Introducing visualisation
Visualisation is one of the most valuable resources we can access. It is a secret skill that has unlocked performance in elite athletes, musicians, CEOs and billionaires, but it is rarely spoken about in your typical social circles. Here’s the thing – what if I told you that visualisation could be the secret ingredient to your success?
In recent years, there has been a surge in the popularity of exploring how the mind can impact our health and well-being using techniques such as meditation and mindfulness. Approaches which are substantiated by an impressive volume of research, but there is still a lot to learn about the power and resilience of the human mind. Enter, visualisation!
Visualisation simply refers to creating mental imagery in a person’s mind, which almost all of us do anyway. But the visualisation I will write about in this article is much more than creating mere images. Another way I like to describe visualisation is by using the term mental preparation. We can use visualisation to mentally prepare for future experiences to give ourselves every opportunity to showcase our best side, and rehearse potentially stressful situations.
When we create mental imagery and layer it with detailed scenarios that we have experienced or will experience in the future, we can live them as if they are real experiences. Each visualisation can be customised to any scenario we need to prepare for. That is why visualisation doesn’t just apply to a select few high achievers; it applies to everyone who wants to perform at their best and unlock their potential.
You already know how to use visualisation
When you think about a future event and feel excited, nervous, or otherwise uncertain, you are using visualisation. Your brain is preparing you for potential situations and creating genuine emotions to go with them. For example, think about how you would feel if you were going skydiving this weekend. Would you sit there nervously thinking about everything that could go wrong, how you will feel before you jump, or how great it will be once it’s all over and you are celebrating? That is visualisation! However, because you are using visualisation to anticipate a stressful experience, and you have a specific purpose for that visualisation, we call this type of visualisation, mental preparation [1].
This mental preparation allows you to think about and anticipate the likelihood of different outcomes, limit stress and anxiety on the day, improve goal-directed behaviours, and ultimately unleash your true potential in those vital moments [2,3]; and it doesn’t need to be jumping out of an aeroplane. Mental preparation can be helpful when predicting how an important interview might go tomorrow, how your presentation will be received, or what will happen during a first date this weekend.
If you have considered situations like this before, you have utilised episodic future thinking [4]. This really just means that you have imagined the expected outcomes of events in your personal future and then incorporated visualisation into your life to prepare for what might happen. We are hard wired to be cautious in unfamiliar scenarios, and like it or not, we generally feel happier and more composed without any big surprises. That is why, when we visualise what might happen, it can help us build confidence that we wont be walking into the big unknown, we already have an idea about what to expect.
The truth is we are only just beginning to scratch the surface of how useful visualisation can be for us.
One of the advantages of visualisation is that, unlike real-life situations, which provoke a wide range of emotions and firmly plant us in that situation (we can’t just stop and leave a vital presentation if we feel anxious), visualisation allows us to repeat scenarios, alter details, rehearse situations, or stop at any time we feel overwhelmed. We can prepare for or relive experiences in a safe environment and are given the time to reflect on our feelings and how we would want to respond in those situations. In a sense, we gain experience without having to leave the room , and, as it turns out, your brain reacts to imagined experiences as it would in real life, preparing you for the real thing. Impressive, right?
For the rest of this article, I will explain the underlying scientific concepts of visualisation and what happens in the brain when we do it. I will also describe how to visualise scenarios for yourself and break down the essential components of a visualisation, including some surprising rules you might not expect.
Ultimately, we will explore how visualisation can enhance your performance in any situation by learning how you can get out of your own way and unleash your potential.
Have you ever used visualisation?
YES
NO
The scientific data
The idea that we can use our mind to prepare for upcoming situations and ready ourselves for their real-world encounters is not a brand new concept. Research into visualisation has been an important focus to cognitive psychology for years. Visualisation, or at least components of it, has already demonstrated its utility in helping people with post-traumatic stress disorder, phobias, and behavioural disorders. However, visualisation as a performance technique has gained more interest recently, and for good reason, but is typically focused on performance-related outcomes within sports. There is strong evidence that sports psychology, particularly with a focus on results and goal visualisation, can help to optimise performance [5]. For example, elite runners who visualised performance-related challenges they might face during a race, such as pain and tiredness, outperformed runners who tried to distract themselves by ignoring them when they occurred [6-8]. Olympic athletes were three times more likely to meet their individual goals when they planned for adversity through mental preparation [9].
In fact, Michael Phelps, the most successful Olympian of all time, has famously credited some of his success to visualisation. It was his secret weapon for overcoming adversity and potential obstacles he might face, and he is known to have visualised races at least 100 times before race day.
