Today we see smartphones consuming a lot of our time. You will have focus retention problems, impatience, and a lack of creativity, which also clouds your visualization. So, before we head to understand the power of visualization, let’s try to understand why it works for a few and for the rest it simply doesn’t.
Decluttering is important to avoid distractions. Digital decluttering is a way to avoid all the unnecessary distractions on social media. Kindness doesn’t mean people-pleasing, as we confuse these two in today’s world.
Now that you have worked on removing all the obstacles, let’s understand the importance of visualization and how it helps to overcome anxiety and nervousness. In the past, if people had extra time, they would invest in learning something more than just hobbies. When you invest your time in other skills, you focus, introspect, and analyze, and cognitive motor skills develop. When your involvement is there, emotionally you function better. As everything is interconnected with one another, you learn science and geometry when doing art, like rangoli; when you do cooking, you learn conduction, convection, and laws of thermodynamics. When you nurture plants or gardens, you know soil health, weeds, pH, and TDS of water, manure, and other organic fertilizer. You know the entire farming process on its own with health benefits as to nutrients, vitamins, minerals, and overall nourishment you get to learn. Again, from sports, you can learn physics and geometry, and travel will teach you history, culture, geography, civics, sociology, and algebra. Nature can teach spirituality, unity, faith, and compassion. This resting period helps the brain process whatever we have studied in an active process of learning. When doing art, you can learn color theory by observing nature.
So, visualization means our maximum involvement with the subject. Now, we will understand the power of visualization and discernment in three ways below:
- Discernment
- Surrender
- Visualization
- Discernment: This is the first step that most people fail to understand because most people don’t know what exactly they want. And today’s case scenario of job placement is such that it’s difficult to get even the placements, and on top of that, you are easily replaceable, as there are many employees applying for the same job role.
It is important to understand before you start any new venture,
- What do you want?
- If there is any demand to it,
- What special skills you possess and
- How well you want to serve society.
These four pillars are crucial to building dreams, as they will be your foundation. If you know exactly what you want, you don’t have to visualize consciously; anyway, it will happen. That’s how someone could have observed their habits of visualization and eventually wanted to achieve their goals consciously. When we go out in the world, we like specific things, and we can do visualization effortlessly, but for things or subjects that don’t interest us as students, that’s when the conscious practice of visualization helps. For example, people are experiencing lots of stress today; it could help to crack an interview or have confidence during an exam. It happens so when thoughts are scattered, laziness, a toxic lifestyle, and ungratefulness become the breeding stages for stress. You need discipline to overcome obstacles, and discernment plays a big role in it.
When interpersonal relationships are concerned, there is nothing wrong with helping people achieve their dreams. There are various options other than mainstream career options, like people working for cause and purpose, etc. You still can work on your dreams while working for others. When you are aware of your responsibilities, visualization helps and benefits you to remain ahead of the target and finish work before deadlines.
I see people weigh work based on intellectual capabilities. I remember one of my friends in the past was searching for a job after her degree in civil, and then she opted for computer science courses. Someone she thought was a senior suggested she do a receptionist job; there is nothing wrong with doing that. You need to understand people do not work for money anymore; they want satisfaction and happiness with money. You need to know your work of interest and capabilities, strengths and weaknesses. In the past, people had few options, unlike today. Some cannot do intellectual labor; others can. It has nothing to do with pride; it is just how nature is. So, know who you are and where you want to put your efforts and focus.
2) Surrender: When situations get tough and at times too tough to handle. There is too much power struggle or competition, and in a job situation there is no reliability unlike before. They will hire or process layoffs as per the requirements. And how to be in the good books of your senior by being loyal and honest as well as maintaining teamwork and healthy competition with colleagues.
A few inevitable situations, if not properly dealt with, can become hurdles. Any skills you need to learn to progress in your field with the work you do, you need to stay ahead of the game of your life – where you maintain your discipline and are almost ahead of your time. Then you have to understand that as you rise, there will be darkness to pull you down. And hence early morning, you have to prepare for the obstacles, whatever they are; it could be people, neighbors, family problems, health problems, etc. When you do specific prayer, tell all the problems to the divine and surrender by saying this statement: “You only take care of my pain. You only take care of me; help me transmute my pain. These are the specific problems beyond my control; you only give me strength and courage to handle it.”
