Visualization is a powerful, proven technique for refining your self-image and making important changes in your life. It involves relaxing your body, clearing your mind of distractions, and imagining positive scenes.
Whether or not you believe in the effectiveness of visualization doesn’t matter. Faith in the technique may help you achieve results faster than a “nonbeliever,” but faith isn’t essential to the process. Your mind is structured in such a way that visualization works no matter what you believe. Skepticism may keep you from trying visualization, but it won’t stop the technique from working once you do try it.
This chapter will teach you basic visualization techniques, give you practice in forming vivid mental impressions, and guide you in creating your own unique visualization exercises for improving your self-esteem.
Visualization raises your self-esteem in three ways: by improving your self-image, by changing the way you relate to others, and by helping you achieve specific goals.
Improving your self-image is the first and most important step. If you currently see yourself as weak and helpless, you will practice visualizing yourself as strong and resourceful. If you tend to think of yourself as unworthy and undeserving, you will create scenes in which you are obviously a valuable, worthy individual making an important contribution to your world. If you consider yourself sickly, accident-prone, and depressed, you will counter this belief with scenes of yourself as a healthy, careful, cheerful person.
The second step is to use visualization to change how you interact with others. You visualize scenes in which you are outgoing, assertive, friendly, and so on. You see yourself in satisfying relationships with your family, your mate, your friends, and your fellow workers. You imagine yourself forming new relationships with interesting, positive people who find you interesting and positive in your own right.
Third, you can use visualization to achieve specific goals. You imagine yourself getting that raise, finally earning that important degree, moving into that particular neighborhood, excelling in your favorite sport, making a real difference in your world—in short, being, doing, and having what you want in life.
The chapter on handling criticism contains a metaphor that will help explain why visualization works. According to this metaphor, people experience reality indirectly, as if they were watching a TV screen in their head. They don’t experience the world as it really is—they can only see what’s on their screen. And what’s on their screen is determined to a large degree by the power of imagination. This means that your mind and body react in much the same way to imaginary experiences as to real experiences. In particular, your subconscious mind seems to make no distinction between “real” sensory data and the vivid sense impressions you conjure up during a visualization exercise.
For example, if you imagine yourself freely mixing at a party, you will get a boost of confidence nearly equal to actually going to the party and successfully interacting. And the imagining is easier, since you’re totally in control and experiencing less anxiety.
The affirmations you will include in your visualizations serve as conscious, positive correction to the negative comments of your pathological critic. They form a “voice-over” component to your visualization, as if you were watching a documentary with a commentator explaining what you see on the screen.
Acquiring visualization skills is simply a matter of learning how to do consciously what you already do subconsciously. You already create, edit, and interpret what you see on your screen. If you have low self-esteem, you probably create scenes in which you are the underdog, edit out any compliments, and interpret much of what you see as evidence of your inadequacy.
You can replace much of this subconscious negative propaganda with visualized scenes in which you are the hero, you receive well-deserved compliments, and you perform competently. In the process of learning to form vivid mental images, you will also sharpen your ability to perceive reality accurately and observe yourself with more detachment and objectivity.
There’s another way of understanding why visualization works so well to change your behavior and your image of yourself. Consider visualization as a method for reprogramming the way you make simple decisions. Every instant of every day you are faced with tiny, mostly unconscious decisions. Should you turn right or left? Have toast or a muffin? Call up Jan or put it off? Have another piece of pie or skip it? Wear your seat belt or ignore it? Run the yellow light or stop? Join the group by the water cooler or the people at the coffee machine?
Visualization reprograms your mind to recognize and choose the slightly more positive of any two choices. Over time, the sum of thousands of tiny positive choices is higher self-esteem and a lot more happiness.
This programming of your automatic decision making is nothing new. You do it already, but if you have low self-esteem, you do it in reverse. You visualize and subsequently choose the negative path. You see yourself as unworthy, and so you expect and choose to lose, to be rejected, to be disappointed, to be depressed, to be anxious, to be assailed by doubt and insecurity. You take the second piece of pie even though you are overweight. You are angry at yourself, so you don’t wear your seat belt, and you try to beat the yellow light. You gravitate toward the negative people, the painful situations.
