Stop Visualizing Your Success: Do THIS instead [PART 1]

Stop Visualizing Your Success: Do THIS instead [PART 1]

「なりたい自分」を叶えるためのイメージトレーニング術≪パート１≫

Transcript

You might have heard of visualization. Imagine if you could just sit there in your room with your eyes closed and you have the ability to suddenly achieve all of your goals. That would be great except… it doesn't exactly work that way.

What you should be doing is, instead of only imagining yourself successful, you should also visualize yourself overcoming challenges and developing a resilient mindset.

And so in this video today, I’m going to show you exactly how to visualize. I’ll be talking about what visualization is, the scientific evidence behind this, and how to visualize step-by-step so you can achieve your goals and dreams.

If you're new here, welcome to my channel, I’m Sayaka, I’m a Harvard graduate ballerina turned entrepreneur.

Before we begin, I want to tell you a story. I have actually been practicing visualization for over 10 years now. I started when I was 15 years old because I wanted to win a gold medal in an international ballet competition. But I had a major obstacle. I didn't have a ballet studio that I could practice in because I wasn’t part of any ballet school at that time, and I lived in Tokyo and the costs of renting a studio were too high. This is why, I had no choice but to practice in my head. At first, I was skeptical whether this would really work but I kept on visualizing every day for hours and hours. And then after three months, something incredible happened. Despite the fact that I barely practiced physically, I went to Berlin, I competed in that competition and I won the gold medal against 900 dancers. This experience taught me how powerful our minds are and that there is no excuse in life. Your mental state is the most important thing, not your body, your looks, your circumstances, or your environment. This is why I know that when visualization is done correctly, it can help you achieve incredible things in life. 

WHAT IS VISUALIZATION?

So first of all, what is visualization?

Visualization is the practice of creating mental images to achieve certain desired outcomes.

Visualization is used by a lot of successful people in sports or business. They imagine themselves achieving their goals, which helps them achieve the goals in reality. Psychologists have used this technique for a long time to help people.

But what we don’t realize is that we actually imagine things every day already, without realizing it. Everybody can daydream. But the difference is, “visualization is daydreaming with a purpose.” We all think every day, we all imagine every day. So why aren’t more people successful? It’s because people are not usually intentional with what they think about and so a lot of people use visualization in a way that's even harmful.

For example, if you are someone who worries a lot, you’re actually picturing bad scenarios so vividly. And what happens is, your brain starts to believe that those thoughts are real because the brain cannot tell the difference between reality and imagination. 

This is true. Lots of brain scan studies have repeatedly found that seeing something and imagining it evokes very similar patterns of neural activity.

THE SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE

For example, in 1995, a Harvard Medical School professor, Pascual Leone, did an experiment. with piano skills.

In this research, there were three groups: the first group was asked to physically play the piano every day for five days, the second group was asked to imagine playing the notes, and the third group didn't practice anything. And all of their brains were scanned every day.

And what they found was, that the brain activities look quite similar whether you actually play the piano or just imagined playing it. You can see quite clearly here. This means that thinking about doing something can actually be enough to learn new skills, it’s almost as good as actually doing it. He even says that “mental practice alone seems to be sufficient.” (Leone, 1995)

I think this research finding is really incredible because it shows that even to learn a new skill like playing the piano, you don't have to move at all to improve. And I can confirm from my personal experience that it was the same with ballet. You can actually strengthen your muscles or improve your technique without moving. So how should we visualize to get actual results? This brings me to my next topic, how to visualize.

I will explain this in a step-by-step detail in part two, in the next video over here.

References: Pascual-Leone, A., Nguyet, D., Cohen, L. G., Brasil-Neto, J. P., Cammarota, A., & Hallett, M. (1995). Modulation of muscle responses evoked by transcranial magnetic stimulation during the acquisition of new fine motor skills. Journal of Neurophysiology, 74(3), 1037–1045. https://doi.org/10.1152/jn.1995.74.3....