Moving away from clinical and sports psychology, visualisation eventually made it to other sectors, such as business, medicine and surgery. With so much medical knowledge to acquire in a relatively short number of years, there has been a strong focus on improving learning among medical students, and researchers have started to look for non-conventional ways to find improvements in learning outcomes. Studies have shown benefits of using visualisation techniques, either alone or in combination with other strategies, to enhance surgical skills in medical students [10].
While there may be specific professions that want to take advantage of the benefits of visualisation, the reason why it will become more mainstream over the next 10 years is because visualisation can fit into everyones lives because and produce wide ranging advantages. Neuroscience has demonstrated how cognitive processes such as classical conditioning (automatic responses to a stimulus), perceptual learning (our ability to get better with practice, particularly in vision or hearing), problem-solving, and reducing anxiety, can all be influenced by visualisation [11-13]. It is no wonder that visualisation has also been used in the business sector, with top executives and celebrities utilising some aspect of visualisation. Not only are there substantial benefits to our daily lives, but visualisation has also been implicated in improving our ability to recognise opportunities for the future allowing us to reach greater heights of success (although research in this area needs substantiating) [14].
The truth is we are only just beginning to scratch the surface of how useful visualisation can be for us.
What happens in the brain during visualisation?
When visualisation was first studied in the lab, most research focused on understanding the inter-neuronal processes that occur throughout the brain. Essentially, this meant looking at the visual cortex and how similar its effort-based activation was compared with real life. In the 1990s and early 2000s, it took a while to understand these processes because each study, using slightly different testing paradigms, showed variable results [15-18]. However, as more research was undertaken over the years, a clearer picture of the brain’s processes gradually revealed itself.
Essentially, these types of studies described a brain that would become particularly active even when it was presented with no external stimulus, or in other words, visualising a real experience would cause our brain to react as if it was real [19]. This is particularly evident in the ventral temporal cortex, and the left hemisphere of the brain, although visualisation will recruit various brain regions (such as the frontal and visual cortex), as it would in real life. While subtle differences exist between brain activity from a real experience versus an imagined one, the overlap is impressive. What’s more, is that these studies demonstrated that the more detailed and convincing you can make your visualisations, the more your brain will learn from the experience [20]. The brain doesn’t seem to care where your experiences come from, it just wants to learn and improve.
Visualisation using your emotions
Arguably, one of the best uses of visualisation comes from training us to deal with stressful situations by rehearsing them in our mind. In this manner, we can put ourselves through (potentially hundreds) scenarios until we become more comfortable when the real-life experiences occur. We can perform better under pressure because we have become habituated to stress, which no longer strongly influences our behaviour.
Using visualisation to mentally prepare for stressful events helps because it acts as a form of exposure therapy. Typically, exposure therapy is a process to allow us to become more comfortable in stressful or triggering situations by exposing ourselves, little by little, to the stimulus until we reach a certain level of comfort. This works particularly well when combining visualisation with things phobias or anxiety from public speaking [21]. A good example of this was shown in a study published last year by a group in the Netherlands [22]. The researchers took a group of people and gave them a public speaking task. Before speaking, one group utilised visualisation, while the control group did not. The visualisation group reported significantly lower anxiety levels before and during public speaking. Perhaps the most fascinating thing about this study was that the visualisation only needed to be 4 minutes long to provide a positive effect. If we translate this finding into our own lives, it means that taking a quiet moment before a stressful event to use visualisation can be used by almost anyone to regain composure, confidence, and reduce anxiety [23].
Visualisation can also help you to ‘re-wire’ your brain by invoking a process called associative learning. Associative learning causes us to affix feelings and emotions with specific stimuli. For example, if you see an adorable tiny penguin, you quickly recognise it as a penguin, and your brain fires up the associations it has previously made, such as “it is cute, and I feel happy now” (technically, there is a little more to it than this, but you get the general idea). This can work to your advantage. Suppose you practice visualisation using scenarios which will naturally cause you to feel anxious. In that case, you can consciously tag a positive feeling to it, like excitement or confidence. If each time you visualise the scenario, you remind yourself of how excited you should be, and more importantly, you genuinely feel those emotions during the visualisation, then you can train your brain to associate that stimulus with the emotional response you want, and feel that way when the time comes in real life [24]. This will work better if you are specific about the stimulus. For example, feeling anxious about making a phone call would require visualising the moment you pick up the phone, and feeling confident and enthusiastic about anything that happens next. It requires repeated visualisations, but it is possible.
