Welcome to the Masterful Coach Podcast with Molly Claire, where coaches learn skill mastery, business mastery, and Life mastery at a whole new level. If you're ready to create a meaningful coaching business that makes a difference, you're in the right place; and now your host, master coach, instructor, Molly Claire. Hello, coaches, welcome to a new year. I can't believe how fast 2021 flew. And I for one, I'm so excited about all that's to come in this new year. For me, my focus in the new year is going to be much more about openness, much more about flow, much more about allowing, much more about receiving, and really opening up to expanding the people that I'm able to reach. And I just couldn't be more thrilled with our group in the Coaching Collective, my master minders, my amazing new group of newbie coaches, who I'm helping in this next three months to really grow their ability to get in front of people, get people in the door and work with some clients to help them change their lives. So, so many exciting things going on business wise, always so much going on in my family life as well, and I'm ready for it, I say bring it. Today, I'm going to be talking about using visualization to create your goals. Now I have to admit that this is really just touching on this topic. While next week, Aimee Gianni is going to be offering a full one hour masterclass for you on this topic. So not on the podcast. But next week in the Coaching Collective is our monthly master class. And it will be on Wednesday, January 12 at 11am Central time. So I'm going to be touching on this today, Aimee is going to go more in depth, she's also going to be coaching, teaching, answering questions, all of that good stuff. So if you have not yet registered for that, make sure that you do. So you can go to the coachingcollective.com and sign up there, and we would love to have you it's going to be amazing. So today I'm going to talk a little bit about visualization just at a high level, I'm not going to go into a lot of detail, and I'm going to give you just a little bit of guidance in this conversation. It's going to be a short and sweet episode, and I hope it inspires you. Okay, so visualization can seem a bit Woohoo to some people. Now some of you love Woohoo, and some of you are not so sure. The good news is that whether you consider yourself Woohoo, or practical and scientific, visualization can change your life. And kind of going back to what I was saying about my personal focus for the year, one of the things that I love about visualization is it is very much like hitting an easy button. It's like bringing in the best possible team that you could have to help you create your goal with more ease. Now, who doesn't want that? I know that I do. Absolutely! So I want to talk just quickly a little bit about the sciency part of this. And I'm really referring to quite heavily with this small portion of the podcast on Jack Canfield book, The Success Principles. This is Chapter 11 in that book, if you have that revisit that chapter. This was my first introduction to really the power of visualization and understanding it. I know I had heard about it loosely before. But when I read this, it really spoke to me and it helped me to really understand the value. So let's talk about it. I'm going to read a few things directly and paraphrase just a few things here because it's said so beautifully, and I just want to share it with you. So he says visualization or the act of creating compelling and vivid pictures in your mind may be the most underutilized success tool you possess, because it greatly accelerates the achievement of any success in three powerful ways. Okay, let me back up and say that again, it greatly accelerates achievement. Isn't that what we'd all like? Let's just put fast forward on all of this. So here are the things that he identifies. First of all, visualization activates the creative powers of your subconscious mind. We all want that creativity awakened in us to find new ideas. The second thing is visualization focuses your brain by programming its reticular activating system that are ARS you may have heard of this before, to notice available resources that were always there, but previously unnoticed. So that ability to be aware of things that you would have otherwise missed. And then the last thing that he mentions is visualization through the law of attraction magnetizes and attracts to you the people resources and opportunities, you need to achieve your goal. So I'm going to break those down a little bit more just at the end of the chapter and why it's so powerful. But I'm just going to share a little bit more about this. So he further speaks to when you perform any task in real life, researchers have found your brain uses the same identical processes it would use, if you were only vividly visualizing that activity. In other words, your brain sees no difference whatsoever between visualizing something and actually doing it, okay. And he also shares that this principle applies to learning anything new. So research at Harvard found that students who visualized in advance perform tasks with nearly 100% accuracy, whereas students who didn't visualize achieved only 55% that is a huge difference; 100% accuracy, versus 55% accuracy. So hopefully, for those of you listening, whether you're Woohoo, or whether you're scientific, you can see that visualization can make a huge difference. And just to inspire you a little bit further, I want to share one of my favorite stories about the power of visualization. And we've talked about this in the Coaching Collective, one of the things we do right at the beginning, when our coaches come in, is we are really clear to help them figure out what their ideal life and business vision is, and work on visualizing it. So this is a big part of what we do those of you in the collective, you know, this, you remember, it's such a good time to revisit all of that. Okay, so I want to share this story about Major James Nesmith, who was captured and became a prisoner of war, and he was a prisoner of war for seven years. He was in a cage that was four and a half feet long and five feet tall. Okay. During this time, while he was in captivity, he saw no one, he talked to no one and had no physical activity, none whatsoever. Now you can imagine, I can barely imagine what this would be like. And I can only begin to imagine what would be going on in my mind if I were in that state of isolation. So he soon realized that he needed to find a way to occupy his mind, and to really direct his thoughts in a powerful way. So back up a little bit. Before going into captivity, he enjoyed golf, and he was an average golfer, but he had definitely wanted to improve his game. So what he decided is that he would spend time, constantly visualizing to the detail, the experience of playing his favorite golf course, he would imagine details, including what he was wearing, the smell of the grass, the feel of the