Seeds for Change Wellness
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Seeing with Your Mind's Eye by Brian Tracy
Success is not an accident. It is a deliberate, systematic process of deciding where you want to go and what it
will look like when you get there, and then taking the steps, day by day, to turn those dreams into realities.
And perhaps the most powerful of all tools for success you can learn to use is visualization, seeing with the
mind’s eye.
Visualization is an absolutely amazing process that is used by highly successful men and women. However, it is
a power that is available to everyone. And the better you get at visualization, the more rapidly you move
forward to accomplish your goals and aspirations. Perhaps the best statement on visualization comes from
Denis Waitley, who says, “Your imagination is your preview of life’s coming attractions.”
All improvement in your life begins with an improvement in your mental pictures. Your mental pictures act as a
guidance mechanism that causes you to act in ways that make your mental pictures come true in your life.
The Law of Correspondence says that “As within, so without.” It says that your outer world tends to be a
reflection of your inner world-like a mirror. What you see in the world around you will be consistent over time
with the world inside you. The Law of Concentration says that “Whatever you dwell upon grows in your reality.”
Those two laws in combination explain much of success and most of failure.
Successful people are those who continually think about pictures and images of the people they would like to
be and the lives they would like to lead. Unsuccessful people, unfortunately, are those who continually dwell
upon and imagine exactly the things they don’t want to happen in their lives. Your subconscious mind is
extraordinarily powerful, but it is a servant, not a master.
Your subconscious mind coordinates every aspect of your thoughts, feelings, behaviors, words, actions and
emotions to fit a pattern consistent with your dominant mental pictures. It guides you to engage in the behaviors
that move you ever closer to achieving the goals you visualize most of the time. But your subconscious mind
merely accepts commands from your conscious, visualizing mind. If you visualize something that you fear, your
subconscious mind will accept that as a command as well. It will then use its marvelous powers to bring your
fears, instead of your dreams and aspirations, into reality.
Over and over, in surveys and tests, it has been found that successful, happy people think about successful,
happy things most of the time. Unsuccessful, unhappy people, on the other hand, continually dwell upon and
mull over the people they dislike, the situations they are angry about and the events that they don’t wish to
occur in their lives. And-surprise! surprise!-whatever a person thinks about continually, either positive or
negative, tends to materialize in the world around him.
Since virtually no schools or courses ever teach people about the power of visualization, average people use it
in a random, or haphazard, way most of the time. Instead of continually thinking about the things they desire
and, therefore, moving consistently toward them, average people think first about something they want, and
then they think about something they don’t want. They think about things they desire, and they think about
things they fear. They think about people they like, and they think about people they dislike. They think about
success, and they think about failure. They think about wealth, and they think about poverty. They think about
having a nice life, and they think about being impoverished or being deeply in debt. And then they can’t
understand why their life seems to go back and forth, back and forth, and they make very little progress.
The starting point of great success in your life begins, in the simplest terms, when you discipline yourself to
think and talk about only the things you want and refuse to think and talk about anything you don’t want. The
fact is that your mind is so powerful that if you don’t want something, you must absolutely refrain from allowing
yourself to think about it when it comes into your mind. You must push it out, knock it aside, get rid of it, and get
your mind back on what you want.
One of the best formulas for positive thinking I ever learned was this: No matter what is going on around you,
think about your goals. If you have problems with your finances, stop-refuse to dwell upon them-and instead
think about your goals. If you are having difficulties with other people, change your mind by switching your
thinking off of your problems with them and onto your goals.
Eventually, through repetition, you will find yourself thinking about your goals most of the time. And, as we’ve
known for more than 2,000 years, as you think about your goals, you begin to move toward them, and they
begin to move toward you. All manner of remarkable things happen in your life that bring you closer to your
goals.
You see, your subconscious mind can’t tell the difference between something that you vividly imagine-such as a
goal, a hope or a dream-and a real experience. For example, if you go to an automobile dealership and take
your dream car for a drive, and, as you drive along, you imagine you already own that car, and you create the
feeling of enjoyment that would accompany your being the proud possessor of that beautiful machine, your
subconscious mind simply accepts that the car belongs to you. It doesn’t argue; it doesn’t complain; it doesn’t
try to change your instructions. It simply tries to make your instructions a reality.
Think of your subconscious mind as a photo lab and your conscious mind as a camera, or a photographer.
Your conscious mind takes pictures of what you want and passes the film to the photo lab, your subconscious
mind. Your subconscious mind then develops the pictures and passes them back up to your reality. The photo
lab doesn’t argue with you over the content of the film that you sent to it. It simply develops the photographs
exactly as you saw them through the lens of your mind’s eye.
To get back to our car example, when you resume driving your old car after having driven the new car from the
dealership, your subconscious mind accepts the new car as your desired reality and the old car as your past
situation. Your subconscious mind then goes to work and consistently, continuously begins to urge you in the
direction of doing the things that will make it possible for you to have that new car.
