Visualization helps you live your dreams

Our brain is divided into two halves: the right half of our brain learns facts and figures and the left half houses our creativity. We work hard to develop the right half of our brain in school, but sometimes the left half gets ignored.

One of the best ways to use your imagination is to visualize or fantasize. Long ago I came to realize that projecting myself in a successful situation is the most powerful means of attaining personal goals.

That’s what a place-kicker does when he comes on the field to kick a winning field goal. Three seconds left in the game … 80,000 screaming fans … 30 million people watching on TV, and the game is in the balance. As the kicker begins his moves, he makes the final adjustments necessary to achieve the mental picture he’s formed in his mind so many times—a picture of himself kicking the winning field goal.

The ability to project is a common trait among all great athletes. They have future vision. They see things a split second before they happen.

Jack Nicklaus, considered by many the greatest golfer of all time and a PGA Tour Hall-of-Famer, was asked about his tremendous success, especially in making crucial tournament-winning putts. He thought about it for a bit and said, “I never missed a putt in my mind.”

Nicklaus is not considered to be the best at hitting his woods, long or short irons, or even chipping and putting. But everyone considers him the greatest thinking golfer of all time. There was no equal at the mental part of the game, which makes up 50 percent of golf.

Thomas Watson Sr. was 40 when he took over as general manager of a little firm that manufactured meat slicers, time clocks, and simple tabulators. He had a vision for a machine that could process and store information long before the computer was a commercial reality. To match his lofty vision, Watson renamed his company International Business Machines Corporation. Toward the end of his life, Watson was asked at what point he envisioned IBM becoming so successful. His reply was simply, “At the beginning.”

Fred Smith’s vision of an overnight, nationwide, air express delivery service was first unveiled in the early 1970s in a term paper for an economics class at Yale University. Unfortunately, his professor didn’t share Smith’s excitement and gave him a “C.” Smith, however, took the idea and created an exceptional company known as Federal Express.

Success is no surprise to visionary people. They know what they want, determine a plan to achieve it, and expect positive results.

Billy Graham prayed, “God, let me do something, anything for you.” Henry Royce was unwilling to accept anything but automobile perfection. Orville and Wilbur Wright were inspired at a children’s birthday party when they saw a toy with a wound-up rubber band take to the air. Marie Curie held high her commitment to scientific excellence in spite of doubters and made important contributions until the day she died. Mohandas K. Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. held a dream of a better life for all people. Lee Iacocca preached, “I have one, and only one, ambition for Chrysler; to be the best. What else is there?”

These people were able to visualize, above and beyond the majority, a condition that was just right. They taught us that a vision begins with imagination, coupled with a belief that dreams can one day be realized.

A man by the name of Viktor Frankl owes his long life to his ability to project himself. He passed away at the age of 92. He was a renowned Viennese psychiatrist before the Nazis threw him into a concentration camp. I heard him speak a number of years ago, and he held the audience spellbound.

He said, “There’s one reason why I’m here today. What kept me alive in a situation where others had given up hope and died was the dream that someday I’d be here telling you how I survived the concentration camps. I’ve never been here before. I’ve never seen any of you before. I’ve never given this speech before. But in my dreams I’ve stood before you in this room and said these words a thousand times.”

Your vision shapes your reality

A railroad crew was making repairs to a section of track when a train rolled up on a parallel track. Several men in suits disembarked from one of the passenger cars and began inspecting the work that was being done. A tall man in a blue suit looked over at the crew and nodded. He began to smile and walk toward them.

“Ted, is that you?” he asked of the crew’s chief.

“Yes, it is,” the chief replied as he shook hands with the visitor. “It’s good to see you, Dale!”

The two men chatted briefly, inquiring about each other’s health and families. Before they parted, they shook hands again and promised to keep in touch. When the man in the suit walked away, a member of the crew asked the chief, “Was that Dale Willis, the head of the railroad?”

“Yes, it was,” the chief replied.

“It seems like you two are old friends,” the man said.

“We are,” the chief replied. “We started out together on this job on the same day 20 years ago.”

“So how is it that you’re here laying track with us?” someone asked.

“Well,” the chief replied, “I had a vision of working for the railroad, while Dale had a vision of running the railroad.”

And if Ted is content working for the railroad, his vision was realized. Dale’s vision, on the other hand, set him on a path that he could accomplish only through a step-by-step plan to move ahead. This story from Bits & Pieces perfectly illustrates the importance of vision.

A study done by Fortune magazine examined 120 entrepreneurs over a three-year period. They were asked, “What do you need most to be a success?”

The study, headed by Robert Baum, an assistant professor of entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, pointed to the need to have vision in order to reach goals. Baum said that 60 percent of people he talks to have wanted to start their own businesses, but that most of what he hears is “I wanna, I wanna.” The people who actually succeeded were the ones who had a vision and knew clearly where they wanted to go.

The American Marketing Association did a study several years back and asked 500 CEOs: What do you have to do to survive the next five years? Eighty-one percent said creativity and vision. But of the 500 CEOs, 81 percent of them said that their company is not doing a good job at it.

I suspect that part of the problem is that many companies don’t know how to formulate a realistic vision. They confuse it with goals and objectives, which should come out of the corporate vision. Vision doesn’t do the planning, and it doesn’t anticipate the obstacles. It gives a real idea of what is possible, if only they want it bad enough.

Base your vision on principle. An effective vision isn’t about processes or products, but principles—guidelines for action and behavior. Explore the values that guide the organization. Rely on principles that are timeless and easy to grasp, even if they’re sometimes difficult to live up to.

A vision that inspires people to action doesn’t come out of a single afternoon brainstorming session. Every member of your team needs to spend time asking questions about the organization, your industry, customers, competitors, trends—everything that affects the success of your vision. You have to build a foundation of learning before you can go forward.

Don’t base your vision on where you are today, but on where you want to be in 5 years, or 10, or 25. Think about the direction you want to take and the obstacles you will have to overcome in order to succeed.

When I speak to corporate America, I tell the story of Helen Keller, who was left blind and deaf at age 19 months from a childhood illness. Yet she became a brilliant author and lecturer who graduated cum laude from Radcliffe College. She was making a speech on a college campus, and during the question and answer session a mean-spirited questioner asked her the following: “Tell me Miss Keller, is losing your eyesight the worst thing in the world that can happen to anyone?”

“No,” she said. “It’s losing your vision.” You see, eyesight is what we see in front of us. Vision is all the way down the road.