Towards the end of my high school years, I started to get stuck into the world of “Personal Development”…  And I haven’t stopped! The whole personal development movement has really worked its way into everyday life now, as well as the sport and corporate worlds…  

I’ve found over the years, at one end of the spectrum there are some really well read, worldly people who…  Want to let you know they’re really well read and wordly by over complicating things! THEN, on the other end of the spectrum, there’s really well read, worldly people who have mastered the ability to distill all that knowledge down into bite size pieces we actually understand and can apply to our lives…  

I guess I like the latter…  

An example of this would be this little exercise that really helps communicate the benefits of visualisation…  

SOME THINK PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT IS ALL WOO WOO

In the last 3 or 4 decades, there have been countless educators and thought leaders helping us live our best lives, and be the best version of ourselves in pretty much every area of our lives…. Some good, some great, some just plain dodgy…. But you’re going to get that in any industry really…. For those who haven’t been to a personal development seminar, conference or workshop – personal development is usually considered a bunch of ‘Woo Woo’, feel good, happy clapping XXXX…

ALL THEY WANT IS A GOOD STRATEGY!

If you haven’t read, listened or gone to any personal development stuff, when you set out to achieve something, most will look at someone else who’s achieved that, look at how they achieved it, then adopt those steps…. Makes sense right?  If that bodybuilder did these exercises, ate that food and took those supplements…. And I did that…. I should more a less get the same results…. 

ISN’T VISUALISATION JUST ALL FLUFF

So that’s cool – adopt the same strategy someone else did to achieve something, and you should get the same results they did…. Sweet…. It’s tangible, it’s a fact based approach, why bother ‘visualising’?

Let’s do a little something simple everyone can get into…. 

Close your eyes and imagine you’re at a friends place and there’s a lemon on the kitchen bench…. You cut the lemon into quarters and put a quarter in your mouth…. The skin is facing out and you bite down into the flesh of the lemon….  The juice squirts into your mouth and rolls over the top and then down each side of your tongue…. It’s quite sour so you just hold some of the juice in your mouth instead of swallowing it straight away…. 

Are you salivating?

HOW CAN SUCKING A LEMON CHANGE MY LIFE?

So you’ve just thought of something that’s triggered a physical reaction in your body…. There was NO lemon…  Yet you just made your body react to the lemon that didn’t exist!  

Now, if you visualise having the body of a bodybuilder, will that make muscles form in the same way visualising a lemon made you salivate? The jury is still out…. However, in lieu of a physical change couldn’t visualising at least turbocharge your strategy?  

Let’s keep running with the bodybuilder example….  You now have a strategy to be a stage ready, fitness magazine cover bodybuilder…. But what happens on the days you’re hungry and just want a burger…. Or it’s a cold, dark and wet morning, and you really don’t want to go to the gym…. Or it’s been a long day, you’re tired and sore and don’t want to do your two-a-days….  By having the vision for yourself on the stage, holding up the trophy…. Or walking past a magazine stand and seeing yourself on the cover of the health magazine…. You may just have the juice (pun intended) you need to have the salmon fillet over the burger….  Or get out of bed and to the gym…. Or trade the couch time in for the gym…. 

SO WHAT

Well…. What I’m not saying is swap out strategy for visualisation…. What I’m saying is level up your strategy with visualisation…. 

If you want to be a bodybuilder…. If you want to have your own private jet…. If you want to have your own multinational company…. If you want to have your own charity…. If you want to have your own business…. If you want to have a 10 car garage filled with imported cars…. Find the examples, build your strategy around what got them their results, and then play it out and create a vision…. 

If you executed on your strategy day in day out…. In 1, 2, 5, 20 years – what does that life look like for you? It’s now time to move beyond pursuing what your examples have achieved, to putting you in the picture….  What do you do each day? How do you look?  How do you feel? Who are you spending time with? What are you doing with them? What are you doing for them?  

See it…. Feel it…. Live it…. 

You’ve already proven to yourself that your body can’t tell the difference between “thinking about sucking a lemon” and “actually sucking a lemon”…. If it makes you smile, savour it…. If it gives you goosebumps, embrace it…. If it makes your heart rate speed up, roll with it….  

Now that you’ve lived it in your mind, you have the juice you need to smash that strategy so you can live it in reality…