What Is Success Visualization, And Does It Work?

Visualizing success may be the key to achieving your dreams. At least, that is what the latest research affirms. There are various visualization techniques you can incorporate into your daily routine, depending on your objectives, and an online therapist can be a helpful guide in your endeavors. This article explores the evidence-based benefits of success visualization and shares tips for habituating visualization.

What is success visualization?

Visualization is an intentional mental image that you create in your mind’s eye using your imagination. Success visualization is the practice of visualizing yourself reaching your goals and succeeding in your endeavors. It is a psychological technique for achieving goals that enables people to harness the power of the mind to build confidence, make decisions, and stay motivated.

Imagining desired outcomes can benefit the likelihood of manifesting them in real life. Research shows that visualization activates the regions of the brain responsible for emotional regulation, decision-making, and interpersonal connection. Visualizing physical exercise has even been found to strengthen muscles by activating specific neural responses. 

What’s more, imagined rehearsal of an action influences the likelihood that a person will complete that action. By imagining yourself reaching your goals, you are physiologically rehearsing and aligning yourself with the steps needed to get there. People may also find that success visualization provides motivation and guidance toward their goals. 

The power of visualization 

Recent studies show that when we immerse ourselves in visualization with all five senses, our brains react to imagined scenarios as if they are real, creating neural connections that activate confidence, willpower, and willingness to take action toward goals. Repeated positive visualization practice strengthens neural pathways to produce real transformations in cognitive function and behavior. Potential benefits of success visualization include improved:

• Mindset.
• Motivation.
• Performance.
• Focus.
• Confidence.
• Decision-making.

Many successful individuals in business and sports have reported the power of visualization. The actor Jim Carrey famously wrote himself a check for $10 million for “acting services rendered” before landing his big break. He attributes some of his success as a comedian and movie star to visualization practices like this. 

A 2017 study exploring the benefits of mental imagery for improving skill levels and outperforming others found that imagery could be an effective tool for sports training, the workplace, or the classroom. The researchers also noted that having a complete mental image of the scenario could have a more profound impact, highlighting the benefit of imagining yourself achieving your goals step by step via success visualization. 

Olympic athletes and visualization

The New York Times reports that many Olympians use imagery as mental training while preparing for the most significant sports events of their lives. To connect with what it feels like to win, they imagine specific scenarios such as attending news conferences or riding the bus home as a winner and mentally experience the positive feelings they might have in those scenarios. 

Sports psychology is a developing field, with more and more institutions recognizing the link between mental health and physical performance.

Entrepreneurs and visualization 

If you want to start your own business, then success visualization may be an excellent tool for you to use to mentally prepare for the challenges of running a business. Many successful entrepreneurs attribute their success partly to their ability to visualize a better future for themselves. Imagining the desired outcome is often the first step to making a dream a reality. 

In 2022, Forbes reported how visualization can aid entrepreneurs from a neuroscientist's perspective. Visualization techniques can be an effective form of behavioral therapy, benefiting mental health, sports performance, musical ability, and self-esteem. For entrepreneurs, success visualization can provide the blueprint for what behaviors and decisions can lead to the most favorable outcomes for business ventures. 

One of the benefits of visualization for success is that it can help you strengthen your decision-making abilities. When you run your own business, you may have to make many important decisions daily. Visualization has been found to improve entrepreneurs' decision-making accuracy and efficiency; visualizing potential pitfalls and acting preemptively can provide an edge in business. 

Success visualization techniques 

Want to get started with success visualization? A few examples of success visualizations include visualizing the rest of your week going great, achieving a business goal, or having a productive conversation. Visualizing yourself overcoming challenges can help you be resilient if they come to pass. Success visualization may be most effective when practiced regularly as a part of your daily routine, perhaps for five minutes in the morning or before bed. 