Visualization can change all this. You can use it to give a conscious, positive nudge to what has heretofore been an automatic, subconscious, and negative process. You can reprogram your choice-making apparatus so that you choose to win, to be accepted, to have your expectations met, to be positive, to be relaxed, to be bolstered by hope and confidence. You can reinforce your positive tendencies so that you turn down the fattening pie. You can appreciate yourself enough to wear the seat belt and stop taking foolish chances. You can gravitate toward the positive people and emotionally healthy situations in which you have a chance to grow and succeed.
Imagine a school of fish, darting left and right, up and down at random. All exert the same energy to get nowhere in particular. If you could become a consciously programmed fish, you could get somewhere you want to go, without exerting any more energy than before.
Step one in visualization is to get relaxed. The most effective visualizing happens while your brain is producing alpha waves, which can only happen when you are in a state of deep relaxation. The relaxed alpha state is one of heightened awareness and suggestibility.
Do your visualization exercises twice a day. The best times are just before falling asleep at night and upon awakening in the morning. You are particularly relaxed and in a suggestive frame of mind at these times.
Audio versions of these exercises are available online at http://www.newharbinger.com/33933.
First Session
Sit in a chair that supports your head, or lie on your back in a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed. Make sure you’re not too warm or too cold. Close your eyes.
Take a deep breath, letting the air slowly fill your lungs so that your chest and stomach both extend. Let the air out slowly and completely. Continue to breathe like this, slowly and deeply.
Focus your attention on your feet. As you breathe in, notice any tension in your feet, and as you breathe out, imagine the tension flowing away. Your feet feel warm and relaxed.
Now focus on your calves, shins, and knees. As you breathe in slowly, notice any tightness in these areas. Let the tension ebb away as you slowly exhale, sinking into relaxation.
Move your attention up to your thighs. Breathe in and become aware of any tension in the large muscles of your upper legs. Exhale and let the tension flow away.
Now notice any tightness in your buttocks or pelvic area as you inhale. On the exhale, let this tightness loosen and dissolve.
Now notice as you inhale whether you are carrying any tension in your stomach muscles or your lower back. As you breathe out slowly, let any tension relax.
Breathe in slowly and notice any tightness in your chest or upper back. Exhale slowly and completely as the chest and back tension eases and flows away.
Now move your attention out to your hands. Breathe in and feel any tension in your fingers, palms, or wrists. Let this tension flow away as you exhale slowly.
Next move up to your forearms and focus on any tightness here as you inhale. Then exhale and let the tightness dissolve.
Inhale slowly and become aware of the tension in your upper arms. As you breathe out, let your biceps and other upper arm muscles become relaxed and heavy.
Now notice if you are holding tension in your shoulders. Breathe in and really focus on the tension. Breathe out and let the breath carry the tension away, out of your shoulders. Shrug your shoulders and take another breath if you need to get the tension out of this area, which is often very tight.
Move up to your neck and feel all the tension there as you inhale. Exhale and let the tension flow out of your neck. If your neck still feels tight, roll your head around and take another full, deep breath to get your neck really loose.
Let your jaw hang open as you inhale and notice how you may be clenching your jaw. Move it around and let it relax as you exhale slowly and completely. Keep your jaw slightly open to make sure it stays relaxed.
Now focus on the muscles of your face as you breathe in: your tongue, mouth, cheeks, and forehead, and around your eyes. Let go of any squinting or frowning feelings as you exhale.
Finally, scan down your entire body. Notice any areas that are still a little tense, and let them relax fully as you continue to breathe slowly and deeply. At any time during your visualization you can come back to the relaxation phase and relax any areas that have become tense.
At first you may find that distracting thoughts pop into your mind when you try to visualize. That’s normal. Just notice what the thoughts or images are and let them go. Resist the temptation to pursue enticing trains of thought and refocus your mind on the material you have planned to visualize.
1. In this first exercise you will concentrate on one sense at a time, imagining simple shapes and colors. This is similar to the way students of Tantric Yoga learn to meditate. Muslim and Sufi mystics use much the same approach to train their inner vision.
First you will exercise your interior sense of sight. Keep your eyes closed and imagine a black circle on a white background. Make the circle perfectly round, perfectly black. Make the background as bright and perfectly white as you can. Move your interior vision around the circle, seeing the perfect roundness of it, seeing the sharpness of the dividing line between the black and the white.
