People who’ve worked with me or spent time with me will recognise one of my signature questions: “How will you know?”
How will you know when you’ve achieved your goal?
How will you know when you’ve made that change?
How will you know when you’ve left that habit or behaviour behind?
The answer to this question is termed the Evidence Procedure – it’s the proof to yourself that you have achieved your result.
Imagining and describing with visual and auditory detail (the things you’ll see and hear around you when you achieve your goal) and feeling the feelings that you’ll feel when you are in that moment of achievement primes the unconscious mind to rehearse your end result. The simple act of asking this question already begins the process of implanting this future vision in your unconscious mind, bringing it to life, and therefore planting the seeds of its fruition.
In addition to giving your unconscious mind the blueprint of the future result you wish to achieve, research has found that visualising the future also increases your propensity to invest in it.
A Taiwanese study[1], published in the British Journal of Psychology, examined savings decision of two groups of participants. The first group was primed by a visualisation exercise where they were asked to visualise their future in four years’ time. The control group were asked to visualise the present. After the priming visualisation exercise the two groups were presented with 42 sets of binary choices between receiving a sum of money in the present, or a larger one a week later. Participants primed with future imagery were statistically more likely than the control group to wait for a larger payment in the future than to accept a smaller payment now. The future-primed participants were willing to delay a monetary payment in the present to receive a higher payment of a compounded weekly interest rate of 11%. The control group would only delay gratification when the compounded weekly interest rate reached 15%.
The results of this study suggest further benefits to goal setting and mental rehearsal of the end result in addition to setting the direction of the sailing ship of your unconscious mind. It seems spending time visualising the future also makes you more likely to delay short-term gratification for the longer-term dream.
What results have you created in your life by using future visualisation techniques? I invite you to share them in the comments below.
[1] Cheng,Y-Y., Shein, P.P. and Chiou, W.-B. (2012) “Escaping the impulse to immediate gratification: The prospect concept promotes a future-oriented mindset, prompting an inclination towards delayed gratification” British Journal of Psychology, Volume 103, Issue 1, pages 129-141.
Image Credit: mike epp via Flickr
