Suspend the ego and embrace uncertainty.
The mind must be able to feel doubt and uncertainty for as long as possible. As it remains in this state and probes deeply into the mysteries of the universe, ideas will come that are more dimensional and real than if we had jumped to conclusions and formed judgements early on. Truly creative people in all fields can temporarily suspend their ego and simply experience what they are seeing, without the need to assert a judgement, for as long as possible. — John Keats
Sometime in 1930, Dr. Edmund Jacobson, a Chicago-based physician specializing in physiology, asked a patient lying on his lab table to imagine lifting his left arm.
Wired with electromyography equipment to measure muscle stimulation, the patient visualized the muscles involved in raising his arm.
The machine blipped and whined, needles jumping. “Ahh,” said Jacobson to his colleagues, “do you see? Muscle stimulation from mental imagery.”
What Jacobson showed was revolutionary. Imagined activity — seeing the shoulder lift in the mind — fired the muscles into action, before the physical movement.
The experiment demonstrated that cognitive processes — or more specifically, mental imagery — can ignite physical performance, coined psychoneuromuscular theory by Jacobson (many theories would follow based on Jacobson’s research).
While empirical evidence that mental visualization improves athletic performance would not arrive until later, Jacobson set the foundation for mentally practicing a skill before the physical skill took place.
It would lead to Richardson’s 2013 claim that imagery is “a simulation representation of motor behavior; it can be seen as either a class of an inferred cognitive structure or processes or a class of more or less perceptual-like experience that happens in mind.”
Yet it would also help give charge to the concept of self-help visualizing for the new age millennia, with spiritual leaders from Ram Dass to Oprah Winfrey pushing its power. Terms like (and I will only use them once in this piece) “manifesting” and “creating abundance” are titular examples of the New Age movement.
While focused visualization is a remarkable cognitive tool that can improve mental and physical skills, how can we hack the process to make using it more beneficial?
To find out, we must investigate our own emotional personalities and go beyond imagery. To change our external world, we must trick the brain.
Whatever the Mind Can Conceive it Can Achieve
Visualizing your success in challenging situations enables the same areas of your brain that experience it physically. This promotes neuroplasticity — literally brain expansion.
History contains a vast library of characters that used visualization to accentuate their creative lives, from Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Salvador Dali, to modern-day entertainers and politicians.
Inventor and intellectual Thomas Edison called his deep state of concentrated visualizations “conscious reverie.” In this mental state, he took his brain on a tour of his problems — and his solutions — by mentally exploring his options for new ideas.
He “saw” the workings of his machine-based ideas, from screws to complicated sprockets, before he put anything on paper or created any prototypes.
He saw mental models and meticulously flipped through them like a stack of cards. He saw them work, he saw their errors, and he made adjustments in his brain before creating a physical representation.
Edison’s skill at imagery and mental manipulation allowed him to streamline his invention process — and it transformed the world.
But how did he do it? History shows he used much more than conscious reverie. Edison became a master at examining his personality — what Robert Greene calls ‘self-awareness’ — so that it didn’t hijack his mental imagery. In other words, he didn’t linger on what would happen if his inventions didn’t work, or what might happen if he ran out of money to fund them.
Edison also became astute at observation. Understanding body language and dissecting how people interact fed his curious mindset — and this allowed him to fine-tune his visualizing skills.
While hard work and purveyance are a large component of accomplishing our goals, when we trick the brain into changing our emotional focus, the floodgates open.
The Secret to Imagery Hacking
I have a system of ridding my mind of negative thoughts. I visualize myself writing them down on a piece of paper. Then I imagine myself crumpling up the paper, lighting it on fire, and burning it to a crisp. — Bruce Lee
Visualization, or cognitive imagery, is a science-backed concept that can help you improve a skill or achieve goals. Yet for many, visualizing is not easy. Thoughts get in the way.
In his books Mastery and The Laws of Human Nature, Robert Greene writes that one of the things holding us back from adopting a growth mindset — and efficient visualization — is our resistance to change.
We struggle with uncertainty when we should be embracing it. Greene maintains that we must suspend the ego and be open to change and criticism. And he’s spot on.
Your ego resists anything that’s ever hurt you in the past. That fourth-grade Show and Tell when you had to stand up and present fossils to the class? And it didn’t go well?
Public speaking will terrify you unless you face that monster — your ego.
That’s the toxic thing about resistance. Resistance is a major sabotage and a nasty trick of the ego. If we submit to it we deny ourselves the ability to learn and move forward.
You can find this concept in every self-help and business book written — from Napoleon Hill to Gary Vaynerchuk — though the concept is often buried in how it’s presented.
But it’s in there. And Hill, channeling Carnegie, vehemently espoused accepting struggles when he said, “Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure.”
Quantum mechanics tells us that within materialism — the idea that nothing exists except matter and its movements — there are uncertainties that do not derive from our ignorance but are fundamental to matter and the laws that govern it. In this view, uncertainty is an ineradicable feature of our physical world. — Nathan Harshman
Embracing our struggles is one of the most difficult things to accomplish. When you have bills to pay and children to feed, it’s easy to focus on lack — lack of money, lack of a job — and place all your emotional cognitive energy on the struggle.
Yet focusing on lack is self-defeating. The simple truth is, there is no such thing as lack. Everything is available and everything is limitless, you just have to tap into the mindset of embracing uncertainty.
In times of duress, you must trick the brain into believing your situation is the opposite of how it is. Your cognitive energy must match the same high frequency as the energy of your imagined success.
Einstein Knew
A famous writer (who shall not be named) wrote a series of best-selling books that sold millions — and made her a billionaire in the process.
When she started the book series, she was on unemployment, raising two children, and living in state-assisted housing.
Yet she wrote. She wrote on napkins, on her hands, in book margins — but she wrote.
She did not focus on lack, how she would feed her children, on money, or even how she would publish her stories.
She. Wrote. She embraced uncertainty. And she visualized the outcome her books would bring.
Her imagery was clean and free from negative thoughts. And something else was at play here.
She surrendered to the Universe. Einstein believed the universe was static until 1931 when he accepted — long after his colleagues — the modern cosmological view that the universe is expanding. She recognized her situation and struggles but did not attach to her emotions.
When you learn to do this it’s like opening a river channel in your visualizations. Things flow.
And they keep flowing.
For visualizing to work, mastering the skill of self-awareness becomes crucial for achieving personal growth. You must be aware of your emotions and how you react to them.
We live in the unknown, yet our decisions create our reality. Resisting change with ego fully employed stagnates growth and negates opportunities.
You must, as Coleridge said, suspend disbelief — aware of negative thoughts but enabled to set potent images in your mind to replace them.
Remember, you are exactly where you're supposed to be. It’s easy to listen to social media, to our parents or friends (who mean well), and be brainwashed with advice or standards. And above everything, it’s easy to compare yourself to others.
Guided imagery and visualization will help you perform better or achieve whatever goals you desire, but the secret is embracing the unknown.
Embrace uncertainty. If you can master this concept, your imagery powers are limitless.
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