Water mint, (yellow) monkey flower.
The Right Kind of Visualisation
Is what you see, really what you get?
There are some wild claims out there for the power of
visualisation.
Things like: if you can imagine it, then it will come to
you. Of course there’s always been
a huge market for telling people things they want to
hear, even if it’s complete rubbish.
Still, visualisation can certainly be important in
reaching goals. Much research has been conducted
in athletics which shows the power of visualisation.
Athletes are encouraged to experience
their sporting behaviour in advance to enhance their
performance.
There is now hardly a sport left that doesn’t have
psychologists
telling players to visualise their performance.
Visualisation is also used in psychological therapies to
help people change their behaviour. Alcoholics, for example, are told to
visualise how they will deal with situations
in which they’re tempted to
drink.
Effective
visualisation
So, we know that visualisations can be effective in
helping us reach goals.
But visions about the future come in many different
forms.
How do we know we’re performing the
right sort of visualisation?
Popular self-help books would have us believe that
mentally simulating the outcome
will help us achieve it. So if we imagine ourselves
getting that promotion, meeting the partner
of our dreams or just giving the house a spring clean, it
will make us more likely to achieve our goal.
We’ve already seen the dangers of fantasising about
future success.
But perhaps a more effective way of visualising the
future is to think about the processes
that are involved in reaching a goal, rather than just
the end-state of achieving it.
Process versus
outcome
Outcome and process have been put head-to-head
experimentally by Pham and Taylor (1999)
who had students either visualise their ultimate goal of
doing well in an exam
or the steps they would take to reach that goal,
i.e. studying.
The results were clear-cut. Participants who visualised
themselves reading and gaining
the required skills and knowledge, spent longer actually
studying and got better grades in the exam. (Interestingly, though, the
relationship generally found between time spent studying
and good grades is surprisingly weak.)
There were two
reasons the visualising the process worked:
Planning: visualising the process helped focus attention
on the steps needed to reach the goal.
Emotion: process visualisation led to reduced anxiety.
The planning
fallacy
One of the reasons just visualising an outcome doesn’t
work is the planning fallacy. This is our completely normal assumption that
everything will be much easier than it really will be.
It still strikes people, even after years and years of
experience.
We continually fail to anticipate just how much of any
plan can and will go wrong.
Thinking about the process, though, helps to focus the
mind on potential problems
and how to overcome them.
Just dreaming about a goal may actually be worse than
ineffective, it may reduce our performance. In the current study participants
who just envisioned a successful outcome
studied less and actually had reduced motivation.
So, be careful what you wish for. Instead visualise how
you might achieve it.
http://www.spring.org.uk/2011/03/the-right-kind-of-visualisation.php
Turbo Charged Reading: Read
more>>>Read fast>>>Remember all>>>Years later
You can TCR software and engineering manuals for spontaneous
recall – or pass that exam.
I can Turbo Charge Read a novel
6-7 times faster and remember what I’ve read.
I can TCR an
instructional/academic book around 20 times
faster and remember
what I’ve read.
Perhaps you’d like to check out my sister blogs:
All aspects of regular, each-word reading and education.
Turbo Charged Reading uses these skills significantly faster
www.ourinnerminds.blogspot.com
Personal business
development.
www.happyartaccidents.blogspot.com
just for fun.
To quote the Dr Seuss himself, “The more that you read, the
more things you will know.
The more that you learn; the more places you'll go.”
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