As I said before, and I think it is worth repeating, this concept, in my opinion, is the most crucial takeaway from visualisation. Whether in sports, business, or daily life, performance benefits generally come from overcoming stress and panic during real-life events so you can work at your best. What I mean by this is that we are often prevented from making optimal decisions because of how we feel. Frustration, anger, anxiety, worry, fear of failure, and imposter syndrome, are just some of the negative emotions that impact our memory recall, decision-making, and overall performance in whatever it is we are trying to do. If we can learn to master those emotions when we are required to perform, we can regain confidence and self-belief and allow ourselves to operate at our potential. Of course, visualisation can help with much more than overcoming negative emotions and potential challenges, but I do believe this approach is where the most substantial benefits from; limiting the impact of unexpected and stressful obstacles, so we can remain confident and composed when we are faced with their real-life counterparts.
You have stumbled, but you get back up
Visualisation can help with upcoming situations, but what about when we have had bad experiences and are worried about repeating them? Let’s say you are an entrepreneur and last year you failed to secure much needed capital you were confident about receiving. Heading into a new round of potential funding isn’t going to leave you feeling ecstatic and confident. If you have attended 20 interviews without landing a job, then the next interview is going to feel a little hopeless and frustrating. In these situations, we can use visualisation to rewrite history. We can choose to incorporate those experiences into our visualisations, rehearse and practice them, and revisit those situations in our mind to change the outcome for the better.
This concept can be explained by something called imagery rescripting. Imagery rescripting is a process undertaken with a trained therapist where a person essentially re-writes their emotional response to previous bad experiences. They are guided through reliving memories, visualising themselves, revisiting that memory at their current age, and intervening to improve the memory and its impact on future behaviours [25]. While this is a complex process, the underlying principles can help explain why visualisation can benefit us when we are preparing for scenarios which may be stressful, especially if we have already experienced setbacks in the past [12].
The mind has the potential to recreate positive associations with events and stimuli. If you revisit those pitch meetings or interviews in your visualisation, then you can recreate more positive outcomes and use that confidence to help motivate you and prepare for your future scenarios. It can be a long process with each visualisation working hard to frame the experience positively, but it is yet another reason why investing in yourself, and techniques such as visualisation, can help you work towards your goals and outcomes. Why? Because this ties in with several ideas, most importantly, something known as the ‘retrieval competition theory’ [26]. This theory explains how attributes such as our confidence and self belief are influenced by previous autobiographical memories. When we create new positive memories and associations, our brain has to choose which one to use to guide our decisions and behaviours. By creating visualisations where we improve our motivation, self belief, confidence, and positivity, the brain is more likely to refer to these experiences moving forward. In addition, it limits the impact of previous emotional stress on our future outcomes [27,28]. Visualisation can be the technique to help create a more positive outlook for your future experiences.
Experience counts
Earlier, I mentioned how Olympic legend Michael Phelps would visualise swimming events up to 100 times before each race day. While your own visualisations don’t necessarily need to rack up these kinds of air miles, just as in real life, there is value in repetition.
Visualisation allows us to repeat scenarios as often as we want, choose when we visualise the event, run through possible scenarios, unexpected questions or issues raised, and gain from that experience, even if it is only imagined. Why go through the trouble of 100 real-life product pitches if you can perfect your pitch before you even begin with number 1? While we can never make visualisations exactly like real life, we still benefit from the experience, and repetition gains us more experience.
A collaborative study by a number of European research centres [29] compared decision-making between entrepreneurs and managers. It was a small but well-conducted study using a task that involved around 50 people with a broad range of experiences, who sat in an MRI scanner while performing a decision-making task. Overall, the results showed a benefit to entrepreneurs in a number of parameters, but perhaps most interesting was the entrepreneurs' decision-making. Entrepreneurs got the same result as managers but in less time, effectively making optimal decisions more efficiently. This was reflected in MRI imaging of the brain, showing different levels of activation in the decision-making regions within the frontal cortex (areas such as the prefrontal cortex, orbitofrontal cortex, and cingulate cortex). The researchers suggested that entrepreneurs had more experience with different situations in a broad range of tasks compared with managers. Within the study, this meant they were more likely to switch to a winning strategy sooner and disengage from the losing strategy more effectively. Although we can’t draw major conclusions from these types of small-scale studies (so don’t worry if you are a manager and reading this), they do tell us that experience probably counts for a lot more than we realise. Using visualisation as a tool for mental preparation can allow us to rehearse a broad range of scenarios and anticipate how we would react to each of them. Here, it is less about creating a perfect script to memorise but more about allowing your brain to learn from different scenarios, even imagined ones. The brain is a learning machine – feed it experiences and let it work its magic.