Now change the color of the circle to yellow. Make the yellow very bright, the clearest, most vivid primary yellow you can imagine. Keep the background bright and white.
Now let the yellow circle fade out and replace it with a green square. Make it a bright or a dark green, whichever you want. Keep the square perfect, not a rectangle or a parallelogram, but a true square.
Now erase the square and imagine a blue triangle. Make it a pure, primary blue, a blue like they had up on the wall of your first grade classroom to teach you the meaning of blue. Make the triangle an isosceles triangle with three sides of equal length.
Now erase the triangle and make a thin, red line. Make it a bright, fire-engine red. Check your background and make sure that it’s still white.
Now let your imagination loose for a while and make a series of changing shapes in many different colors. Change the background as well as the foreground. Try to speed up your changes without losing the vividness or completeness or perfection of the images.
2. The next part of the exercise will concentrate on sound. Let your mental eye close. Make the shapes and colors go away. It may help to imagine that you are in a thick fog, where you can see nothing. Become “all ears.”
First, hear a bell. Make it ring over and over. What kind of bell is it? Is it a church bell, a doorbell, a dinner bell, a ship’s bell, a desk-captain’s bell, a cowbell, or what?
Now hear a siren, far away, like a fire engine half a mile in the distance. Bring it closer, louder and louder, until you almost have to put your hands over your mental ears. Hear it scream past you. Hear the Doppler effect that makes it seem to get higher in pitch as it approaches, then drop in pitch as it passes you. Hear it fade away again in the distance until it can’t be heard any longer.
Now hear the ocean crashing on a rocky beach. Hear the crash of the waves as they break far out. Hear the rumble and crunch as the white water piles up against the rocks. Hear the hiss and gurgle as the waves finally spend themselves on the sand and gravel of the shore. Throw in the cries of some seagulls. (If you’ve spent your life in a landlocked area, imagine the sounds of a creek swollen with spring rains, roaring, crashing, and tumbling down a rocky creek bed.)
Now hear the sound of the engine of a car. Start it up. Race it. Drive it up a steep hill and hear it labor. Hear it cough and sputter as you run out of gas.
Now listen carefully and hear your mother saying your name. Hear it with tones of love, and then tones of anger. Try it with exasperation, with happiness, with sadness. Do the same with your father’s voice, your lover’s voice, and the voices of others in your life.
3. The next part deals with the sense of touch. Imagine that your mental fog is thicker than ever. You can’t see. And you have cotton stuffed in your ears so that you can’t hear a thing. All you can do is feel. Imagine that you’re sitting on a hard wooden chair. Feel the back and the bottom pressing against you. Imagine that there is a hard wooden tabletop in front of you. Reach out mentally and feel the hard, square edge and flat surface.
Now imagine that there are several objects on the table. Reach out and find the first one. It’s a small sheet of coarse sandpaper, about three inches square. Feel the rough and the smooth sides. Run your fingers over them and really feel the grit on one side and the dry, smooth paper on the other. Flex the sheet in your hands and feel its resistance to bending. Keep folding until the paper buckles and folds in half.
Put the sandpaper down and pick up a same-sized piece of thick velvet. Feel how soft and plush it is. Raise it to your face and run it over your closed eyes, down over your cheeks and lips. Wad the velvet up and then smooth it out on the table.
Now let go of the velvet and pick up a smooth stone about the size of an egg. Feel how hard, smooth, cool, and heavy it is.
Now hold out your hand palm up and imagine that someone has put a dab of hand lotion into it. Mentally rub your hands together and smear the lotion all over them. Feel the slipperiness and coolness first, and then the warmth and comfort.
Continue to explore your sense of touch. Try plunging your hands into running warm water. Make the water hotter and cooler. Imagine touching warm, living human skin. Try stroking a cat or dog. Imagine the feel of your favorite tool or cooking utensil.
4. The next part of the exercise is focused on the sense of taste. Imagine that you still can’t see or hear and now can’t feel anything either. All you can do is taste. Imagine a few grains of salt on your tongue. Let the taste of salt flood your mouth, making you salivate and swallow.
Now change the salt to a few drops of lemon juice. Concentrate on the sensation of sourness. Feel your whole mouth pucker up.
