kept their faith that the Universe would support them in their goal.
A month into the building of their dream boards, the woman received a call from a friend at work. She was ringing to ask if they wanted to look at a house ten miles out of town in a beautiful semi-rural community on the outskirts of the city. It belonged to a family member who wanted either to sell or to rent the place out. They jumped at the chance to go see the place and inspect it for themselves. When they got out there it was precisely what they wanted and the living room and garden were virtually identical to two of the pictures that they had been envisioning and working with for that past month!
Visualizing what you want means putting yourself in a place emotionally and mentally where you can see in your mind's eye the ideal outcome that you want to attract to you.
It differs from Goal Setting as a process, but builds upon that activity. By creating the picture you are involving more senses than just thought. The visual image involves your sight. Putting yourself physically in the place you imagine allows you to engage your physical senses of touch, sound, even taste, as you imagine and visualize yourself in that place, that circumstance, participating in that desired opportunity. While you are there you can allow your emotions to complete the picture by feeling what it is like to be there and to have the sensations all around you.
Begin to visualize today. Start with something small that you would like to have happen or which you would like to attract. Notice the feelings you associate with the outcome being achieved and allow yourself to explore how good it feels to have this happening for you.