Wow how time flies! Over half the year is gone and you only have five more months until you accomplish your yearly goal. I bet you are excited with how much progress you have made and are energized by how well things are going. The rewards for attaining your goal are now clearer and more real than ever before.

Well, maybe you are in the other camp of people who are a little off-track and are slightly worried about how you will accomplish your goal. There seems to be too much work and not enough time. No matter what group you are in, you need to start doing one thing. You need to start visualizing yourself attaining your goal.

Last year one of my “big” goals was to finish a marathon with a 10-minute mile pace – a pretty tough standard for a first time marathon runner. Besides putting in the time and effort training, I did one small thing. During my last mile for each training run, I would mentally picture “Touchdown Jesus” (viewable from Notre Dame football stadium) and hear the finish line music. When that mile was done, no matter where I was or who was watching, I raised my arms like I just won the whole race. You see, my marathon took place at Notre Dame University and the finish line was right in front of “Touchdown Jesus”. Every day for six months, I pictured the finish line and achieved my goal right on pace.

Did the visualization have anything to do with accomplishing my goal? Yes, it had everything to do with it. Although the physical training developed my cardiovascular “motor” that got me from the starting line to the finish line, it was the vision that provided my “fuel” for the journey.

Visualization makes you focus on your goal and keep things in perspective. No matter what your goal is, you will always have an obstacle to overcome. It may be the weather. It could be a scheduling challenge. Or it could be you just feel like doing something. Whatever the obstacle, you have a decision to make. If you are focused on the challenge, it will become way too big and delay or even prevent your goal. If you visualize the accomplishment of your goal, you will recall how important it is to you and come up with a creative solution.

Herein lies one example of how this works. It is actually something that Earl Nightingale calls “the strangest secret”. His “strangest secret” is “we become what we think about”. Earl Nightingale discovered that the more one thinks about something, the more their conscious and subconscious begin to align with that thinking.

Think about a time when you had a great passion in life. A time where you just could not stop thinking about something. What happened? You probably became (or attained) what you were thinking about. And even more importantly, at the time of achievement your actions just “flowed smoothly”. Yes, you had to put in the effort, but things just happened like you always imagined. That’s because you were visualizing and you did not even know it.

Olympic athletes and other high level performing people have applied this to their lives. They have all started to visualize what they want and how they are going to get it. The summer Olympics is a great place to see this take place. Specifically watch the high jumpers. During their warm-ups you will see them stand in place and go through their jump. Their eyes are usually closed and you can tell when they jumped off the group and when they are arching over the bar. They are visualizing a technically perfect jump over their goal height. When it is their turn, they do not want to be thinking all the way through their jump, they simply want their body to react.

Through visualization, Olympic athletes condition their bodies to accomplish certain goals and so can you. Here’s how you do it. Set a specific goal or call to mind a current goal. Go off to a quiet place where you will not be interrupted. Get in a relaxing position, close your eyes, and visualize yourself doing all the work you need to do to accomplish your goal. The more detailed, clear, and real you make your visualization the greater the impact. For some people and certain tasks this will take longer than others. A great way to start is to take five to ten minutes at the beginning of your day and visualize the perfect meeting, presentation to a client, or accomplishment of a daily goal.

Be Free!

Jeffrey Czajka
Instructor

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