Imagery – The Power of Visualisation
This is where the whole visualisation thing comes in. “Imagery” is the final key element. We think in images. Most brains attach an image to a word, a thought, an event, a concept, or idea. We don’t think in letters or words. We tend to think in terms of pictures and abstractions.
The images that we attach will come out of all our life experiences and the things we have been exposed to and seen. So, the images we attach to words are also uniquely an individual thing.
If I say the word ‘DOG’ to you, your mind does not see the letters D-O-G. It immediately sees an image of whatever you associate with the word dog. This is based on all of your experiences and what you have attached to the word DOG.
That image will be completely different to the image that I see in my mind that I associate with ‘dog’.
So, you need to use words that conjure the most vivid image possible that represents how you will be and what you will feel when that affirmation has come to pass.
This serves to illustrate the need to be both precise in the image of your affirmation but also that It must be in your words.
The words you use to describe something often conjure a different image in someone elses mind, so you can’t use someone elses words to form your affirmative self-talk.
How many arguements or disagreements have ensued because of a difference in perception? What you have said, they have heard but its been interpreted by the emotions, thoughts and experiences that they have around that topic.
Even something as simple as color can effect words and images i.e. two people can see the same color, but one calls it blue and the other green.
Therefore, clarity is important. If I had said big black dog you might have seen something more like this.
However, if say to you, “Big, black, one-eyed, three-legged, drooling dog”, then your initial image shifts dramatically and comes more in line with what I’m seeing in my mind’s eye.
Yet there still maybe many other variables that differ between my mental picture and yours.
What I think is big may vary considerably to what you think is big. I might be seeing a black Labrador; you might be visualising a Rottweiler.
So, the words you choose for your affirmation are really important. They have to have meaning to you and create a clear emotive image of some kind.
That way your affirmation will have power. It will get traction and seem more real to your RAS than what you are currently experiencing or living.
If your imagery is powerful enough then it may even provoke a physiological response.
If the words in your affirmation can produce a response like this then adds more power to the absorbing of that affirmation.
Try this exercise. Imagine you are in a field and right in the middle of the lovely, rolling, green -grassed field is lemon tree, full to bursting with large succulent looking lemons. A few blossoms remain on some branches.
You inhale: a deep breath through your nose. The crisp clean smell of lemon blossoms and lemon fruit fills your senses and the energised air expands in your lungs filling you with vitality. It gives you a lovely subtle sensation of light-headedness. You can feel your body being uplifted by it.
The sun is high in the sky and its warm and soothing. A warm breeze wafts gently around you ebbing and flowing, and a sense of calm and peace settles upon you.
Standing in front of the tree, ankle deep in the lush emerald green grass, you admire it’s the tree’s beauty. Its leaves a verdant deep green, the light reflecting off their shiny, waxy surface, and it’s heady fragrance.
The lemon fruits hang in abundance like yellow baubles on a Christmas tree. You can’t’ resist so you reach up and pluck off a plump lemon. A satisfying crisp ‘snap’ emanates from the stem. You can feel the fruit’s heaviness, its waxiness, and the fine dimpled pores with your fingertips. Now take a great big bite of the lemon.
If I’ve done a decent job at creating some mental imagery for you then you should have mouthful of saliva because in your mind you can vividly taste the acidy bitterness of the lemon.
This is in stark contrast to the rest of the visual and sensory feast created by the words. This serves the purpose of illustrating that good strong imagery can generate an involuntary physical response.
I am not, however, suggesting your affirmation be paragraphs long. It is only an example of the power of imagery.
That vivid image adds more force to the conflict in your RAS. The conflict that you are trying to create between what you are currently living and what you are vividly imagining.
The more powerful and evocative the image the greater the RAS ‘s response. It will move you toward the stronger image. Then the quicker and more efficiently you bring about the change you desire.
These points together constitute the basis of creating a powerful affirmation.
Let's Craft aN Affirmation to Visualize
Now is a good time to attempt to design and craft your first golf-related affirmation. Choose something simple that you want to change or improve first such as confidence with your putter or reading the greens – follow the rules and have fun. i.e. remember…
Your affirmation must be
- First Person
- Present-tense
- Experiential
- Imagery
It could be something as simple as”I am a great putter”. But please don’t use my words, use your own, and be a little more clear an detailed e.g. only “I am a fantastic putter and love watching the ball roll precisely on line dropping into the cup with that familiar clattering sound”.
Pick a course you know intimately and can see each green in your mind. Apply the next section to the image of you sinking putts from every direction and disctance.
Now that you have a powerful RAS-conflict producing, reality-changing affirmation and associated visualisation, what do you do with it?
Put it in your bottom drawer and wait for it to happen? Absolutely not! Crafting the affirmation correctly is only half the job.
