Visualizing Your Success

Original Spanish version published in America Economia (Latin America) on February 03, 2016

Every year, we have the opportunity to rewrite various aspects of our life. Even if it sounds cliché, today, February 2, 2016, we still have 332 days left to work for what we want to accomplish this year. Very few people actually take the time to take stock of where they are and examine their ambitions. Those who do sit down and visualize their goals for the year clearly, with optimism and confidence, and write them down, usually accomplish them.

There are many visualization ‘techniques’. I like one in particular, and here it is in all its simplicity: setting aside time to sit down calmly and quietly, I focus on imagining that I am living a moment of major triumph, in a year such as this one.

I imagine that it is already January 2017 and that I am very happy celebrating the accomplishment of one of my most important goals –whether a personal, a family, or a professional goal. And here I clearly define and explain to myself that goal or objective, in its full detail and complexity. I focus on feeling the emotion of having accomplished this goal, fully savoring that great feeling of success, imagining what surrounds my moment of celebration.

I imagine who is with me at the time and try to see their faces, sense where we are, try to visualize what we are all wearing, what the place smells like, the music that comes from afar, what we are eating or drinking. I really try to get into the moment and experience it as very real, very present, very tangible. Of course, I try to enjoy it as much as possible: This is a celebration after all! Then, without much further ado, I write down all that I recall feeling at that moment created by my imagination, with all the aforementioned details. Almost as if you were quickly writing down a dream that you didn’t want to forget when you first woke up in the morning. When writing the vision or the dream of success, it is crucial to do it in the present tense. Not in the future, but in the present tense.

Then comes the second part of this technique: visualizing a moment of major success in January of 2021. To imagine that moment, I let my imagination fly much more freely (I can afford to, I still have five more years to go!). I dare to dream bigger, to fly higher, to take more risks, and take more ambitious gambles, in the good sense of the word. Yes, because a five-year time frame gives me much more room to do and accomplish many things that perhaps seem unlikely now.

Once again, I focus on seeing and feeling the full scenario and repeat the above, feeling very present in that future reality that exists first in my mind, as the first step to make it come true. This is my dream, it is very personal, mine only, and confidential if I want it to be so, and why not, very ambitious and clear.

With these two visualizations written down, the next step is to pose myself four key questions:

1. What do I have to keepdoing to make this dream come true?
2. What do I have to stopdoing?
3. What do I have to startdoing?
4. What should I notdo?

These questions get me started towards the goal that I want to achieve.  The next thing is almost evident: define the strategy and the deadlines to start working passionately towards my goals, as written. And I try to do so open to whatever life can bring, such as, changes of plans, surprises, opportunities, and the occasional setback.

As I said, without any further ado, I sit down right now to do my favorite visualizations of success with optimism and faith. Furthermore, doing them puts me in a very good mood because I know that this is how I start building my dream future!

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