A friend of mine, who was unemployed at the time, decided to use this technique to get a new BMW. He began
visiting the dealership every Saturday and taking a new BMW for a drive. He feasted his mind and senses on
the car. He smelled the leather, he looked through the windshield and at the dashboard, and he thought of
himself owning this car as he drove it around on test-drives. He got a brochure on the car from the dealership,
cut out the pictures and put them everywhere, including on the steering wheel of his old car. Each time he
glanced down at the steering wheel and saw a picture of his new BMW, he imagined that he was already driving
it.
The most remarkable things began to happen. First, he went from being unemployed to being employed. After
two months, he changed to a better job, and after four months, he changed jobs again. By the end of the year,
he was making three times what he had made at his very best job in the past. This time, he was working in an
area of sales that was totally suited to him. Almost exactly to the day one year after he began this visualization
process, he walked into the BMW dealership, traded in his old car, bought his brand-new BMW, and drove it
away. He was still driving it the last time I spoke to him. Does visualization work? Well, here’s an exercise that
has worked for me and might work for you.
Everyone I know wants to have his “dream home.” The first problem with obtaining a dream home is that most
people have never even sat down to think about what it would look like.
Many years ago, when my wife, Barbara, and I were going through financial difficulties, we began putting
together a composite of our dream home. We subscribed to magazines full of beautiful pictures and
descriptions of lovely homes for sale. We cut out pictures and descriptions that were consistent with what we
were looking for. We discussed our dream home at great length. We went to open houses in the best
neighborhoods in the city. We looked at beautiful, expensive homes and at the details and furnishings in them.
We read Architectural Digest and House Beautiful. We eventually came up with a mutually agreed on composite
of what our dream home would look like. Within a year after beginning this exercise, we moved from a rented
home to a beautiful home that we had purchased. It wasn’t quite what we had in mind, but we both recognized
at the time that it was merely a stepping-stone to what we really wanted. A year later, after looking at 150
houses in different cities, we walked into a home that was for sale, took one look around and, without speaking,
both knew that we had found it. This was the home that we had been looking for. It cost twice as much as we
ever had imagined paying for a house, and it required a good deal of renovation to make it conform to the
mental pictures we had developed. Nonetheless, we bought it, renovated it, repainted it, furnished it and
landscaped the grounds exactly as we had imagined. And it all began to come together after we had carefully
crafted a clear mental picture of what it would look like when it was done.
Many, many books and articles have been written on the process of visualization. I’ve personally studied the
subject for many years. Because the ability to visualize is a natural attribute, it is something that you can learn
to do extremely well with practice. If you do it properly, and consistently, visualization can help you to move
ahead further and faster than perhaps any other process you could engage in.
will look like when you get there, and then taking the steps, day by day, to turn those dreams into realities.
And perhaps the most powerful of all tools for success you can learn to use is visualization, seeing with the
mind’s eye.
Visualization is an absolutely amazing process that is used by highly successful men and women. However, it is
a power that is available to everyone. And the better you get at visualization, the more rapidly you move
forward to accomplish your goals and aspirations. Perhaps the best statement on visualization comes from
Denis Waitley, who says, “Your imagination is your preview of life’s coming attractions.”
All improvement in your life begins with an improvement in your mental pictures. Your mental pictures act as a
guidance mechanism that causes you to act in ways that make your mental pictures come true in your life.
The Law of Correspondence says that “As within, so without.” It says that your outer world tends to be a
reflection of your inner world-like a mirror. What you see in the world around you will be consistent over time
with the world inside you. The Law of Concentration says that “Whatever you dwell upon grows in your reality.”
Those two laws in combination explain much of success and most of failure.
Successful people are those who continually think about pictures and images of the people they would like to
be and the lives they would like to lead. Unsuccessful people, unfortunately, are those who continually dwell
upon and imagine exactly the things they don’t want to happen in their lives. Your subconscious mind is
extraordinarily powerful, but it is a servant, not a master.
Your subconscious mind coordinates every aspect of your thoughts, feelings, behaviors, words, actions and
emotions to fit a pattern consistent with your dominant mental pictures. It guides you to engage in the behaviors
that move you ever closer to achieving the goals you visualize most of the time. But your subconscious mind
merely accepts commands from your conscious, visualizing mind. If you visualize something that you fear, your
subconscious mind will accept that as a command as well. It will then use its marvelous powers to bring your
fears, instead of your dreams and aspirations, into reality.
Over and over, in surveys and tests, it has been found that successful, happy people think about successful,
happy things most of the time. Unsuccessful, unhappy people, on the other hand, continually dwell upon and
mull over the people they dislike, the situations they are angry about and the events that they don’t wish to
occur in their lives. And-surprise! surprise!-whatever a person thinks about continually, either positive or
negative, tends to materialize in the world around him.
Since virtually no schools or courses ever teach people about the power of visualization, average people use it
in a random, or haphazard, way most of the time. Instead of continually thinking about the things they desire
and, therefore, moving consistently toward them, average people think first about something they want, and
then they think about something they don’t want. They think about things they desire, and they think about
things they fear. They think about people they like, and they think about people they dislike. They think about
success, and they think about failure. They think about wealth, and they think about poverty. They think about
having a nice life, and they think about being impoverished or being deeply in debt. And then they can’t
understand why their life seems to go back and forth, back and forth, and they make very little progress.
