Four Stories of Successful Visualization

I’ve been writing a lot about visualization lately, and I decided to write a post on how to visualize.  I’ll be posting it later this week.  In the meantime, I came across four fantastic stories of people who have used visualization with great success, and I wanted to share them with you.  These are stories from the world of athletics, acting, and syndicated cartoons.

Greg Louganis – Visualizing Perfect Dives

“I had to be physically and mentally prepared to do a dive. I had to be able to see it in my head.” — Greg Louganis

I referred to Charles Garfield in my post “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Habit 2″. In his book “Peak Performance”, Garfield reflects on his experience in training Olympic athletes and future astronauts. He says the following:

“Great accomplishments are always the result of imagination. Almost all world-class athletes, astronauts, and other peak performers are visualizers. They see it, feel it, and experience it before they actually do it.”

A noted example of an athlete who used visualization extensively is world class diver Greg Louganis. In “Empowerment: The Competitive Edge in Sports, Business and Life”, Gene N. Landrum explains that Greg’s ability to apply mental imagery enabled him to dominate the diving scene over a 12-year period that spanned four Olympic games.

Greg experienced a lot of hardship while growing up: he was abandoned by his teen-aged parents, he was mocked by his classmates because he had a reading impairment, and he was scorned by his adoptive father for his homosexuality. Then he discovered that he was HIV positive. At one point, Greg’s life became so difficult and painful that he was suicidal. Yet he found within himself the resources to push through the ridicule, the abuse, and his low self-esteem to rise to the top of the world in his chosen field.

Visualization was the way in which Greg learned the difficult dives. Using this technique he won back-to-back Olympic titles in both the 3m and 10m diving events. He wrote the following in his memoir, “Breaking the Surface”:

“I would do every step over and over in my head until I visualized getting it right . . . By practicing over and over again in my head I stopped worrying about going blank. I had the routine so deeply memorized that I could feel it.”

Visualization was also how he reached the level of relaxed concentration which enabled him to focus completely on the dive at hand during each competition, blocking out the cacophony of thousands of screaming fans, the television cameras, and thoughts of not doing the dive well enough to win. Greg says the following:

“As I waited at the bottom of the ladder for my turn, I went through the dive in my mind, visualizing each step and playing music in my head to the beat of the dive. Most of the time I dove to ‘If You Believe’ from The Wiz, because of its message: If you believe within your heart you’ll know / That no one can change the path that you must go. Believe what you feel and know that you’re right/ Because the time will come around when you’ll say it’s yours.”

(Greg Louganis photo courtesy of Alan Light.)

Wayne Gretzky – Visualizing the Stanley Cup

Wayne Douglas Gretzky is a retired Canadian professional ice hockey player who has been called “the greatest hockey player ever” by many sportswriters, players, and coaches. Once again making reference to the book “Empowerment: The Competitive Edge in Sports, Business and Life”, Landrum indicates that Gretzky described his use of mental imagery as follows:

“We taped a lot of famous pictures on the locker-room door: Bobby Orr, Potvin, Beliveau, all holding the Stanley Cup. We’d stand back and look at them and envision ourselves doing it. I really believe if you can visualize yourself doing something, you can make that image come true . . . I must have rehearsed it ten thousand times. And when it came true it was like an electric jolt went up my spine.”

(Photo of the Stanley Cup taken from here.)

Jim Carrey – Wrote Himself A $10 Million Check

Well-known comic actor Jim Carrey grew up in poverty.  During his early teens he had to work 8-hour shifts after school performing janitorial duties.  For a while things got so bad that his family was homeless and lived in a van. Yet he always believed he would have a bright future.

In the book “Write It Down, Make It Happen: Knowing What You Want And Getting It”, Henriette Anne Klauser indicates that when Carrey was just starting out in Hollywood he was completely broke. Yet he wrote a check to himself for ten million dollars and dated it for Thanksgiving 1995, which was about five years into the future. On the memo line he wrote: “For Services Rendered.”

He carried that check around in his wallet for years. Carrey would look at the check every day and visualize having that money.  He soon became one of the highest paid entertainers in the industry, getting twenty million dollars per film.

Incidentally, if you’d like to follow Carrey’s example and write out a check for yourself, here’s a PDF you can download: Check.

Scott Adams and Affirmations

Scott Adams, creator of the incredibly successful cartoon strip “Dilbert”, wrote in the closing pages of his book titled “The Dilbert Future” of how he used affirmation to help him achieve several unlikely goals. The technique that he was taught was the following: “visualize what you want and write it down fifteen times in a row, once a day, until you obtain it.”

“Within a few weeks, coincidences started to happen to me,” wrote Scott.

“Amazing coincidences, strings of them. I won’t mention the specific goal I was working on, as it was a private matter, but within a few months the goal was accomplished exactly as I had written it.”

Scott then decided to pick another goal: to make some gains in the stock market. He wrote his affirmation down every day and then one night he woke up from a dream with the words “Buy Chrysler” repeating in his head. He bought Chrysler shares during one of the company’s most bleak periods, yet it began to rise soon after and he did well with the stock.

Now it was time to pick an even loftier goal. Scott wanted to get into the highly competitive MBA program at the University of California at Berkeley. He had already taken the G.M.A.T practice exams and had only hit the 77th percentile score.

Scott knew he needed to be above the 90th percentile to have a shot at being accepted. He picked the outlandish target of hitting the 94th percentile on the G.M.A.T. as his goal and again applied the affirmation technique. He did hit the 94th percentile and he graduated with a Berkeley MBA in 1986.

A few years later, Scott set the goal of becoming a highly successful syndicated cartoonist. You probably know the rest of the story. In June 1996 Scott’s book “The Dilbert Principle” became a #1 New York Times Best Seller.  In November his second book, “Dogbert’s TopSecret Management Handbook”, also made the bestseller list, giving Scott the number-one and number-two positions simultaneously for one week.

Here’s a quote from Scott: “Reporters often ask me if I am surprised at the success of the Dilbert comic strip. I definitely would be so, if not for my bizarre experience with affirmations. As it was, I expected it.”

(Funny Dilbert for Feb. is courtesy of Arpit Gupta).

Conclusion

There are countless stories of people who have achieved their goals by using visualization to focus their mind on their intended outcome and mentally rehearse their success ahead of time.  As I indicated at the beginning of this post, later this week I’ll be publishing a post on how to visualize so that you, too, can begin to use this powerful tool to turn your dreams into reality.

If you have any visualization success stories, or if you know of someone else’s story, please share in the comments section.

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Related Posts:

• How to Prepare Yourself for Success
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Habit 1
• The Sedona Method – Let Go of Negative Emotions and Limiting Beliefs
• Psycho-Cybernetics: How to Change Your Self Image

I Recommend:

My ebook “How to Be More Creative – A Handbook for Alchemists” explains that creativity is not the sole domain of the arts but is important in any field. Whatever you do, creativity helps you do it better. Discover practical advice on how to be more creative in every life endeavor by reading my ebook.

The Sedona Method is a simple, powerful, easy-to-learn technique that shows you how to let go of any negative, unwanted or painful feelings you may be experiencing at any particular moment. It consists of a series of questions you ask yourself that lead your awareness to focus on what you’re feeling in the moment and gently guide you toward letting it go. Read my review of the Sedona Method here.