Now touch the tip of your tongue to a very hot chili pepper. Feel the intense, spicy heat burning on your tongue.
Now cool the heat with a bite of vanilla ice cream: sweet, cold, smooth, and creamy. Really taste it.
Continue to taste a succession of your favorite foods. Eat a whole imaginary meal from soup to nuts.
5. Now you will concentrate on your sense of smell. Close off all your other senses and imagine the smell of Thanksgiving turkey. Reexperience the pleasure of coming into the kitchen or opening the oven door and smelling that rich, festive aroma.
Now do the same with your favorite perfume, cologne, or flower scent. Let the smell engulf your imaginary nostrils.
Continue with other smells you like, or even smells you don’t like: pizza, wine, fresh bread, ocean air, new-mown hay, wet paint, hot tar, model glue, rotten eggs, and so on.
That’s enough for now. Mentally recall where you are—the room, the furniture, and so on. Open your eyes when you are ready and reorient yourself before you get up. You may be a little dizzy if this has been a long or particularly vivid session for you.
Analyze your experience. Did one sense come easier than others? Most people’s visual images are most intense, with sounds running second. It really doesn’t matter which sense you find easier to imagine. Even though the word “visualization” implies that it is about the sense of vision, any sensory impressions you can form in your imagination will work. Capitalize on your strong point and emphasize whichever sense comes easiest to you.
All people can improve their ability to form imaginary sense impressions. As you practice forming sensory impressions in your mind, you will get better and better at it. The images and sounds and feelings will become stronger and more vivid. You will be able to add finer and finer details.
Improving your ability to imagine in one sensory modality will also improve your ability in the other modalities. If you started out only being able to see dim pictures and couldn’t hear any sounds, keep practicing on the visual images. Your ability to see pictures will improve and generalize until you can also hear sounds. Feeling, taste, and smell will gradually become clearer as well.
Did you find it hard to concentrate on just one sense at a time? Perhaps when you were forming the blue triangle, you got a flash of the sights, sounds, and smells of your first-grade classroom. Perhaps you got a complete image of a fire engine when you tried to imagine fire-engine red. Or while imagining the sounds of the ocean, you may also have smelled or tasted the salt air or felt the sand under your bare feet. This is a good sign. It shows that you have a knack for filling in the sensory details and including inputs from more than one sense system.
During the next few days, notice how your senses combine to form your experience. Notice how a meal at a restaurant is a complex blend of sense impressions: the sight of the food, the sound of the utensils and other diners, the taste and smell of the food, the feel of it in your mouth and as you swallow. The more you notice in the real world, the more vivid and enjoyable that world will become. Noticing your sense impressions and how they combine in your waking, conscious, walking-around state is also excellent practice for combining imaginary sense impressions to form vivid, effective visualizations.
Second Session
In this exercise you will practice creating a full, vivid experience containing impressions for all five senses. To begin, retire to your quiet spot and relax using the relaxation procedure you learned in the first session.
Now you are going to build up a full experience of a red delicious apple. Start by visualizing the color red. Then shape the color into the outline of an apple—basically round, a little narrower at the bottom, bulging at the top. Now see the apple in three dimensions. Rotate the image in your mind so that you can see the little knobs underneath, the stem in the indentation in the top, and so on. If you haven’t already done so, add shades of color—from lighter red on one side to darker red on the other. Add the little white speckles that red delicious apples have all over them. See the shiny gleam. Let your image of the apple come to rest on an image of a plate.
Add some sounds now. Let the apple rise up an inch and drop with a thump onto the plate. Slide the plate across a wooden table. Now across a tablecloth. Hear the crunch of biting into an apple.
Now add the sense of touch. Pick up the apple in your hands and feel the cool, smooth, heavy weight of it. Slowly take a bite of the apple and feel the resistance as your front teeth break through the skin.
Now taste the first rush of sweet, slightly tart juice. Smell the sweet, fresh aroma.
Continue noticing one sense after another: the sight of the white flesh; the feel of the pulp as you chew; the taste of the skin and flesh; the smell; the cool, wet feeling; the heft and shape of the apple changing as you eat it. Keep going until you are done and have put the core back on the plate and wiped your lips and hands with a napkin.
