Visualisation – Introduction

What is it?

To make something real, you first need to be able to imagine it is real. Visualisation is ultimately creating a mental picture of success.

Visualisation is a central element of the realising benefits tool, as this is a key step when it comes to leveraging the power of our unconscious mind. Visualisation though has applications to all fields of achievement, that is why it deserves its place as a tool in its own right.

In the raising the bar tool we explored the mechanics of visualisation which fundamentally are just the same here, the difference in this insight is that we are going to dig further in to the practical applications of the skills.

More than that though, visualisation was previously described as something you plan to do periodically to calibrate your internal compass towards your desired goals. In this tool we are looking to move beyond that and cultivate your visualisation practice so that it simply becomes a default part of your way of being. This means visualisation becomes ingrained in your natural approach to how to contemplate and face in to any new challenges life presents you with.

How does it work?

Visualisation is simple and yet powerful. The act of imagining our manifested goal makes it real within our minds eye. It is no longer a just a possibility, it is something that is real and has happened.

Notice the words I have chosen… is and has…

The key to visualisation is projecting our minds eye in to a perceived future state where our goal or result is already here. From this perspective we can then look back and analyse the steps that were required to reach this state.

In project management speak we call this product-based planning – starting with the end result and breaking it down it to its component parts and then breaking each of them down in to their component parts. The idea being you start from the end result and work backwards to give yourself a recipe card of everything that must be done/achieved on your route to success.

Being clear about the end result enables this deconstructive analysis, so the higher quality your end vision is, the better equipped you will be to analyse what was involved.

Right to Left, then Left to Right

I am just going off on a little planning tangent here but it feels appropriate and right.

Visualisation gives us a clear picture of the manifestation of our goal. If we were creating a time-based visual plan, we would have the end goal on the right (like at the end of the book) and the activities leading up to it on the left.

The chunking down in to component parts from our end vision can be described as planning right to left – starting with the end of the story then writing the bits leading up to it.

Effective planning though requires both directions of travel.

Starting right to left to uncover all that is involved, then flipping to left to right to determine the must efficient order of execution available within your frame of delivery (see the getting to the root tool).

With this in mind, you can see that visualisation is a key part of planning, but does not cover all the bases alone. There will be more tools to follow exploring different perspectives on planning which you can integrate with this insight around visualisation.