There’s a saying, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
One of my teachers used to say it this way: “A rose by any other name still smells like a rose.”
In English, we have this substance known as “water.” You can also refer to it as aqua, 水, पानी, вода, νερό or wasser.
In chemistry water is written as H20.
What you call the substance doesn’t change the substance because the word “water” is not water.
And so it is with the word visualization. The words “imagine and feel” resonate with me in a deep way, yet these words don’t change the fact that when I’m picturing something in any way, shape or form, or with any method, I am visualizing.
Call it mental imagery, imagination, mental pictures, a blueprint, a mind map or a meditation, we are still referring to visualization.
Many years ago, I was reading a book written by Michael Masterson. In this book he talked about how he had four main goals and how focusing on his number one goal, financial abundance, would help him achieve all four.
Masterson also wrote about how he would get a pencil and paper each night and recalculate his net worth.
Whether he was aware of it or not, Masterson’s practice of writing out his goals and calculating where he was each night in relation to his goal, is visualization/imagination in action. In fact, with a pen or pencil in your hand, as you look at your numbers and compare them to where you want to be (imagining your visual goal), you are activating the brain in a major way.
Just because your eyes are open and a tool is in your hands doesn’t mean you are NOT visualizing or imagining. You are definitely doing so. In essence, it’s the same as a basketball player at the free-throw line, picturing the ball going “swish” before he shoots it.
Over the weekend a client asked me about “blueprints.”
I told him that a blueprint is a visual aid that you create through the practice of visualization.
You can craft your blueprint with your eyes open or closed. Makes no difference. Why? Because ultimately, you put what you pictured in your mind’s eye on paper. At the beginning of each day, when you hold the blueprint in your hands and look at it, you are imagining yourself either living on the successful end of the blueprint, or you are picturing what you need to do next to bring the blueprint into reality.
Whether you call your process looking, imagining, picturing, meditating upon, drawing up, calculating or measuring, you are using visualization.
So why is it that some people claim they are practicing something other than visualization, when they are definitely using it?
There are a number of reasons. Here are some:
1. The person is positioning a product in the marketplace and wants you to think it’s something he or she invented or “pioneered.” Not likely.
2. The person is emotionally resistant to the obvious. In fact, this person has trouble comprehending that the word water is NOT water.
3. The person has trouble visualizing with eyes closed, and therefore concludes, erroneously, that he or she doesn’t visualize at all.
4. The person is unable to realize that you cannot set goals or plan the actions you are going to take unless you are picturing those goals and those specific actions in your mind’s eye.
The purpose of writing out your goals are making plans is simple: The written goals and plans serve as a mental reminder of the mental imagery you selected from a plethora of possible choices.
Every time you look at these goals and these actions, whether you are willing to admit it or not, you are picturing them in your mind’s eye.
When you think of having a drink of water, you don’t picture the letters W A T E R.
You picture the thing you see in your brain… water.
You probably even get super specific on what type of W A T E R you will drink. Consider what images flood your mind when you see the following: Evian, Fiji, Saratoga, Artesian, Sparkling, Coors, Fresca.
Yes, two of those words are not WATER – but they have water. Nonetheless, how would you distinguish the difference? Though the process of mentally picturing, at a staggering speed.
So I find it amusing and entertaining the lengths some people will go to when they claim they don’t visualize. I guess the next thing you know, one of these “pioneers” and “thought leaders” will claim he doesn’t breathe.
No, I don’t practice breathing. I practice the… let me see, uh, …. the, the, the, … the blueprint for uh… for… respiration. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Respiration.
Meanwhile: “A rose by any other name still smells like a rose.”
See it. Feel it. Be it.
Matt Furey
P.S. Interested in Mind Power Monthly, my coaching program on Psycho-Cybernetics and the art of visualization? We are beginning this week. Send me an email if you are interested.
