Chapter 19

Ten Great Settings for Creative Visualization

In This Chapter

Incorporating visualization into your everyday life

Practising creative visualization on your travels

Visualizing in your professional life

Calling upon your visualization skills anytime, anywhere

When visualizing creatively, choosing the most conducive time and place for the exercise is important.

Initially, you may prefer to seek out quiet and comfortable places where you’re less likely to be distracted. As your visualization skills grow, you can start to visualize while listening to relaxing or atmospheric soundscape music.

When visualizing starts to come pretty easily to you, however, you can perform your exercises in most places and situations (with the exception of those requiring you to concentrate on something else – while driving, for example!). This chapter suggests ten top places for quality visualization and can be used in conjunction with Chapter 6, which contains loads more suggestions on this subject.

Finding Somewhere Quiet and Comfortable

The best location for beginner visualizers is at home, where everything is comfortable and familiar, and during the daytime so that you’re not too tired and don’t drift off to sleep in the middle of a visualization. A comfortable armchair or, in good weather, a suitable seat in the garden are ideal.

Settle upon a place and time where you can be alone and uninterrupted so that you can properly practise visualizing creatively and get the best results from it early on. In a busy household, especially one with children running around, this ideal may not be easy, but try if at all possible.

Listening to the Radio or an Audio Player

I recommend that you practise your first visualizations in silence for optimum concentration. When you’re comfortable with silent visualization, perhaps add a little music to the mix, which can help due to its ability to relax you and help induce a trance-like state of mind in which you can more easily visualize. Classical, light ambient, or chill-out music is best, and try to avoid anything with words because they can impinge on your exercises. Vocal music without words, or in a foreign language that you don’t speak, is often fine though.

Loads of ambient music and/or sound-effect CDs and downloadable digital files are available via the Internet. These products have been specially mixed to enhance meditative-type practices, so they can be worth purchasing.

I’ve also recorded a free guided audio exercise to help you get relaxed and prepared to visualize, which you can access on the Internet. You can play it by visiting tinyurl.com/guidedrelaxation.

Doing the Housework

As you begin to get used to visualizing, you may find that you can do it while performing simple tasks such as watering flowers, dusting, using a vacuum cleaner, or mowing the lawn. You know, the types of thing you do almost instinctively that require little concentration.

Some of the best visualizations to use in these circumstances are the auditory ones in which you repeat positive affirmations (which are spread throughout this book), because they don’t interrupt your vision while you perform your household chores.

Travelling from A to B

Riding as a passenger – whether in a car, train, bus, or plane – is a wonderful time for visualizing. The surroundings change so quickly that you have a constant stream of new things to look at and think about.

You can let your surroundings blur into the background and use them as an animated backdrop to visualizations, or you can use the passing objects and people as seed ideas for coming up with creative visualizations.

Don’t visualize while you’re driving or operating machinery. Only visualize in situations where you can allow your concentration levels to drop safely.

On Holiday or a Day Trip

While spending recreational time – such as on a day out at the beach or on a holiday – you’re very receptive to creative visualizations because you tend to be relaxed and calm. So why not spend a few minutes practising your visualizations or affirmations?

You may well find that you return from your trip feeling even more refreshed and energised than normal.

Participating in Meetings or Talking on the Phone

As you become more skilled at visualizing, you can call up the exercises on demand, especially the mental flash cards that are designed specifically for this purpose (such as those in Chapter 18).

So, for example, when you need an idea, extra energy, or some inspiration while on the phone or in an important meeting, run an appropriate flash card through your mind to bring up the feeling, response, or the creative idea you need.

Attending an Event

You can visualize creatively while attending special events such as pop or rock concerts and sporting events. Doing so can heighten the effect of a visualization due to the fact that many of your senses are involved when you practise it, including hearing, seeing, and even smell.

Don’t feel as if you’re depriving yourself of enjoyment; you need to spend only a few minutes visualizing at events to see useful results.

Taking a Walk

Walking is one of my favourite times for visualizing. It works best when I’m on my own, but even when walking with my wife I often sneak in quick visualizations in the quiet spaces between chatting.

While out on your walk take a note of the smells and sounds around you, and touch and feel things as you pass them. Providing multiple inputs to your brain during visualizing helps to increase the effectiveness of your visualizations by storing them in a variety of different memory areas.

Lying in Bed

Your bed is a great place to visualize. At night time, practise the sort of less-structured visualizations during which you can safely drop off to sleep without adversely affecting them. I prefer to do my ‘thankfulness’ and ‘oneness with the universe’ visualizations (which I describe in Chapter 18) at this time.

If you’re the type of person who wakes up bright and breezy in the morning, run a quick visualization through your mind before getting out of bed. At this time of day you may prefer to focus on exercises intended to promote energy and motivation, such as those in Chapter 9.

Visualizing Anywhere

As your visualization experience and skills increase, you may well find that you can visualize absolutely anywhere. You’re ready to do so when you discover that you’ve fully incorporated creative visualization into your everyday life and find yourself drawing on it regularly.

When you reach this point, you’re well on the way to becoming the person you want to be. You’ve mastered the creative visualization technique and as you progress further through life, you can put your mind to, and be successful at, almost anything you desire.