End the exercise by coming back to the here and now. When you are ready, open your eyes and analyze the experience. Did you find that you imagined yourself in a particular room in your house? Did any images pop up from your childhood? Did you feel silly? Do you feel hungry for an apple? Did you feel full afterward?
Third Session
The first part of this session is an eyes-open exercise you can do any time. In a full-length or very large mirror, examine your face: hair color and style, forehead, eyebrows, eyes, nose, cheeks, smile and laugh lines, mouth, moles, marks, facial hair, pores, different colorings, ears, and so on. Practice smiling and looking serious. Become an expert on your own face. You’ll be surprised at how many new things you notice in your own face.
Do the same for the rest of your body. Scan downward and study your neck, shoulders, arms, and hands. Check out your chest and stomach, your hips and legs. Turn around and see as much as you can of your back view. Notice your posture. Stand up straight and slowly slump down. Swing your arms around and march in place. Look at some old snapshots of yourself if you have them, to see how you have looked to other people. You need to get a clear, conscious idea of what you really look like to do the next step of the exercise.
Note that this should not be a critical appraisal. This is not the time to take an inventory of all the things you would like to change or wish were different.
When you have become an expert on your own appearance, you can go on to the second part of this exercise. Do this part in bed in the morning, as soon as you wake up. Keep your eyes closed and make sure you are still in a totally relaxed state.
Visualize yourself waking up in the morning. Feel the warm bed; see the dark of the inside of your eyelids. Hear the alarm. Feel the hard plastic of the button as you fumble to turn it off. Fall back into bed, sigh, groan, roll over and out of bed.
The floor is cold against your bare feet. Look around and observe your room: furniture, belongings, doors, and windows. Get your clothes and put them on, one at a time, feeling the fabric slide over your body. See the colors.
Do whatever grooming you usually do—combing hair, brushing teeth, and so on. Notice the smells of toothpaste, cosmetics, or whatever there is to smell. Notice any usual aches and pains in your body as you warm up and start moving. Make the scene as vivid and real as possible.
Now remind yourself that you are actually still lying in bed. Open your eyes and get up, performing all the actions that you have just visualized. Be very aware of the actual sensations as they compare with your visualization. Make careful note of the differences, of what you missed or got wrong.
Do this exercise every morning for a week, each time adding the details that you left out the day before to your visualization. You are developing your ability to imagine, in a way similar to a movie director learning to envision how a scene will look on camera before filming it.
A week of this kind of systematic practice will greatly increase the complexity and intensity of the imaginary scenes you create. This type of rehearsal is excellent preparation for creating your personal, self-esteem-raising scenes.
The rules that follow will also help you form effective self-esteem visualizations.
Here are some examples of effective affirmations:
The best affirmations for you will be the ones you compose to match your personality, circumstances, and goals. Affirmations that you have composed for exercises in other chapters can probably be adapted for use with your visualizations.
In general, it helps to see the universe as a place with sufficient emotional, physical, and spiritual nourishment for everybody—a benevolent universe that can potentially work for everyone. In such a universe, all humans are capable of change and improvement, all deserving of love, all with grounds for hope.
The sample sessions that follow are guidelines only. You will evolve your own personal, idiosyncratic versions, with the specific sensory details and affirmations that work best for you. Audio versions of these sessions are available online at http://www.newharbinger.com/33933; they might be useful in getting you started on your own versions.
Self-Image Session
This is the first type of self-esteem visualization you should create for yourself. It is a general purpose session designed to correct the way you see yourself. You create scenes in which your behavior shows that you are worthy instead of unworthy, confident instead of doubtful, secure instead of anxious, cheerful instead of depressed, self-loving instead of self-hating, outgoing instead of shy, attractive instead of ugly, capable instead of helpless, good instead of bad, proud instead of guilty, and self-accepting instead of self-critical.
Prepare for the session by retiring to your quiet place and going through your relaxation routine. With your eyes closed, breathing slowly and deeply, imagine this first scene:
Now get ready to end this session. Recall your surroundings. When you are ready, open your eyes and get up. As you go about your daily routine, recall this visualization and repeat your affirmations to yourself: “I deserve nice things. I deserve to feel good. I look fine. I am actually okay just the way I am. I’ve got what I need. I deserve to eat well. I’m good at doing things. I love myself. I take care of myself. I allow myself to make mistakes. I’m okay just as I am, mistakes and all. I can enjoy the simple things of life. I am willing to take risks. I am outgoing and confident.”
