Visualize Your Way To A Healthy and Happy Life

Peter Vidmar and Tim Daggett, members of American gymnastics team at 1984 olympics shared a dream: A dream to win gymnastics gold medal for their team. But there were issues to be addressed.

For starters, in recently concluded world artistic gymnastics championships, American team’s performance was far from good, so much so that they could not even make it to the finals, which had an adverse impact on team morale. Moreover, Peter and Tim, themselves were skeptical of their ambitious dream, yet unwilling to let it go.

Yet they dreamt passionately about what would have seemed impossible to many.

To keep the American gymnastic team’s focus on the Olympic gold medal, they began ending their workouts by visualizing their dream.

They visualized that the men’s gymnastics team had qualified for finals at the Olympic Games where Tim Daggett and Peter Vidmar are the last two gymnasts performing, and that their team was competing neck to neck with the Chinese team. They also visualized American team winning the gold with a perfect final routine.

To make their visualization as elaborate as possible, they filled in the relevant details. They visualized the Olympic arena with thirteen thousand spectators and two hundred million viewers watching live on television.

It was the 1984 Olympic Games men’s gymnastics finals.

Last two gymnasts up for the event were Tim Daggett and Peter Vidmar. All thirteen thousand seats were filled and there were two hundred Million people watching live on television. The main opponent was Chinese team and the American team had to perform perfectly to win the gold medal.

Peter Vidmar was about to leave for his performance when his coach said, “Okay, Peter, let’s go. You know what to do. You’ve done it a thousand times. Let’s do it ones more and go home”. That night Peter Vidmar performed a perfect routine winning the United States the gold medal, but this time, It was for real! From: The Success Principles: How to Get From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be

Try Visualization Now !

Try a simple visualization exercise right now!

See yourself walking to the refrigerator. Take out a yellow, ripe and juicy lemon. Notice its oval shape and feel its strong, sweet smell. Place this yellow, ripe and juicy lemon on a wooden cutting board. Now, get a sharp knife with a Black handle and cut the lemon in half. Notice the juice drops running down the pale yellow flesh. Now, pick one of the lemon halves and squeeze a few drops of lemon in your open mouth.

Did your mouth water?

How Visualization Works

Researchers have found that your brain uses identical processes for visualization as well as for carrying out an actual task.

It is quite simple; brain does not recognize the difference between a real activity and the visualization of the activity. So the bottom line is: brain will try to complete the activity you visualized and you will get what you saw.

There are thousands of examples where visualization has been used to overcome adverse health conditions. A young boy used visualization to destroy his incurable and inoperable brain tumor. The boy imagined himself as gallant leader of Star Wars and tumor as evil invader.

Similarly, Morris Goodman, featured in movie The Secret and known worldwide as “The Miracle Man” used Visualization to get cured and walk again when doctors had proclaimed that he’ll remain bed-ridden for the rest of his life.

It is a fact that: If you can ’see’ what you want, you will get what you see. If getting healthy is your dream, visualize yourself as completely healthy and happy and you will be what you want to be. Visualization is one of the factors that makes successful business people, exceptional athletes, remarkable scientists and other exceptional people out of ordinary people.

The same principle can be effectively used to stay healthy or to be healthy again. See Oprah Winfrey on Larry King Live about how she used Visualization in beginning of her career to get a role in movie, “The Color Purple”. 

How to Visualize

Visualization is simple. It is somewhat like day-dreaming but with lots of details and emotions.

Here are simple steps from Creative Visualization by Shakti Gawain. Follow these steps and you’d be visualizing to achieve your goals in no time.

1. Find a quiet, comfortable place where you won’t be disturbed for a few minutes. To start with; 1 to 5 minutes are enough depending upon your comfort and available time. Close your eyes, take a deep breath, wait for 2-3 seconds and exhale from mouth. Count backwards from 10 to 1.
2. Think about a relaxing place and start walking through it. This can be the woods, a beach, a river bank or anything that makes you feel relaxed.
3. At the end of your path; notice the thing or surroundings that you want to achieve. This can be a new office, a new house that you are planning to buy, the kind of relationship you will like to build with someone special, etc.
4. See your goal in detail. As an example, if it is about getting healthy, see yourself healthy and happy, doing all things that a healthy person will do, driving by yourself, playing with your friends and family; feel the excitement of what you are visualizing. Keep doing this for a few minutes.
5. Now slowly come back to conscious awareness of your surroundings while feeling the reality of the existence of your experience.
6. Once you are back, you can write down what you saw, so you can read it frequently or create a board with pictures of the car and hang it somewhere you will see frequently.
7. Do this visualization exercise frequently (at least once a day) until you achieve your goal.