The starting point of great success in your life begins, in the simplest terms, when you discipline yourself to
think and talk about only the things you want and refuse to think and talk about anything you don’t want. The
fact is that your mind is so powerful that if you don’t want something, you must absolutely refrain from allowing
yourself to think about it when it comes into your mind. You must push it out, knock it aside, get rid of it, and get
your mind back on what you want.
One of the best formulas for positive thinking I ever learned was this: No matter what is going on around you,
think about your goals. If you have problems with your finances, stop-refuse to dwell upon them-and instead
think about your goals. If you are having difficulties with other people, change your mind by switching your
thinking off of your problems with them and onto your goals.
Eventually, through repetition, you will find yourself thinking about your goals most of the time. And, as we’ve
known for more than 2,000 years, as you think about your goals, you begin to move toward them, and they
begin to move toward you. All manner of remarkable things happen in your life that bring you closer to your
goals.
You see, your subconscious mind can’t tell the difference between something that you vividly imagine-such as a
goal, a hope or a dream-and a real experience. For example, if you go to an automobile dealership and take
your dream car for a drive, and, as you drive along, you imagine you already own that car, and you create the
feeling of enjoyment that would accompany your being the proud possessor of that beautiful machine, your
subconscious mind simply accepts that the car belongs to you. It doesn’t argue; it doesn’t complain; it doesn’t
try to change your instructions. It simply tries to make your instructions a reality.
Think of your subconscious mind as a photo lab and your conscious mind as a camera, or a photographer.
Your conscious mind takes pictures of what you want and passes the film to the photo lab, your subconscious
mind. Your subconscious mind then develops the pictures and passes them back up to your reality. The photo
lab doesn’t argue with you over the content of the film that you sent to it. It simply develops the photographs
exactly as you saw them through the lens of your mind’s eye.
To get back to our car example, when you resume driving your old car after having driven the new car from the
dealership, your subconscious mind accepts the new car as your desired reality and the old car as your past
situation. Your subconscious mind then goes to work and consistently, continuously begins to urge you in the
direction of doing the things that will make it possible for you to have that new car.
A friend of mine, who was unemployed at the time, decided to use this technique to get a new BMW. He began
visiting the dealership every Saturday and taking a new BMW for a drive. He feasted his mind and senses on
the car. He smelled the leather, he looked through the windshield and at the dashboard, and he thought of
himself owning this car as he drove it around on test-drives. He got a brochure on the car from the dealership,
cut out the pictures and put them everywhere, including on the steering wheel of his old car. Each time he
glanced down at the steering wheel and saw a picture of his new BMW, he imagined that he was already driving
it.
The most remarkable things began to happen. First, he went from being unemployed to being employed. After
two months, he changed to a better job, and after four months, he changed jobs again. By the end of the year,
he was making three times what he had made at his very best job in the past. This time, he was working in an
area of sales that was totally suited to him. Almost exactly to the day one year after he began this visualization
process, he walked into the BMW dealership, traded in his old car, bought his brand-new BMW, and drove it
away. He was still driving it the last time I spoke to him. Does visualization work? Well, here’s an exercise that
has worked for me and might work for you.
Everyone I know wants to have his “dream home.” The first problem with obtaining a dream home is that most
people have never even sat down to think about what it would look like.
Many years ago, when my wife, Barbara, and I were going through financial difficulties, we began putting
together a composite of our dream home. We subscribed to magazines full of beautiful pictures and
descriptions of lovely homes for sale. We cut out pictures and descriptions that were consistent with what we
were looking for. We discussed our dream home at great length. We went to open houses in the best
neighborhoods in the city. We looked at beautiful, expensive homes and at the details and furnishings in them.
We read Architectural Digest and House Beautiful. We eventually came up with a mutually agreed on composite
of what our dream home would look like. Within a year after beginning this exercise, we moved from a rented
home to a beautiful home that we had purchased. It wasn’t quite what we had in mind, but we both recognized
at the time that it was merely a stepping-stone to what we really wanted. A year later, after looking at 150
houses in different cities, we walked into a home that was for sale, took one look around and, without speaking,
both knew that we had found it. This was the home that we had been looking for. It cost twice as much as we
ever had imagined paying for a house, and it required a good deal of renovation to make it conform to the
mental pictures we had developed. Nonetheless, we bought it, renovated it, repainted it, furnished it and
landscaped the grounds exactly as we had imagined. And it all began to come together after we had carefully
crafted a clear mental picture of what it would look like when it was done.
Many, many books and articles have been written on the process of visualization. I’ve personally studied the
subject for many years. Because the ability to visualize is a natural attribute, it is something that you can learn
to do extremely well with practice. If you do it properly, and consistently, visualization can help you to move
ahead further and faster than perhaps any other process you could engage in.