Visualize Your Goals and Success

This article was originally published on Coach U Insights on November 20, 2023.

The more powerful the visualization the more strong your neural networks

The brain does not distinguish between the visualization and the real thing. You are drawn to the reward that success brings. There is compelling evidence of the benefit of visualizing the success and achievement of your goals. Athletes have been doing this for years to improve performance. When you visualize your desired outcomes you begin to see the possibility of achieving it.

Don't just write down the goals but create an image of what success will look like when you have achieved them.

What will you see?
What will you hear people saying about you?
What will success taste like?
How will you feel?

Imagine as strongly as you can the satisfaction, joy, excitement that this accomplishment will have. The more you engage all the senses the better and it will help you ensure success and create a sense of pace.

Why? It increases motivation as we are all drawn to seek out dopamine -- the neurotransmitter that comes with reward. The more you can sense and feel the successful reward of achieving your goals the more likely you are to overcome the discomfort and pain associated with working towards our goals. In addition our brain does not distinguish between imaginary events and real life if created strongly enough. When you visualize using all your senses your neurons form networks and connections as if you are doing this for real. This helps create new neural networks that generate learned behaviors.

The more often you practice the visualization the stronger the networks become and primes you to act in a way consistent to what you imagined.

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The author of this article

Annie Coleman