Visualization & Creativity

It is an innate human experience to dream about what we want...happiness, fulfilling work, good friends, affection, adventure, health, a nice place to live, and so on. Some of us appear lucky enough to get what we wish from our lives. For others, it's a challenge and an often frustrating experience resulting in varying degrees of sadness.

Through events and experiences, people discover visualization to be a personal resource for transforming one's wants and passions into reality.

What is Visualization?

It's one of our natural experiences. Seeing images or movies in our minds - daydreaming or imagination - is visualization. And when we consciously choose our thoughts, we are practicing the visualization technique.

Visualization is as natural as breathing or sleeping - we all visualize. The only difference is some of us are aware of it, and others not - at least not yet.

The Power of Thought

Successful visualization actually helps us unconsciously move from negative thinking to positive thinking. And within this is the secret to creative transformation.

We are usually negative because we're afraid to dream of success or joy. Why? Most likely, we don't want to be disappointed so we simply tell ourselves not to believe in our dreams. Sometimes it hurts to dream of happiness when we are not experiencing that happiness. We may even fear that the joy we want so much may be lost after we attain it. Or, our attitude could be learned behavior, the result of negativity we saw around us growing up.

Fear, worry and doubt are negative thoughts and they create negative emotions.  Tranquility, joy and determination are positive thoughts, and create positive emotions. Thoughts, and then emotions -- fear, worry, doubt, tranquility, joy, determination and on -- are all symptoms of our deep-seated mental landscape.

Our mental landscape is our picture of life, and has self-assumed boundaries - structures we have built in our minds within which our life is encompassed.  Many boundaries are of impossibility -- we can't be something, we can't have something, we can't do something. We can't be self-employed, we can't have the house we saw in the magazine, we can't play a musical instrument. "Good things will never happen to me."

When we project our mental landscape through our thoughts, daydreams or visions, we emanate focused energy and emotion, and we then realize how powerful this is in creating an external reflection of our internal landscape.

Visualization Technique

Be aware of our thoughts and imagery, and we'll become aware of visualization. We all visualize. There's no skill we need to learn, nor any place we need to be to visualize.

Movies or pictures in our minds are our intrinsic visualization process. Since thoughts and emotions emanate from our mental landscape, daydream with confidence and with enjoyment, and our landscape will uncover new vistas. Liken it to watching a nature documentary on Discovery or Animal Planet and other shows. Notice how the sight of unusual creatures we had never even imagined completely blows away our assumptions of what exists on our planet. Similarly, we expand our mental landscape by daydreaming and imagining.

Instead of imagining the worst, imagine the best.  Instead of playing out the worst scenarios in our minds, play out the happiest. And go about our daily business...with a lighter heart.  Once we come out of our daydream, remain happy.  Don't worry about the future or fervently 'hope' that our dream comes true.  Just begin to let ourselves experience joy in the images we see in our minds.

Positive visualization:

- We see oneself doing, or having, what we enjoy. Focus on what we want. Avoid focusing on what we don't want or what we don't like.

- Be in the moment... see ourselves in our new work, see our environment, see ourselves enjoying our passion, whatever that may be.

- Smile, and and know that things have been set in motion. Live and feel the change we have seen in our mind.

- Act, when the time is right...nature will let us know. Action, in as much as it is meant as a controlling endeavor to achieve our objective, is unnecessary. Action, as part of the momentum leading up to the manifestation of our desire, will seem natural. Let nature unfold in its wonder, rather than control it to meet our terms.

We should believe in our dreams, without fear. This can be hard to do, especially when faced with challenges, but gradually becomes a transforming process. Fears and crises are opportunities to move forward.

Allow our inner consciousness - or compass - to guide us in our desire to achieve what we want. All we have to do consciously is remain positive in our everyday life and walk in the direction of our dreams.

Give out our best positive thoughts, and we will be returned sheer brilliance ... beyond our human comprehension.

Acceptance and Gratitude

If you're faced with a crisis, accept it. You will have taken the first step towards moving ahead. This means accept that the event has happened, don't resist it. Then visualize where you would rather be, instead of giving the event more of your negative emotion.

Life is your friend, not your enemy. When you believe in yourself and your dreams, and stay positive and calm, you'll be able to accept the turns in life with grace, all the while knowing that the events in your life - the good, the bad, and the sad - are all perfect pieces of the mosaic that will complete your unique journey. Acceptance of, and gratitude for, the flow of your life will change your living experience.

Acceptance and gratitude together are probably the hardest lesson to understand and practice in this human life. This is best experienced rather than taught, and then becomes a transformative awareness. If you look at a blessing in your life today, say the love of your child or your pet, you will understand that all the ‘bad’ things in your life earlier, which you probably railed against, were the ingredients of your life path that brought you to the day you had your child or adopted your pet. And then it'll suddenly dawn on you, my gosh the time that I was mad that I didn't get to go on that trip I wanted was just the time space that was essential to the chronology of my life as I later met my future partner and had a baby (or found a pet).

The two things that may come into your consciousness again and again - and which crystallize all other concepts - are acceptance and gratitude.

Creativity Unleashed

Each of us is a creative individual. Once we become cognizant of the power of our thoughts and desires, our mind will know no boundaries. We will unleash our creativity.

Wonderful Quotes

"Follow your bliss." - Joseph Campbell

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world." - Mahatma Gandhi

"Never believe that a few caring people can't change the world. For, indeed, that's all who ever have." - Margaret Mead

"When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us." - Helen Keller

"Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all." - Dale Carnegie

"Live out of your imagination, not your history." - Stephen Covey

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." - Albert Einstein

Andy

You can read my longer personal narrative for a more metaphysical understanding of visualization.

Photographs on this page are from free photo websites, with design elements added to them in Adobe Photoshop.