The visualization techniques that work are the ones you practice on a schedule. I call it the Superpower of Visualization. Give your imagination a daily drip of 10 minutes, add a Sunday session to look ahead, and bring three moves to every picture you hold: speak it, see it and feel it.
- Bringing your vision to life is a skill and a process, and both are in your control.
- Put 10 minutes of visualization on your schedule every day and add a longer session on Sunday.
- Speak it, see it and feel it so the picture carries emotion and energy.
- Visualize who you want to be in five years and start acting like that person now.
What is the Superpower of Visualization?
The Superpower of Visualization is my name for visualization with a system and a process behind it. You decide when you daydream and how often you come back to the picture.
I learned this when I did the 75 Hard mental toughness program and the larger Live Hard program around it. One of the tasks was to visualize for 10 minutes a day. So I put it on my schedule like a checkbox on my get to do list.
The word superpower comes from my conversation with Travis Brown. He called visualization one of the most incredible superpowers people have and never use. At 17 he played in a punk rock band, and he went to bed at night visualizing himself on stage at the Metro in Chicago, with the crowd in front of him. Soon after, he lived it.
Bringing your vision to life is a skill and a process.
Why does visualization work?
Visualization works through what I call the power of repetitive vision. Three powers sit underneath it.
| Power | What it sounds like |
|---|---|
| Intention | This is what I want. |
| Awareness | I see it in my life. |
| Consistency | I see it often. |
Turn those three into positive habits and you get what I call effortless effort. The intention goes in up front, and then the habit runs on autopilot. I cover the habits behind it in manifesting your dreams.
Repetition also prepares you. Travis shared the story of Michael Phelps, who visualized his swims so many times that when his goggles filled with water during a race, he snapped into the visualization, knew what to do and still won.
What visualization techniques can you use?
These are four I use.
- The daily drip Ten minutes a day on your schedule. I take mine on a walk with my eyes open and the podcast off.
- Possibility projecting I use this one from Ed Mylett. Every Sunday I look forward with three prompts: my life, my business, my imagination.
- Found moments While I sat with my son at bedtime and waited for him to fall asleep, I worked on my vision.
- A vision you can see Write a three year vision and add imagery to it. A document becomes something you can see and feel.
That last one comes from Cameron Herold's book Vivid Vision, and I show you how to build yours in how to create a vivid vision.
What is Speak, See, Feel?
Speak, See, Feel is my three step process for making a visualization land. You speak the words out loud, you see them in your mind's eye, and you feel the emotion and energy of them being true.
I run it every morning with my declarations, a series of I am statements. One of mine is "I am the happiest person on earth, shining my light on everyone." When I spoke it, I visualized my son, two and a half at the time, waking up in his crib and calling for dad. In the gym, mid lift, I say "I am fearless."
How do you practice visualization every day?
- Put it on your schedule. Treat 10 minutes of visualization like a checkbox on your get to do list.
- Stack it early. The earlier in the day you do something, the better your chances of getting it done.
- Speak, see and feel it. Say what you want out loud, picture it and let the emotion in.
- Add a Sunday session. Possibility project on your life, your business and your imagination.
- Read your vision first thing. A person who lives massive dreams reads their vision at least once a day. Mine became the very first thing I do each morning.
- Make it a growth game. Commit to seven days in a row and keep the streak simple.
Time is the excuse a lot of people create, and we always have time.
If something is important enough, you will always create time to make it happen.
Rob Cressy
How do you visualize your future self?
Travis gave a challenge in our conversation that takes this one inch further. Visualize who you want to be in five years and start acting like that person now. Ask what that version of you, who has already accomplished those things, is doing today.
I use three questions with my coaching clients to do the same work. Vision: what do you want to create? Being: who do you need to be to make that vision happen? Action: what action does that person take? Those three questions carried my move to Chicago, and later the move my wife and I made to Sarasota to start a family. I take a page here from Dr. Benjamin Hardy's book Be Your Future Self Now, and I go deeper in becoming your future self.
How can AI help you visualize?
Stay human first. Give AI the context of who you are and who you are becoming, let it draft the words and the imagery, and keep the judgment yours. Start with how to use AI to write your vivid vision.
Do this today
- Schedule 10 minutes. Put visualization on today's calendar, then take a walk with your eyes open and the podcast off.
- Run Speak, See, Feel once. Write one "I am" statement, say it out loud, picture it and feel it.
Listen to the episode
The Superpower of Visualization
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Read the full transcript
Hey, it's Rob Cressy. This episode is a snippet of my conversation with Travis Brown about being a master creator. I broke our podcast together into digestible nuggets. That way, it's easier for you to consume and take action. Enjoy.
What most people don't actually do is have a system and process for how to visualize and daydream. So what does that actually mean? As I look here on my big-ass calendar in front of me, one of my daily vitamins. So if I look at my perfect day, and there's 10 things that I could do in any day, if I take one of those vitamins, boom, it's great. I could take all 10 or one of them, but it's all things that in my perfect day are there.
