Subconscious Mind Power #6

Subconscious Mind Power Secret #6
Your subconscious mind thinks in pictures and can’t tell the
difference between pictures that are real and those
that are vividly imagined.

If I say the word car, you don’t see the letters C-A-R in your mind,
you see a picture of a car. If I ask you to think about your house,
you see a picture of your house. If I ask you to remember your last
vacation, you see mental movies and pictures of your last vacation.
That’s how your brain works.

Making mental pictures or movies and practicing skills and
behaviors with mental rehearsal is called visualization. Extensive
research has proven that when you visualize a skill, performance
or behavior in your mind, you’re firing the same neurons in your
brain as if you actually carried it out physically.

You can find dozens, maybe even hundreds of stories and
references to this in professional and Olympic sports. There were
some especially interesting experiments on basketball free-throw
shooting. In one study, mental practice with visualization was
almost as effective as physical practice.

If you ask any top pro golfer about visualization, don’t be
surprised if they tell you that the game is 80% mental and 20%
physical and that they see every shot in their mind before they
actually swing the club. Those who use this technique regularly
are often among the top performers in their sport.

But visualization isn’t just for practicing skills you already do that
you want to perform better—like shooting free-throws or swinging
a golf club. You can also use visualization to imagine yourself
already having achieved a goal or attaining a certain physique. If
you see that image in your mind’s eye as already achieved, your
brain goes to work at adjusting your automatic behaviors to come
into alignment with that internal self image.

When we talk about using imagination, that may not sound
scientific at all, but the scientists are saying that using your
imagination in the form of visualization has a neurological basis.
Here’s what one neuroscientist, Dr. Richard Restak, said:
“Positron emission tomography (PET) scans reveal that the process
of imagining yourself going through the motions of a complex
musical or athletic performance activates brain areas that improve
your performance. You set up the correct premotor program and the
brain will do the rest.”

Athletes have known about this and have been using it for a long
time. There’s a scientific basis for visualization and mental
rehearsal.