The reality about life is that if it’s a CEO, a staff member, an employee, or a homemaker, everyone wants the same thing more or less. Everyone works for food, shelter, clothing, and now freedom of time. Everyone desires to have time for themselves, but there seem to be problems. And hence, people are suffering more or less the same thing.
One of my uncles recently said he will work on his own but not with people. You see so much resistance, and some problems could be really challenging. You need to know your values and find that group of people. You must have heard of many such examples, but you see bittergourd vegetable, which can come under the invasive plant category, as it seems to grow all its tendrils around other plants and invading other territories. There are many other species, more or less similar, that have tendencies. But at the end, it’s a part of nature, and so are humans. If there is acceptance, there comes a solution, which is either you deal with it or plant other trees far away from it.
3) Visualization: You are interested in your work so much so that when there is involvement, the visualization happens naturally as you work, study, discuss, and dream the same subject persistently. There is no space for boredom, but these cases are few. As there are vast subjects one has to study and also today people are interested in more than one thing, there lies the confusion with scattered focus.
Why is it important to do visualization?
The answer is that there is always an influence of other people over us. If you observe closely, before entering any room, you prepare yourself first so that you can fit in. And more you see, you will eventually end up behaving like the people you surround yourself with. As a wise man once said, the impact of the associations – surround yourself with good people because they will influence you more or less. So, do not pick others’ energies; either you can take precaution in the beginning itself or do fixing for the rest of the life. So, when you choose precaution over cure, what you can do is prepare beforehand, prepare what could be challenging, and visualize it before getting into any interview or meeting. Repeat the visualization process before night and the next morning.
During the daytime, take breaks of five to fifteen minutes and do not consume any social media content. You can stroll, rest, practice deep breathing, and enable visualization on its own. You see, any technique you learn, if it doesn’t come naturally after a few practices, you eventually give up. So, initially, you force implement it, for example, anything you learn in school, college, or any skill. Learn actively when you attend any lecture, when you return home, imagine yourself both as teacher and student and teach the same topics to yourself, which will help you get a grip on the subject with clarity. Then write whatever you have understood; before going to bed, visualize it. The next morning, you write again what you have understood and find techniques like a visual memory board to memorize whatever important stuff you have to. So, visualization eventually helps to boost memory.
Start writing the lifestyle that you want and then visualize yourself living it. It can be your usual schedule or an important event. For example, for an important event like an interview, presentation, meeting, or exam, write down the challenges and visualize this important event three times or more if needed.
Visualization is effective when you have to learn to drive any vehicle or sports tournaments. And in meditation, there are many ways with visualization one can meditate. And most importantly, we can benefit from visualization for healing past traumatic memories. Also for some people when there is focus on the worst situations, and hence it is difficult to remember good. It is important to visualize previous victories or successes, small or big, of the past and also maintain a gratitude journal. We no longer carry baggage with us as we consciously heal our past, and hence our present improves.
Visualization is where you focus on things you want to achieve. When you maintain your constant focus on the process of learning actively, and when you rest, you visualize those subjects organically. If there is a problem visualizing it, then work backwards. You can reverse engineer things and work backward on your emotions. You have to jot down those emotions and the root cause of them, whether it is shame, guilt, regret, unrealistic expectations, etc. And to visualize, you have to be kind to yourself, one of the first steps as things could be overwhelming. You can also practice an act of kindness in your visualization before sleeping or during the day for a few minutes, where you do deep breathing and visualize being embraced by the divine light. Journaling helps to process your thoughts, which eventually helps to visualize things better.
In our childhood, we used to get punished for writing things down so that we could build muscle memory to remember better. It is just that we were treated with shame, punishment that instills fear; now writing or journaling feels like an act of punishment rather than enjoyment or pure joy of expressing day-to-day life events. For being aware of your emotions and all the vulnerabilities that are deeply ingrained in people as weak. When one problem arises, there comes a set of other problems like tangled knots of a literal thread. If there is difficulty visualizing, keep writing until you can visualize.
It would do good once we sacrifice poor habits so that we can stabilize our mind on the right path. So, half of the work it will do for you and the remaining half when you do it consciously, success is obvious. See the beauty of life; every day it’s a struggle to do what you want and repeat the same thing every day. When we accept challenges and the daily hard work to reach that excellence, which is in a way the essence of life, isn’t it worth living?