Winning the Mental Game: Visualizing what you're about to do

Winning the Mental Game: Visualizing what you’re about to do

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This post was orignally written back in April of 2022 as a part one to a three part sereis on mental skills to improve your daily life.

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‍Much like practicing skills that help us in our job, or a sport, or an academic pursuit we need to practice our mental skills to get stronger mentally. Ignoring these mental skills will and can lead to struggles in other aspects of your life. Understanding the mental game and the role of our subconscious is the first step in leveling up our lives and improving at our job, sport, academic pursuit or whatever else you are chasing. 

With that said, let’s read past the jump and dive into how to use our mind to our advantage through visualization. 

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I think when a lot of people think or hear of visualization they think of a meditation or a situation where someone guides them through a forest or village, where they see a part of themselves in a different scenario or environment as a tool to look at the subconscious and to find a calling or desire that they have inside them. While this is a visualization method, it is not what I am going to write about. 

Instead, I’m talking about visualizing yourself in a moment. A real-life moment that you have experienced or will experience in the future. The importance of doing this is limitless. It can and will prepare your body to do more than what you may think you are capable of.  

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Visualization is a hard skill to learn. Visualization is further a difficult skill too because most people think about it and discuss it on a high level. There is not a visualization for dummies guide, though I hope this can be that. Many people talk about meditation practices to visualize something. Or they talked about going through a guided visualization. I will talk about both of those, but I will also be introducing a simpler, more attainable visualization guide and starting point to help you through scenarios. 

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Let’s start with the guided visualization. Guided visualizations are, in my opinion the most difficult visualization skill. This is where you have someone walk you through a scenario and dive into the subconscious to see a certain version of yourself. This is a hard skill to practice; it is even harder to master. It requires you to go deep into the subconscious and react to a certain scenario or exercise. But to have that visual image, you need to build your visualization skills so that you can create the scenario that the person is guiding you through. Starting here is dangerous and may not create the intended outcome that someone is looking for. It may lead them to think that visualization is a waste of time and has no benefit. 

However, guided visualizations are extremely powerful, I’ve had some amazing self-discovery moments through guided visualizations. But it took me time to be able to hone my skills into being able to benefit from a guided visualization. There are times today when I sit in a guided visualization, and I get nowhere because I am trying to fight it and I don’t let my brain (and body) relax in the moment. However, the less visualization skills you possess, the harder it is to get takeaways from a guided visualization. 

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The next type of visualization is a meditative visualization. This is probably the most common visualization that people think of when they hear about doing a visualization or visualizing an event. And it is exactly what it sounds like, it is a visualization that comes from a meditation. Meditation is another hard skill, which makes meditative visualizations another hard skill. Again, this doesn’t mean that it is not beneficial, it just takes time to get into a state where you are comfortable enough with mediation and visualization skills. 

However, the basic premise of a meditative visualization is dropping into a meditative state (again this is hard, and I am planning on discussion meditation skills in the future) and just having the meditation walk you through a scenario. A meditative visualization is very powerful as it combines being in a meditative state where you are just experiencing a moment and visualization a certain event. Using a meditative state of bringing awareness to the body, breath, and being, allows this visualization to take you further than the next visualization type I’ll discuss. Additionally, it can be worked into a daily meditation practice to help you visualize your day or the goals and plans you have for the future. When I meditate, I always end with a vison of me giving a talk discussing these topics and others that I write about at a convention to focus and move closer to my goals. 

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Finally, that brings us to the last type of visualization which I call, situational visualizations. You can also call situational visualizations mini visualizations, as they are supposed to be short and very focused. However, just because they are short does not mean that they don’t create immense value. My whole athletic career has been carried on the back of situational visualizations and gaining mental reps through the use of situational visualizations in my life. This is where the power of visualization really shines. A short visual scenario can create positive feelings and increase your confidence in a situation. 

The brain can not tell the difference between real and perceived events. If you imagine a situation where you accomplished a big task or completed a big goal, your body will respond positively to the situation. Likewise, if you imagine a negative scenario, your body will react to that in a similar, negative, way. Your body does not care if it was real or perceived. It only reacts to the scenario. Usually, we imagine negative scenarios and experiences which leads to hesitant or fear when we actually preform the event. That’s why these situational visualizations are so strong. 

A situational visualization helps you become familiar with the unfamiliar, uncertain, and unknown. You’re able to learn and process through visualizing an event and gaining a better understanding of it and your place in it. I mentioned how my athletic career was carried through going over mental reps of plays or scenarios so when they arrived, I was adequately prepared to handle them. 

This is best illustrated by my favorite play from my college career, where I was able to contest a kickoff and win the kickoff back to our side. We practiced that play maybe once, total. But we always talked about it, what it looked like, what scenario we try it in, and whose job it was to contest it. I don’t know why but it was the five-foot seven guy who was supposed to go up and contest the ball. (We didn’t make the most intelligent decisions, but they somehow worked). 

During kickoff practice we would always walk through and jog through our assignments and make sure we knew what to expect if certain scenarios occurred. Where we adjusted on defense if we kicked deep, how we cut off the swing rotation pass, any scenario we thought of we talked about. Every time, though I would run through my job of getting as close to the ball and contesting the ball before the other team could corral it. If it was deep, my job was to hold up, but on close kicks, I had to be a bat out of hell making the defense hesitant when receiving. However, very rarely did we run the exact scenario as captured in that picture. In order to do that I took to mental reps. 

I would imagine where the ball was, how far I had to run before jumping and making a play on the ball. I still remember before we called for the short, contested kick looking over at Darragh and telling him to give me a chance at the recovery. And that’s exactly what happened. I went up, made the play. I felt prepared to execute that play because I ran it so many times in my head that I knew it was possible and I was just reacting to the moment. 

This situational visualization is important as it can prepare us for events and give us much needed confidence in the situation before it even comes. If you’re preparing a presentation for your boss or leading a meeting for the first time it may be scary (and it’s perfectly ok to be scared). But using that fear or hesitation to dampen your ability won’t get you anywhere. Walking through a situational visualization to prepare for the situation allows you to work through the fear and hesitation. You can visualize yourself in the position and how it feels to give the presentation. Then once the actual event comes you have adequately prepared for it and come in confident. 

The same thing works for preparing for an interview, sports game/event, date, etc…. visualize what it looks like and how you respond. Allow your body to get comfortable with the scenario. Then when the thing comes, you’re just reacting to the situation because you are comfortable and don’t feel hesitant in what you need to take care. You can visualize your role in a meeting, what it looks like to be successful, the feeling you get, etc… Slowly, the more you practice these situational visualizations the more comfortable you get with them the more you can evolve your visualization skills. 

You can start doing meditative visualizations, visualizing your goals and diving deeper into your subconscious. You can sit through and learn from the power of guided visualizations leaning into the sub-conscious even more. The more you visualize, the more you practice, the easier it gets. It is like any other skill. You can’t just wake up one day and become a master at it. It takes time, it takes dedication. By starting with situational visualizations, you can be better prepared for certain events and help train your mind for more positive situations. 

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The power of visualization will allow you to become comfortable in unfamiliar or uncertain scenarios and allow you go further in understanding and chasing whatever your goals are. 

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