Why Visualize?

I have visualized every single day for the last 6 years. Why? Because every single successful person I have spoken to has told me they wouldn’t be where they are today without it. These are Olympians, decorated entrepreneurs, award-winning academics, etc.

My mentor told me just last week, “Everything I visualized when I was your age became my reality today.”

He told me it’s honestly scary how similar his visions were to his everyday life today. He told me when the company he helped start and grow IPO’d, it felt normal because he had seen it in his head a million times. He said when he took his first 7 figure dividend from another company he started, he felt like it had already happened. He said when he met the woman of his dreams, he felt like he’d known her forever.

In athletics, we’re trained to visualize. We’re trained to take ourselves through the steps of each competition to familiarize ourselves with what can go right AND with what can go wrong.

Every morning, I woke up and put myself in the setting of an upcoming heptathlon / decathlon. I would imagine everything down to the smells, the weather, the people I was competing against, the equipment I was using, how I tied my shoes, everything!

Then, I would run myself through every event. How was I executing my technique, how did I feel, what was my coach telling me, what jokes were my teammates telling, how bad did the damn 1500m hurt…? I would run through it all.

Hell, I even threw on my uniform and spikes in my bedroom one time and ran through a competition I missed because I was quarantined! I went through every scenario, each event, and wrote up a report on my stats from the meet and looked at it every morning. It felt so real.

And I would not only run through the competition itself, I would imagine the feeling of breaking the school record, of qualifying for NCAA’s, of medaling at the conference meet, of winning the conference meet as a team, or finally holding that All-American trophy.

The benefit of taking myself through every possible situation? I knew exactly what was ahead. I knew what was to come. And after days, months, and years of training my mind, it all felt normal when I finally arrived at the national meet or when I was finally handed my medal, ring, or trophy.

Beyond athletics, I’ve implemented this practice into every other aspect of life. Relationships, business career, wealth, health, personal branding, etc. I want to see clearly what is to come of my future and what I will do to make it a reality.

In the short term, I’ve seen many of these things come to fruition. In the long term…I guess we’ll have to come back to this email to see if my visualizations have come true.

So, what would this practice look like for you? What do you want to achieve in the coming week, month, year, decade, 20 years, 30 years, etc. I invite you to train your brain with me. To see clearly what you have hoped for your whole life.

Make it a daily practice. Run yourself through making that massive sale, meeting that person that fully understands you, setting that personal best in the gym, cracking par on the golf course…run through everything you want to see come true in the near future.

Then ask, “What do I want when I’m 30? 40? 50? 60? 70?” You get the point. Take 15-30 minutes once per week and run yourself through your ideal life. Step by step, year by year, and let’s work towards making that dream into our reality.

Best of luck out there…the world is ours :)