Another tip for effective success visualization is to imagine every step of the experience in detail from start to finish, including how you feel during each moment. The more you engage all five senses with your imagination while visualizing, the more your brain believes it is real. Here are a few tips for effective success visualization:

• Create a vision board.
• Write down your goals.
• Embrace available resources.
• Journal.
• Meditate.
• Visualize your plan in action.
• Connect with like-minded people.

How to practice success visualization

Practicing success visualization techniques can be simple and accessible. Start by setting your intention for what you want to achieve and having a clear picture of your goals. Then begin to visualize yourself achieving that goal, starting at the beginning of the process and working your way through imagining as many details as possible. Try focusing on your emotions throughout the visualization while engaging all of the senses with your imagination.

You can listen to music, follow guided meditations, or journal throughout the visualization process. Setting aside a few minutes when you first wake up or before you go to sleep to practice visualization may have benefits because your subconscious mind is the most easily influenced during those times. 

Being successful does not mean that nothing ever goes wrong. While practicing success visualization, imagine what could go wrong and how you might overcome anticipated obstacles. 

Guided imagery exercises

Guided imagery is a visualization technique where a speaker leads you through a visualization experience, suggesting what to imagine. Listening to guided meditations or practicing guided imagery with the help of a mental health professional can put the body into a relaxed state, relieving anxiety and stress and making us more receptive to new ideas.

Positive affirmations 

Positive affirmations are positive sayings or quotes that you can use as a source of emotional resilience, inspiration, or motivation. Personalized positive affirmations can enhance your visualization practice. You can tailor your favorite positive affirmations to be in alignment with your goals, such as, “I will get the job,” or, “I will recover from my leg injury.”

To reinforce new neural pathways, repeat positive affirmations throughout the day while imagining yourself achieving the goal. Repeating a positive affirmation on your vision board can help you visualize the imagery and reaffirm your intention to reach those goals. 

How to create a vision board 

A vision board is a visual depiction of your desired future and goals. Looking at your vision board can serve as a visual reminder of what you are working toward, encouraging you to be consistent with visualizing your success and stay motivated. 

Set intentions 

The first step to creating a vision board is determining your goals. Having a clear vision for what you want can help you focus your efforts most effectively — the more detailed, the better. Setting your intentions enables you to become more aware of your priorities and how to best reflect them in your goal setting. 

Gather supplies

You can gather inspiration by cutting out images from magazines or printing images from the internet and gluing them to a poster board. You can also create the vision board digitally with a photo collage application and print it out.

Before you begin assembling your vision board, have your goals set and a good selection of inspiring images. Include photos of what you want in your future, including experiences, mindset, achievements, and material items. 

Assemble 

Assemble your vision board using your supplies, highlighting the most meaningful aspects. Consider including positive affirmations, motivational quotes, or photos in your vision board collage to make the imagery more impactful. You do not have to have any creative talent to create a vision board, but it is helpful to make the assembly aesthetically pleasing so that you will want to look at it often. 

Display 

Display the vision board where you will see it frequently — perhaps near your bed, so you see it right when you wake up and as you fall asleep. Alternatively, you might hang your vision board in your office. If your vision board is digital, you can make it your wallpaper on your phone, laptop, tablet, or all three. 

Online therapy

While visualization exercises have been found to benefit mental health, they are no replacement for therapy offered by an experienced mental health professional. Online therapy has recently surged in popularity, primarily because it is a more easily available option for some individuals, such as entrepreneurs with busy schedules who need greater scheduling flexibility than traditional in-person sessions can provide. 

Through online therapy platforms like BetterHelp, users can choose the best meeting format for them: videoconferences, phone calls, and/or in-app messaging. A videoconference might be suitable for guided meditation, while your online counselor can send and encourage you to use positive affirmations via in-app messaging.

Not only is online therapy often more easily available, but a systematic review and meta-analysis from 2018 looked at the treatment results of around 1,400 patients . Over a decade of research supports no difference in the effectiveness of widely used talk therapies like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), whether delivered online or in person. Working with an online therapist can help you make the mental and behavioral changes you want to achieve your goals.