Visualizing Success: The Secrets To Positive Thinking

If you dream it, you can achieve it.

This is an old saying, meant to be inspirational but often written off as wishful thinking. While it may indeed be naïve, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a kernel of truth in it. There is no substitute for hard work and strategic thinking, but at the same time there is much to be said for thinking positively—and if you can clearly envision what success looks like, you’ve taken your first step toward attaining it.

In other words, for business owners and busy executives, visualization is a highly legitimate and important discipline—not psycho-babble and not mere motivational thinking, but an important, concrete way to make progress toward your goals. In fact, one of the main reasons why visualization is important is that it allows you to define exactly what those goals are, and how you define a successful outcome. Additionally, visualization is a process that lets you think through each step you will need to take to reach that successful outcome—preparing you to invest in the process strategically.

Don’t Oversimplify

Speaking of strategy, it is important for business owners to have a strategy as they embrace the visualization process; this may be more of a “soft” skill, yet it still requires a high level of thought and deliberation. One important thing to consider: Avoiding oversimplification as you visualize success.

Indeed, no matter how much you plan and how much you visualize, there are always going to be obstacles that pop up, test your mettle, and hinder your progress. It’s important to be prepared for them, and if you visualize a completely obstacle-free and easy path to success then these obstacles might catch you off guard and unprepared. Your visualization should be positive, but not idealistic. Visualize possible obstacles, and then visualize yourself taking the steps needed to overcome them.

Visualizing a Process

Related to this point: You don’t necessarily want to invest all your time in just visualizing success. To use athletics as an example, you don’t just want to visualize yourself being handed a trophy, or of making a game-winning shot. You want to visualize the steps that lead you to those big, climactic points—the steps that prime you for optimal performance and get you to the point where success is yours for the taking.

Visualization should always be done in tandem with strategizing. Think about the plan of action you will take to achieve your desired outcomes, and then visualize yourself moving along the path, taking every step necessary for success.

Putting Actions First

Indeed, when you visualize, it’s important to make a distinction between visualizing success and visualizing successful actions. To use another analogy, say you were visualizing a major home landscaping process. Visualizing the finished lawn is important, because it gives you a goal—an image of what you want the lawn to look like, when all is said and done. With that said, you don’t only want to focus on this, but also on the steps you need to take and the order in which you need to take them. What tools will you need, how closely should you trim the grass and shrubs, and where should you be planting flowers?

When you focus on these positive actions, it reinforces good, actionable behavior. It gives you confidence—the belief that yes, you can do this, because you’ve seen yourself do it, if only in your mind. Finally, visualizing actions can get you fired up—ready to actually move past visualizing and start working.

Moving Beyond Negativity

What happens when you’re visualizing your path to success and—seemingly from out of nowhere—you visualize a hurdle, impeding your way forward? What happens when you imagine a worst-case-scenario? Simply put, you imagine yourself overcoming it; you imagine what you’ll do to move beyond it and to achieve success. You replace negativity with positive thinking, because that’s what visualization is about—but you don’t ignore the possibilities of hardship, or pretend like obstacles won’t come up. The goal is to be positive, but not blind or unrealistic.

That’s visualization in a nutshell—and for business owners and executives looking to align themselves with success, this is a process far too important to neglect.