I was a New Yorker, but not the kind that avoids driving a car by holding a bar handle on the subway.
I was a non-driver in the city of Binghamton, NY, where wheels of some sort, whether your own, or limited, and time-consuming public transportation, are a necessity.
By my late-20s, I decided I'd try to learn how to drive again.
Over about four 90-minute driving lessons, I did achieve my goal.
But I believe it was the visualization reps I got in, in-between lessons, that gave me the upper-hand, and confidence I needed to pass the driving test.
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Visualization is a means to an end, while daydreaming sort of happens naturally.
Visualization is creating our own mental and physical flight simulator, for things that they don't make simulators for.
It's a process that gets you acclimated to conditions that you can't train in with your eyes open.
But it's not as complicated as you may think.
What follows are a couple of visualization processes that I've had success with: one for improving at something, the other for empowering yourself in the face of trauma.
Visualization For Gaining Skills, Reducing Anxiety, And Self-Improvement
1) Identify The Visualization Scenario
What skill are you trying to build?
What process do you want more experience with?
What scenario, potential, or real, gives you the most anxiety?
Decide what you'll spend your visualization session trying to improve, or get better at.
2) Identify All of The Elements That Make Up This Scenario
If it's your workplace, this might include:
- Your coworker's faces and what they're wearing
- Your workplace environment, and desk
- Your work activities
- The potential or likely conversations you might have
- The potential or likely problems that may arise in the scenario
- The potential problems that aren't likely that you still want to be prepared for
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You want to know what your biggest anxieties, or weaknesses are, and have a plan for how you'll encounter them in your visualization session.
3) Deciding on The Visualization Time, Place, And Type
You'll want a place, likely in your home, where you can be by yourself for at least 10 minutes, and for potentially longer.
You also want to decide if you should visualize sitting down, or if it'd be more relevant to your desired visualization activity if you stood up.
Then you'll want to set a timer on your phone, or with a clock/watch, for that amount of time, and begin.
4) Go Through Your Visualization Session
Activate all of your senses: touch, sight, smell, taste (maybe not relevant for all scenarios), hearing.
You want to try to imagine how you feel, and everything you encounter in that environment or scenario.
If there's movements you can act out with your eyes closed (Ex: opening a door, using your computer mouse, etc.), then do it.
Go through the entire scenario. Then, ideally, keep going through it.
Focus on the weakest spots for you in the scenario, and keep going over that part if it's giving you the most anxiety. (Ex: repeatedly going over parallel parking if that's your biggest weak spot in a driving visualization)
You want to get those relevant areas of your brain firing, over and over again, to engrain as much as you possibly can.
Get as many reps in as you possibly can, activating as many of your senses as you can, for as long as you can.
5) Additional Notes
You don't want to schedule a visualization session that's so imposing that you drag your feet on actually doing it.
A little bit of time, consistently done, is better than one 15 or 20 minute session that you're never going to repeat. You want to get reps in.
I'd also add that rehearsing scenarios, and practicing them (preferrably with others if it's something like a job interview or speech), is also a good thing to use in addition to a visualization session.
I can tell you, from experience, that the more time you dedicate, the better your results will likely be.
Visualization To Reduce Anxiety, And Respond To Trauma
I came across a book by Linda Graham, called 'Resilience', and I highly recommend it for practicing visualization. It's full of different exercises you can do, but one stood out the most. I call it the Temperance Visualization (After the image of the Temperance card of the Tarot).
You begin by bringing up a negative memory or experience in your mind, and you try to activate as many of your senses as possible. You try to make it real to you in that moment. And:
"Once the negative memory has been activated and is available for rewiring, you deliberately juxtapose it in your awareness with a stronger, more positive, more resilience-based memory or even an imaginary event, holding both the original negative and the new positive experiences in your awareness at the same time (or alternating between the two). The juxtaposition causes the original neural network to fall apart (deconsolidate) and rewire again (reconsolidate) a fraction of a second later. That’s the process that neuroscientists can now see with brain imaging technology. When the new positive memory or experience is stronger than the previous negative one, it will “trump” and rewire the negative memory."
So:
- 1) Activate A Negative Memory
- 2) Bring To Mind An Existing Positive Memory, or Create A New One
- 3) Hold The Negative And Positive Scenarios/Memories/Scenes Together, And Back And Forth
By doing this, you're basically reprogramming, or brainwashing yourself into better mental health.
Ex: You bring to mind a time when you were embarrassed in front of others, then you bring to mind an imaginary scenario where you had the perfect response to being embarrassed, and hold them together at the same time.
While it won't necessarily solve all of your problems, and it may not prevent future negative scenarios that are similar (the first visualization process I discuss may be best for that), it could be helpful to 'de-charge' that negative memory, helping you move on.
You basically are de-sensitizing yourself to that negative past memory, and sometimes that's all we really need.
Final Thoughts
Hopefully the two visualization exercises I mention above are helpful for you in attaining a greater level of peace. And in addition to that, I hope that it helps you come up with some ideas on other ways to incorporate visualization to your life.
While it isn't an immediate form of magic, I believe that with the more time you dedicate to it (like with meditation), the greater the rewards will eventually be for you. Good luck.