The following visualization technique brings together many of the concepts that I developed while acting. As an actor, I played Charles Darwin at three different ages for the TV documentary series The Next Human. I took professional training a decade ago, and have now appeared on stage, film, TV, and radio. You can learn more about my affair with acting on my Mandy profile.
I have been lucky in my life and never forget this. I now try and share some of my luck around. So if you have 5 minutes, try the visualization exercise below and write back to me!
The “Direct the 5✮ Movie of Your Best Life” exercise allows you to consciously change your perspective and when that happens, you always profit from this new viewpoint. Besides, you will see yourself with greater clarity and more like how others see you.
Great movie directors know the importance of creating vivid imagery using all our senses. We have five senses—sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. These senses are our only information channels from our environment—an environment that is limitless in its abundant diversity. Everything is channeled through these conduits.
Following on from last week’s blog here are more examples of how visualisation exercises have helped improve performance, taken from my book Get Lucky Now.
Make Sense of Your Five Senses and Go Large with Your Movie
Now it is time for you to direct your own movie. Make sure it is packed with detail relating to your five senses.
CAMERA, LIGHTS, SOUND, BOARDING, ACTION!
So let us get the cameras rolling. Lie back, close your eyes, and imagine some success you desire in the future, perhaps a few months away. Imagine something that you really want.
Picture yourself achieving this success in as much detail as possible, using all your five senses. Then reflect on all the things that went right over the preceding months to position you for this success. You recognize that your processes were sound and that your journey was a series of small steps. Not all of them seemed to be in the correct direction at the time.
A Welcome Interruption
Your thoughts are interrupted as a journalist from the local paper approaches you and asks you for the secret of your amazing success. Could you pass on some tips that would interest and help the readers of her paper?
Pause for thought for a few seconds. Then share some of the most illuminating insights and suggestions that you found the most useful in achieving this wonderful result.
Most people like being asked to help others, and this is one of the reasons why this simple visualization can be so powerful. What you have also done is change your perspective. You have permitted your mind to create a vivid movie of a positive outcome in the future. You have also changed your perspective by being the observer and watching yourself behave with unconscious excellence in this movie.
360° Feedback
Whenever you consciously change your perspective, you always profit from this new viewpoint. Besides, you will see yourself with greater clarity and more like how others see you.
NLP training
Visualisation is a huge subject and therefore is included in my NLP coaching programs. More information can be found here – http://drstephensimpson.com/techniques/nlp/