air, the temperature, he would see all of the trees, all of the sounds in the air, animals, birds, squirrels, everything, and he spent time every single day visualizing all of these details. He would go in his mind step by step through grasping the club, feeling what it felt like on his fingers, he would notice how it felt in his body the way that he was standing. He visualized taking a practice swing, addressing the ball, hitting his shot; he would visualize watching the ball fly through the air. All of these details, now he had all of this time to occupy his mind. But he spent time really concentrating on every single detail and seeing it and experiencing it. So he did this every single day for seven years, and then miraculously, he was finally released and able to come home. So if you were just to look at him physically, his condition had definitely deteriorated as you would expect, right? Being in a cage for so long, no physical activity, no proper nourishment, and even still when he returned he went to play his favorite golf course. And believe it or not, he actually cut 20 shots off of his average, the very first time he played. So let me back up here. So he's been in captivity for seven years in isolation. He's in poor physical condition, he hasn't swung a golf club he hasn't exercised, and the first day out, 20 points have been cut off of his golf score, and this is something he'd been working on consistently before. Unbelievable! I hope this helps you all to see the power of visualization, and how the details and the consistency and the true depth of the experience can be so powerful. So there are some pretty clear benefits to visualization. First, it just works, it's effective. The other thing that I want you to keep in mind is that you really can do it with ease. I think that oftentimes when we are building our businesses, we push and we hustle, and we kind of have this intense energy behind us that can sometimes be helpful, but sometimes not so helpful. And so one of the things that I believe is the most magical and powerful about visualization is it is a method that can keep you from accidentally pushing into those unhealthy patterns, and can keep you from really creating from fear, and instead can move you into the space of allowing openness, and really just utilizing your brain's greatest resources. Okay, so let's talk about three specific things as you're thinking about bringing visualization into your life. Number one, be precise. Think about that story that I just shared with you about how specific he was thinking about all the details of the golf course, all the details of how he held his body, all the details of the sounds. When you are thinking about your goal, be precise in what you visualize. Now, in the collective with our coaches, we talk with them about every detail of their life, right? We work with them on thinking through relationships, who they spend their time with, on and on, the whole scope of their life; and that's a really beneficial thing to do. But for the sake of this podcast here, if you're thinking about a specific goal, imagine that amount of money in your bank account. Imagine that number of clients on your list. Imagine what it's like speaking with your clients and experiencing that feeling, when your clients are having that powerful shift. Whatever it is, for you that is most compelling about that goal, visualize it to the detail. And think about also the broad scope of it, think about all of the different pieces of your goal and visualize them. The more detailed you can be, the more likely it is that your brain will wake up and make it happen. Next piece of advice be consistent. Now this may look like setting a specific time twice a day to do it, setting a timer, or you could want to bring it in and more of a natural flowing way. Having it always top of mind, having maybe some alarms in your phone that remind you during the day that you can bring this into your thoughts as you're driving, whatever it is. So no matter how you do it, be consistent. Make sure that it is a part of your everyday flow, and also remember that along with the visualization, you can bring in writing it down, you can bring in talking about it. And make sure that you're also spending time feeling it as you imagine it, really invite those emotions into your body. Bring all of these things together regularly as you focus on that goal, and you will create more ease in the process. Okay, my last piece of advice here before I let you all go, be excited. When you visualize something you have the power to create emotions that you believe you'll experience when that goal comes to fruition. Be excited about this. I think creating emotions can be so much fun. Isn't it amazing? Like think about the first time that you've realized that you could truly bring the feeling into your body, you could create emotions with your mind. So have a lot of fun with it. Above all of the other advice I've given so far, is have fun with your visualization. It should be something you look forward to. I think giving yourself no limits on what you're allowed to think about is a really important piece of this. Think about visualization as the easy road. You can simply decide what you want to see and create, and rely on your amazing subconscious to work for you. I feel like it's almost like finding the best possible team of assistants in your business to make your goal happen, right? So you have one team member coming up with all kinds of new ideas that you never would have thought of in a million years. You have another team member who is detail oriented, who notices all the things that you would miss, I know I need that person on my team, right? And then you have this other person on your team that somehow has this amazing ability to keep you moving forward and engaged because you never lose your momentum. And they really help you believe in what's possible; wouldn't you like all of these members on your team? That is what is possible when we engage in visualization; it will bring out those parts of our brain and will allow you to have more ease as you move forward. Life is full of so many things that challenge us, right? Building a business is full of so many things that challenge us. I want you to consider what you think about taking a little bit more of an easy road this year. Yes, there will be challenges. But I hope all of you can think about opening up to more allowing, more receiving, your business is growing. You are creating it. Your clients are coming. Your ideal life is unfolding. The best things are just around the corner. This is going to be the best year yet so much fun and I can't wait to experience all of it with you. I'll talk to you next week. Have a good one. Thanks for listening to the Masterful Coach Podcast you can check out www.thecoachingcollective.com for info about the ultimate program for coaches building a business. To find out more about Molly, you can visit www.mollyclaire.com