Your affirmation should now contain all the attributes it requires to create a conflict – cognitive dissonance – between what you are living daily and the stronger vividly- imagined reality of your affirmation.
It is critical that your affirmation be assimilated, so it becomes so much of a reality to you and your RAS/brain that you are driven towards that goal automatically.
Assimilation comes through constant and continual repetition so that your affirmation becomes more real than what you are currently seeing and/or living.
Assimilation comes through constant and continual repetition so that your affirmation becomes more real than what you are currently seeing and/or living.
Like in the example of the new car discussed previously, it wasn’t seeing the car once, or the purchasing of the vehicle that created the subconscious awareness of it that brought it to your awareness.
It was continually mentally and vocally mulling it over and thinking about it.
So, it should be with your affirmation. It must be meditated upon and mulled over and vocalised (self-talk if private).
Like a cow chewing its cud you must mull over it and think about it. And like a cow it’s not over once you have swallowed it. It stews around in the digestive juices of your mind being mixed and turned over. Then you deliberately, with will and intention, bring it back up and chew on it some more.
That analogy may sound a bit gross but that is what needs to be done with an affirmation. The chewing is deliberate mental meditation. The swallowing and digestion are the ‘other than conscious’, mental processes that weigh it up and rate if it has worth. Is it something you really desire?
Regurgitating and re-chewing is adding purpose and intent by deliberately thinking about, mulling it over by speaking it and looking at it so your brain will listen, see and feel it.
Eventually, like the cow’s cud, it is finally swallowed and completely and thoroughly absorbed. In this way the affirmation becomes a part of you.
Assimilate Phase Two
Yes, I get it, but do I do it all day, I hear you cry? Repetition, as mentioned, is essential, but of equal importance are the conditions under which the repetitions take place.
Your brain-changing, new habit-forming affirmation and visualisation needs to be read out loud to yourself frequently. A minimum is first thing in the morning and last thing at night when your brain is at is most receptive and least busy.
Why? Because there is an interesting exchange that takes place in your brain when you talk, especially self-talk. There is a part of your brain that thinks and there is a part that listens. They interact with each other.
The thinking part of your brain actually stops thinking to listen to what you are saying and assesses how it lines up with your thoughts and what you really believe.
A simple example of this:
- Count from one to twenty in your mind or thoughts.
- Somewhere during the course of counting say your name out loud three times in a row.
You should most likely have found that you stopped counting while you spoke only to resume where you left off.
But many can’t recall where in the count they got up to it is so distracting to them.
You stop counting because your brain stops to listen to your words -your self-talk – because what you say is important to it. This is an example of why so many counsellors and psychologists, especially sports psychologists, emphasise the importance of positive self-talk.
What you say to yourself about yourself is not only a reflection of your core beliefs and what you believe about yourself, but is also what you will exhibit in related behaviours and actions.
I can listen to a person in conversation for only a relatively short while and their core beliefs and true self will reveal itself in their speech.
It is true that whatever you are filled with and focused on, no matter how guarded you are, will always bubble to the surface and show up in what you speak and do eventually.
Primacy – Recency
So, speaking your affirmation to yourself morning and night is a bare minimum. ‘Primacy/Recency’, which in simple terms means that what you hear first and last at a point in the day gets more traction in your brain e.g. the last song you hear on the radio before you get out of your car sticks.
This is why it is such a good practice to speak your affirmation first thing in the morning and last thing at night.
It’s not restricted to those times as the more often you speak and visualise it the quicker it becomes more real to your brain. Don’t rush through it though. You need to conjure the images and emotion attached for your brain to respond.
There might be lots of things you want to change or improve but when you are starting it’s is best just to choose one important thing you want to change. Work on that and when you have gotten your breakthrough there you will be super motivated to work on the next change or two.
Science tells us that somewhere between 21 and 28 days of focus your brain is convinced that what you are saying and imaging is far more real than what you are living that it goes to work producing the change you desire.
The better the construction of your affirmation and the more you repeat it the quicker the transformation will take place.
The Reticular Activating System is so powerful and exerts such a strong influence over your behaviours, actions and perceptions that whatever it believes to be the truth and reality, it will move towards whether real or imagined.
It will generate behaviours, create circumstances, and manifest coincidence that drive you toward that imagined reality.
Yes, it does require some will-power to initiate the process, but the profound success it produces soon generates momentum and brings about radical change.
In Summary
“You can change anything and everything in your life… simply by deciding to.”
Use the power of visualisation and a well-constructed affirmation so that what you are seeing, feeling and imagining will becomes a part of you… hard wired into your brain and your perception of yourself.
Remember your affirmation must be
- First Person
- Present-tense
- Experiential
- Imagery
And with the power of self-talk, visualisation and repetition you can move the mountains in your golf game, as well as in your life and open up new and exciting adventure and opportunity.