The Power of Visualization

Has it really been over a month? Wow time is just flying by. You’ll be happy to know that I am now gainfully employed at, not one, but two jobs which is one of the reasons why I haven’t blogged in over a month. The other reason is that I slipped into a little bit of a mental rut that I’ve been struggling to get out of for a couple of weeks now. I’m going to share with you exactly what happened because there is a valuable lesson to be learned in this tale.

If you remember, my car broke down a couple of months ago. Because I was unable to commute back and forth to work, I had to quit my job (which I loved, by the way) and find employment closer to home. However, that proved to be quite a challenge as I was submitting applications and not getting any calls back and I was even scammed.

As my period of unemployment grew longer, so did my face and by the end of June I was thoroughly discouraged and depressed. The only thing that kept me going was the hope that I could make my internet business flourish but things weren’t looking too bright in that area either.

Then I came across this post by Steve Pavlina. I instantly recognized that putting myself through the self defeating behavior described in the article:

Thinking about what you don’t want is a trap. Such thoughts can keep you stuck for a very long time. You can seriously blow years — even decades — of your life in the following vicious cycle:

1. Look around and observe what you’re experiencing.
2. Notice that you don’t like certain aspects of your life.
3. Feel fear, worry, sadness, disappointment, and/or other negative emotions.
4. Think about what it would take to change what you dislike.
5. Notice that it will probably take a huge amount of time and effort to change — and with no guarantee of success. Consider that you might even make things worse.
6. Feel frustrated, trapped, and/or depressed.
7. Do something that makes you feel better. Watch TV. Eat. Drink. Surf the web. Check email. Maybe do all of the above.
8. Feel some relief and comfort now that you’ve distracted and/or drugged yourself.
9. Allow some time to pass, and eventually repeat from step one.

After reading the article, I realized that I was constantly running this script through my mind about pretty much everything in my life. I’m going to totally put myself out there and confess that I struggle with low self-esteem and depression. I’m not sure which came first, the low self esteem or the depression but I do know that they feed on each other and the result is a self defeating thought pattern that plays over and over in my mind blocking the positive changes I attempt to make in my life.

So I decided to take the advice offered in the article and instead of thinking so much about what I didn’t want out of life, I shifted my focus on the life I did want. The exercise required that I visualize what I did want out of life every day for at least 20 minutes per day. My visualization skills are a little weak so to help, I wrote down everything I wanted to achieve and for seven nights, I read it out loud to myself.

The first night, I felt a lot of resistance. I honestly thought that the exercise was a waste of time and that things would never change. But I decided that the least I could do was follow through on the trial. After all, it was only seven days and the time was going to pass by anyway.

The next time I did it there was still a little bit of resistance but not as much but I did notice that I felt more optimistic about life. By the fourth day, the resistance had disappeared and my attitude about life had improved vastly. I was ten times more positive, more energetic and I began receiving tons of ideas about what I could do to make my life better.

And then things started happening.

The first thing that happened was that I became more aggressive about finding a job. I followed up with two of them and scored an interview with both. This motivated me to continue with the visualization exercise even after the trial time had ended. About two weeks after I started the experiment, I was gainfully employed at both jobs.

Encouraged by this success, I made changes to other areas of my life. I began to exercise. I also began to study the Chakras for reasons I’ll detail in another post. I also started expressing gratitude for all of the things in my life both good and bad. My outlook on life had improved dramatically and I could feel that the universe was helping me achieve the goals I had set out to achieve. About two days after getting the jobs, I sold an article on Constant Content and shortly after that I sold another two articles in a private sale.

I could hardly believe my good fortune. Unfortunately, I stumbled and have rolled back down the side of the hill. Because of hours I had to work to complete my training at the two jobs, I didn’t have time to continue with my new program and stopped. Now that I think about it, it may have been that my subconscious mind, who seemed to like having me depressed and hating myself, grabbed onto my crazy schedule as an excuse to just stop working on my personal development. As expected, I slipped back into bad habits and self defeating thought patterns.

As an attempt to combat this, I’ve been forcing myself to do something every day towards my goals and have managed to get my other website-Openlore Fiction Writer’s Magazine-up to date. However, I’m still struggling against mental and physical inertia. It’s extremely frustrating because I have all of these ideas and goals that I want to achieve but it feels as if I have to jump over an obstacle a 100 feet tall in order to do so. Needless to say, I’m feeling discouraged.

The moral of the story is that you really do manifest what you concentrate on. The last month proved that to me. When I focused on success, I experienced it and when I focused on negativity, negative things happened to me. Now some people may have very logical explanations for that. They may chalk it up to coincidence or even that I am just deluding myself. Both explanations are entirely plausible. However, I’ve decided to do a 30 day trial of the visualization exercise mostly to get myself out of this mental rut I’ve found myself in but also to solidify in my mind that this technique does, in fact, work.

If your life sucks at the moment, I encourage you to try this for yourself. Just pick a dream and spend 20 minutes everyday visualizing yourself achieving that dream. Additionally, whenever you find yourself thinking about how much your life sucks, turn your attention to how much you want your life to rock. As I pointed out earlier, it is only seven days and the time is going to pass by anyway so really what do you have to lose?

I will attempt to do daily updates as time permits. In the meantime, share with me how a shift in your mentality has affected your reality.