Here are some further suggestions for self-image scenes: making a doctor’s appointment for a checkup; receiving a compliment gracefully; shopping for new clothes or furnishings; buying vitamins, cosmetics, or exercise equipment; enjoying physical exercise or cultural activities; spending enjoyable quiet time alone; being successful at a sports activity; enjoying your favorite recreation. Choose these or other situations in which you tend to be hard on yourself or which would constitute evidence of higher self-esteem for you if you did them.
Make sure that you follow the rules about visualizing overt behavior, including positive body language, stressing self-acceptance first, and seeing yourself as basically okay in the present.
This series of scenes focuses on how you feel about your dealings with others. The important issues are feeling comfortable in the company of others, expressing yourself adequately, asking for what you want, responding to criticism, and in general feeling that you can hold your own as an equal, worthy participant in your interactions with others.
The following visualization is just a guideline. Use it as a model for designing your own scenes that are appropriate to your personality and situation in life.
Prepare for the visualization by retiring to your quiet place and taking plenty of time to get completely relaxed. When you are relaxed and ready to begin, imagine the following:
Now prepare to end the visualization. Become aware of your surroundings and slowly open your eyes and reorient yourself. As you run into people in your everyday life, recall your interpersonal visualizations and bring to mind the appropriate affirmations: “I enjoy being with friends. My friends enjoy being with me. I can ask for what I want. I have valuable opinions. I can speak up in a group. I can acknowledge criticism and keep my self-respect.”
Here are some other situations you could try: asking for a date, enjoying new people, successfully handling a complaint or a socially awkward situation, returning some unwanted merchandise, saying “I love you” to someone and meaning it as a compliment, asking for a raise, applying for a job, or saying no to someone who wants you to do something that you don’t want to do. Pick situations in which you usually feel insecure and one-down.
When creating interpersonal scenes, the important rules to remember are the ones about including a certain amount of initial struggle, assertive body language, and positive consequences, and stressing how self-acceptance comes before acceptance by others.
Goals Session
Setting and achieving goals can give a big boost to your self-esteem. Visualization is one of the most effective tools for clarifying your goals and creating an expectation of success.
Start small, with simple, short-term goals. Pick the kind of everyday goals that you tend to beat yourself up about: getting to work on time, exercising a certain amount every week, finishing school assignments, answering important e-mail, getting your teeth looked at, and so on. When you’re just starting to use visualization, it won’t help very much to visualize grandiose accomplishments or valuable possessions twenty years down the line.
The visualizations that follow give several examples of how to envision simple goals. Use them as a model for creating your own images of what you want to accomplish.
Sit or lie down in a quiet place and do your favorite relaxation exercise. When you are relaxed and in a suggestible frame of mind, imagine the following scenes:
Now get ready to come out of the scene. Remember where you are, and open your eyes when you are ready. Remind yourself of your final affirmation about performing the first step by a certain time and resolve once more to do it.
When you create your own visualizations, stick to one goal at a time, not three separate ones as in the above sample session. Remember to keep your goals simple and short-term at first. The self-esteem boost that you get from achieving small goals will give you the confidence you need to set and accomplish bigger, more long-term goals later.
The most important rules for forming effective goal visualizations are to break things down into small steps, concentrate on observable behavior, see yourself struggling at first, include the positive consequences of accomplishing your goal, and end with an affirmation spelling out the first step and when you will perform it.
If a visualization session isn’t going easily, stop and return to it later. Effective visualization is pleasant and nearly effortless. It depends on a state of relaxed receptivity. If you are too tense or preoccupied, you’re better off doing something else and saving the visualization for a more peaceful time.
Some results will come right away. Others will appear erratically or take a long time to show up. Still other results will be unexpected. Take what you get, be patient, and try not to get discouraged. Your subconscious may be working out some big changes, while your conscious mind, especially your pathological critic, is telling you that nothing is happening and the whole technique is a waste of time. Do the exercises faithfully for at least a month before you make any decision about quitting or trying some other technique.
The best results come when you aren’t trying too hard or expecting too much. It’s a paradox: you have to let go of what you want before you can get it. View your visualization exercises as pleasant and relaxing in and of themselves, whether they “work” eventually or not.