So creating an idea and visualizing is one of them. And I actually learned this when I did the 75 Hard Mental Toughness Program and the overall Live Hard Program. And one of the things was visualize for 10 minutes a day. So I put it on my schedule as if it's a checkbox on my get-to-do list. So now there is a process for us. You say, well, where in the world am I going to find time to do this?
Well, maybe I'm now going out for a walk. And when I'm walking, instead of listening to a podcast, I'm sitting there with my eyes open and I'm looking around at the nature and I'm hearing sounds. And I go ahead and do that.
Another thing that's part of my process, and I learned this from Ed Mylett, he calls this possibility projecting. Every Sunday as part of my routine to look forward, I possibility project in my life, in my business, in my imagination. So I sit there and similar to journaling or morning pages, there are no rules whatsoever. I just go there and the prompt just says, my life, my business, my imagination.
So what this is, is another drip. So I've got the Sunday drip and I've got the daily drip. And now I'm part of that frequency where, all right, well, I'm going to be putting my son to bed. So I'm just sitting there and hoping he goes to sleep. So what am I doing? Boom. I'm sitting there thinking about, all right, let me work on my vision right now, because now there's an opportunity.
I don't have enough time as an excuse a lot of people create, but we always have time. But if something is important enough, you will always create time to make it happen. Therefore, let's start to use our vision a little bit more and say, you know what? Rob and Travis said, imagination is important and it's fun and it helps me accomplish my dreams. Maybe I should find a way to create a system or a process to allow me to live in that even just a little bit at a time.
And the last thing, Travis, I'm going to add one book that I really liked about this was James Altucher's Choose Yourself. Yeah. And what he talks about is not just writing like one idea a day. I believe he says write 10 or 20 ideas a day, because what I learned at Second City in the humor writing for The Onion course is that you have a 90% success rate of bad ideas to good ideas. So let's just start getting that volume out there so that one or two pieces of gold can get unearthed.
Absolutely. I don't think people give themselves enough chance to be, you know, as the writing process starts with a bad first draft. And most people won't allow themselves to get to that bad first draft. So like throwing out ideas and documenting everything. I call it an idea orphanage, right? I have more ideas than I will ever be able to execute in my life, which is why I share so many business ideas on my social media accounts, because there's no way I'm going to be able to do them.
And just keeping them away from everyone else doesn't do them any good. Hopefully somebody can take it and actually apply it and build themselves something, right? So documenting your ideas is so important. There are no bad ideas in brainstorming. This is a rule, okay? Okay?
So, you know, going back to unpack a few things you said, I call bullshit on everybody who says they don't have time. Time is like money. And you choose where you spend it, right? So if you really say you don't have time, the question that I have is, then show me your 24-hour schedule. Because I guarantee you that I can find time in there to do the thing that you want to do.
And then as far as visualization goes, I think visualization is one of the most incredible superpowers that people have that they never use. So when I was 17 in a punk rock band, I used to go to bed at night and I would visualize myself on a very specific, excuse me, stage in Chicago, a venue called the Metro. It was like the mecca for like, you know, local bands kind of going big. And I would visualize the crowd. I would visualize coming out onto the stage. I would visualize, you know, rocking out. And I'll tell you what, it wasn't very long until I actually experienced that visualization.
And, you know, lots of people do this. I think it was Michael Phelps would visualize swimming. And one time he had a goggle malfunction, right, where the water started pouring in and he couldn't see. And all he did was snapped into his visualization because he already knew what to do because he had done it so many times in his head and he still won the race.
So my challenge to everybody listening or watching this right now is part of the visualization processes is things that you want to manifest or things that you want to achieve. But I'll put that one inch further. Why don't you start visualizing who you want to be in five years and start acting like that now? Okay. So, for instance, I don't act like Travis today. I act like Travis in five years. What is Travis in five years who's already accomplished these things doing?
Well, he's creating systems so that he has more free time, so that he can write keynote speeches and stand on stages, right, so that he can be a prolific author and do all these things. So acting as if you already are where you want to be is going to get you there so much more faster. And part of that is realization. Part of that is visualization.
And then part of it is really just looking at your time and saying, like, okay, so many people tell me they don't have time, but they could tell me everything that happened in the latest hit series TV show. Well, right there, you're trading your time for consumption, right? You're trading time for something that doesn't serve your goal. So don't bullshit us and tell us that you don't have time. Wake up an hour earlier. Stay up an hour later. It's how you decide to create your own destiny.
It's not about not having time because we all have the same. You can't buy it. You can't make it. We all have the same. So I think it's a bunk excuse to say I don't have time. And the last question I'll just ask people is, well, how bad do you want it? Because if I want something bad enough, I'll stay up all night to work on it.
A conversation between Rob Cressy and Travis Brown. Transcript cleaned up for reading.