Visualizing Your Success Won’t Make You Successful

There are a myriad of articles, books, and websites that sell “How to be successful” brick-n-mortar self-help guides. They are filled with trigger words such as ‘visualize,’ ‘positive-thinking,’ ‘imagination,’ ‘think big’ etc… and they are all full of poppy-cock…It took me awhile to figure that out especially considering that one of the biggest sellers of all time to ‘hack’ your way to "Success" was “the Secret.”

And it’s no wonder these self-help guides are 'successful' (heh) the culture is full of examples of people who ‘visualized’ their way to success:

                                          (Start watching at 49seconds)

In the clip Carrey says that he wrote himself a check for 10 million dollars and 'visualized' receiving the check in real life for 'acting services rendered' and then finally in 1995 he found out that he would make $10 million for his movie "Dumb and Dumber."

But did he really just visualize?

No 

What all these people and scam sites don’t tell you is the behind the scenes, these people put pain-staking work everyday, every month, every year. Year after year to become successful:

His [Jim Carrey] family lived in a rough district with lots of low-rent townhouses. By the tenth grade he was trying to juggle eight-hour night shifts at the factory with school during the day. He was so exhausted that he couldn’t understand what his teachers were talking about. He didn’t have any friends at school and feared that anyone getting close might find discover his embarrassing poverty. With little learning and no relationships, he felt that school was getting him nowhere. He called it quits at 16.

His family decided that their surroundings were taking them the wrong direction, so they packed up and moved to Canada with no job in sight. His parents and two siblings lived in a beat-up yellow Volkswagen camper van for a full eight months, parking in campgrounds. [Source]

After moving to America, it took Jim Carrey 15 years before he finally became 'successful' and received that 10 million dollar check.

You see 'Visualizing' is just the cliff-notes-feel-good version that sounds good in a sound bite. I wrote before on success and the key to success is just one simple four-letter word:

Work

There was an interesting study done awhile back on the effects of visualization. In the study two groups had their wrist immobilized for a month. Group A spent 11 minutes a day, 5 days a week focusing their mind and imagining that they where flexing their muscles (in the immobilized wrist) while the other group did nothing.

After a month, Group A muscle mass increased by 35 percent! So, yes, 'visualization' works but does anybody actually consider the visualization a success?

No

Why? For the simple reason that the visualization was only a mediocre result but even more importantly the visualization took actual WORK. The respondents had to spent 11 minutes every day, 5 days a week thinking about working out. So instead of working at thinking about working, they might as well have just done the real physical thing.

Which is exactly what Jim Carrey did. Yes he visualized his success but more importantly he worked and did everything in his power to make the vision a reality.

This year is still fresh and has only just half begun. Instead of visualizing, thinking big, or imagining what you will do this year, just go out and do it.

Read More: Freedom of Speech and the Changing Fascist Media


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