How to use visualisation: The good, the bad, and the ugly
When we talk about visualising outcomes and using them as a tool for mental preparation, it is common to imagine only the positives. For example, if we have a 10km run coming up, we instinctively focus on how great it will feel when we cross the finish line. Or, if we have an important meeting tomorrow, we might be tempted to focus on achieving all of our goals and even ending up on the shoulders of the interview panel, with everybody cheering our name. “You did it, you’re the best!” While there is a substantial benefit to incorporating positive outcomes in our visualisation (such as enhancing our perceived control of the situation and proving confidence) [30], the main benefit comes from imaging the bad scenarios—the worst-case scenarios—what could go wrong, and how we will deal with it.
When we visualise the challenges and setbacks, we are training ourselves on how to respond to them. Specifically, we put our body and brain through the emotional turmoil and stress of that negative outcome. That could be feeling tired or falling over and injuring ourselves during that 10km, and maybe even feeling too sore to continue. Or, that meeting coming up we here we really need to impress, could push us into situations where we are faced with tough questions, long silences when we can’t think of the information we need, or feeling embarrassed in an awkward situation. Visualising these situations is essential. It is not necessarily about rehearsing exactly how you should respond in those situations (although that is certainly helpful and a useful technique), instead, it is about putting yourself through the stressful and often debilitating emotions we would feel. By the time these setbacks occur in real life, as far as our brain knows, we have already experienced them many of times before. We know the feeling and expect the stress, and have become very familiar with them all. We are able to overcome the temptation to panic and instead, we can free up our attention and other resources to perform at our best. We can improve our decision-making, memory recall and regain our determination to do well, despite the obstacles. This is what I mean when I talk about getting out of your own way to unleash your potential. None of us can perform at our optimal level when we feel anxious, stressed, or in the firing line of whatever obstacle has its sights on us. If we can put ourselves through those situations in the comfort of our own visualisations, then when they present themselves in real life, they are no longer obstacles, they are merely situations we have repeatedly encountered and always survived.
TRY IT YOURSELF:
If you are new to visualisation or just want to get the most out of it, choose a quiet setting with no distractions. Laying on your bed or in a comfortable chair will be perfect, especially in the morning when you are already relaxed after sleeping. Close your eyes and focus on the scenario you want to visualise for the next 5-10 minutes.
Make it as real as possible. The brain will respond better when it thinks the experience is really happening. To do this, add details to whatever you want to visualise. What time of day is it? How many people are next to you? What are you wearing? Is it cold or hot? Are you sweating? How do you feel (really focus on this)? Are you confident, nervous, tired, or excited? Are other people there, and how do they perceive you? Make sure to create visualisations that are as true to real life as possible by engaging all your senses, not just what you see. Can you hear anything, smell anything, taste anything (like chlorine if you are swimming, rain if you are running, or coffee if you normally drink it before a meeting)? Take your time to systematically go through each one of these points.
Visualise the situation as you think it will occur (past experiences help a lot with this step). Try to visualise something going wrong. Let your mind wander to areas that make you feel uncomfortable and try to learn from them.
At any moment (with your eyes closed), you can ‘freeze’ the visualisation and take stock of how you are feeling and would like to respond to these situations. Overcome that obstacle!
Finally, it is essential that you end each visualisation on a positive note. This has the benefit of increasing confidence and your positive affectivity [31]. It can also influence motivation, decision-making, and goal achievement [4,32]. End the visualisation by completing your goal, objective, or anything you want to go well. Take a moment to really feel that success. Embrace the good feeling you get.
Repetition. Be sure to repeat visualisations as often as you need to so you can gain the true benefit from them. As of yet, there is no consensus on the number of visualisations, so do whatever feels right for you, but you can never have too much experience.
We can each use visualisation for our own purposes, and there isn’t necessarily a wrong way to do it. Some people like to make notes after each time, which can help them overcome specific areas of concern; others like to repeat visualisations often to gain confidence that there will be fewer surprises when the real time comes.
No matter what you use visualisation for, what obstacles you face, or what challenges lay ahead of you, always remember……you are incredible, and it’s about time the world knows it.
