I’m sure everyone has thought about the things they would most like to do when the lockdown finally ends.
Perhaps seeing much missed family members and friends, going to the pub or gym, visiting a favourite destination, or continuing a hobby.
The chances are that you’ve already imagined yourself doing them and how it would feel.
If so, you’re already practising Visualisation, a simple and extremely powerful means of achieving your aims in life.
Visualisation can be applied to any kind of goal - personal, business, financial and health – and anyone can do it.
The reason we don’t is that everyday life usually gets in the way, cramming our brains with information that makes us feel like we’re living on autopilot.
However, lockdown has changed things by making our lives simpler and giving us more time to think about our future desires and what we need to do to achieve them.
Guiding this thought process is an area of the brain called the Reticular Activating System, a network of neurons that allows some information in and filters out the rest to avoid overload.
The RAS’s natural programming makes change difficult as its ‘confirmation bias’ loves to let through the familiar things we agree with. It also retains negative experiences, which holds us back as we think of bad things that might happen if we change.
What does reset the filter and force the change is Visualisation.
By taking your post-lockdown thinking a few steps further, you can slowly build a vision of your ideal life and bring it a step closer.
Just close your eyes for a few minutes and begin to form the big picture. The more detail it contains, the more clearly you can see what you need to do to achieve that vision, thereby forming the goals that will take you there.
Repeating this process for a few minutes each day will actually trick your brain into behaving as though your vision is real and I’ll explain more about this in my next blog.
Until then please do take advantage of the lockdown to visualise your future and paint that big picture!
Richard Wood is BRWM's Managing Director