REFERENCES
Barsics, C., et al. (2016). Frequency, characteristics, and perceived functions of emotional future thinking in daily life. Quart J Exp Psych; 69 (2), 217-233
Miloyan, B. & Suddendorf, T. (2015). Feelings of the future. Trends in Cog Sci; 19 (4), 196-200
Finch, K. & Moscovitch, D. A. (2016). Imagery-based interventions for music performance anxiety: An integrative review. Med Prob Perf Art; 31 (4), 222-231
Schacter, D. L., et al. (2017). Episodic future thinking: Mechanisms and functions. Curt Op Behave Sci; 17, 41-50
Martin, J. (2012). Mental preparation for the 2014 winter Paralympic Games. Coin J Sport Med; 22 (1), 70-73
Masters, K. S. & Ogles, B. M. (1998). Associative and dissociative cognitive strategies in exercise and running: 20 years later, what do we know? The Sport Psych; 12, 253-270
Morgan, W. P. & Pollock, M. L. (1984). Psychologic characterisation of the elite distance runner. Ann Y Acad Sci; 301, 382-403
Frimmel, K., et al. (2017). Mental preparation techniques and accomplishment of race goals by ironman triathletes: A qualitative investigation. J Sports Sci; 5, 157-166
Gould, D. D., et al. (1999). Factors affecting Olympic performance: Perceptions of athletes and coaches from more and less successful teams. The Sport Psych; 13 (4), 371-394
Yiasemidou, M., et al. (2017). Patient-specific mental rehearsal with interactive visual aids: a path worth exploring? Sure Endow; 32 (1), 1165-1173
Antonietti, A., et al. (1994). Mental visualization before and after problem presentation: A comparison. Percep Motor Skills; 78, 179-189
Frets, P. G., et al. (2014). Imagery rescripting as a stand-alone treatment for patients with social phobia: A case series. J Ben There Exp Psych; 45, 160-169
Tartaglia, E. M., et al. (2009). Human perceptual learning by mental imagery. Current Bio; 19, 2081-2085
Gaglio, C. M. (2004). The role of mental simulations and counterfactual thinking in the opportunity identification process. Enter Theory & Practice; 28 (6), 533-552
Ishai, A., et al. (2000). Distributed neural systems for the generation of visual images. Neuron; 28, 979-990
Trojano, L., et al. (2000). Matching two imagined clocks: The functional anatomy of spatial analysis in the absence of visual stimulation. Car Cort; 10, 473-481
Ganis, G., et al. (2004). Brain areas underlying visual mental imagery and visual perception: An fMRI study. Cog Brain Res; 20, 226-241
Handy, T., et al. (2004). Visual imagery and memory: Do retrieval strategies affect what the mind’s eye sees? Our J Cog Psych; 16, 631-652
Pearson, J., et al. (2015). Mental imagery: Functional mechanisms and clinical applications. Trends in Cog Sci; 19 (10)
20.Thirion, B., et al. (2006). Inverse retinopathy: Inferring the visual content of images from brain activation patterns. Neuroimage; 33, 1104-1116
McGlade, A. L. & Crake, M. G. (2021). Optimizing exposure: Between-session mental rehearsal as an augmentation strategy. Behave Res There; 139
Landkroon, E., et al. (2022). Future-oriented positive mental imagery reduces anxiety for exposure to public speaking. Behave There; 53, 80-91
23.Jing, H. G., et al. (2016). Worrying about the future: An episodic specificity induction impacts problem solving, reappraisal, and wellbeing. J Exp Psych: Gen; 145 (4), 402-418
Lewis, D. E., et al. (2013). Conditioning the mind’s eye: Associative learning with voluntary mental imagery. Coin Psych Sci; 1 (4), 390-400
Holmes, E. A., et al. (2007). Imagery rescripting in cognitive behaviour therapy: images, treatment techniques and outcomes. J Behav There Exp Psych; 38, 297-305
26.Brewin, C. R., et al. (2006). Understanding cognitive behavioural therapy: A retrieval competition account. Behav Res & There; 44, 765-784
Arntz, A. (2012). Imagery rescripting as a therapeutic technique: Review of clinical trails, basis studies, and research agenda. J Exp Psychopath; 3 (2), 189-208
Arntz, . & Weerman, A. (1999). Treatment of childhood memories: Theory and practice. Behav Res & There; 37, 715-740
Laureiro-Martinez, D., et al. (2014). Frontopolar cortex and decision-making efficiency: comparing brain activity of experts with different professional background during an exploration-exploitation task. Front Hum Neuro; 22 (7)
30.Boland, J., et al. (2018). A brighter future: The effect of positive episodic simulation on future predictions in non-depressed, moderately dysphoric and highly dysphoric individuals. Behav Res & Ther; 100, 7-16
Schubert, T., et al. (2020). How imagining personal future scenarios influences affect: Systematic review and meta-analysis. Clin Psych Rev; 75
32.Holmes, E. A., et al. (2006). Positive interpretation training: Effects of mental imagery versus verbal training on positive mood. Behave There; 37, 237-247