Neuroscience Nuggets #2: Fantasy vs Visualization

I use images and visualization regularly in my coaching and workshops. So naturally I was thrilled to hear that my neuroscience program devoted a lesson to visualization.


But when my teacher prefaced the class by saying there was a right and very wrong way to use it, my internal doubting alarm went off.

"Yikes," I thought! "What if I’ve been doing something wrong? What if scientists scoff at it? What if it's a just a feel-good technique that doesn't really move the needle?"  

First off, reader, we can both breathe a sigh of relief. Visualization isn't going anywhere in my practice. Au contraire, it's about to get very next level. 

But let's back up the tape and get some terms straight before I tell you how: 

• Visualization is using your imagination to conjure up a future scenario that you can see in sharp detail in your mind’s eye, and even feel in your body.
  

• It can be a very powerful tool when you need to get creative, dream big, try on different versions of the life you'd like to live, and see what feels right!
  

• It can also motivate you to accomplish something super hard, messy, and meaningful (e.g. feeling the joy and relief of giving birth without an epidural; hearing your name called at the graduation ceremony after four grueling years of studying; feeling the warm, smug smile on your face after finally beating your son at tennis).
  

BUT, and this is a very important BUT, if you don’t back those delicious images up by also visualizing the process of getting to your goal, the vision simply stays a fantasy. 

According to my professor, Dr Irena O’Brien, "Fantasies can actually hinder success because they embellish future events regardless of past performance and the probability of future occurrences. Therefore, they fail to be a solid basis for acting." 

When you visualize the steps you need to take to move yourself along your path, however, you not only feel less anxious and more confident about what you need to do, you make it much more likely to achieve your goal.

By visualizing the process as opposed to just the result, you’re giving your brain a practical road map to understand and anticipate the resources needed to move you forward.

So, in a nutshell, if you want to go after something specific, you can’t just visualize the end-game, you also need to: 

• Visualize the process to get there.

• Be sure to include any potential internal or external roadblocks or temptations you might encounter along the way.

• Then come up with a plan to overcome those road blocks, or better yet, create an environment that helps you avoid them entirely (more on that in the next neuroscience nugget newsletter).

Photo courtesy Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/aPNE3B0WHTM

How do vision boards work?

Have you ever stood in front of a painting and started to weep? Or listened to a concerto and felt shivers run down your spine? 

Images (and music!) carry instant, powerful, emotional messages that bypass logic and reasoning. They move so fast that our minds can’t keep up. 

“Images track instantly to your brain’s visual centres, bypassing conscious thought, which means the brain’s filtering system can’t edit them out or dismiss them,” explains neuroscientist Tara Swart in her amazing book, The Source. 

At this time in the year when we’re making resolutions, setting intentions and goals, we typically spend a lot of time in our thoughts, telling ourselves what’s wrong or missing or in need of improvement with ourselves and our lives. It’s just the way that our brains work (negativity bias—ugh!). 

Entering a heads-on battle with our thoughts, especially when we’re trying to decide where we want to focus our creativity and energy for the upcoming year, can be exhausting and futile. 

Our brains will tell us the answer is to take on more, be more disciplined, control the outcome. But they rarely show us how we want to feel about ourselves and the world we inhabit in our journey forward. 

That’s where images, and more specifically vision boards, can come into play in a really interesting way. 

What’s a vision board?

A vision board is like a mood board, but for your life. It’s an assemblage of cut-out images that speak to you on some deeper level by tapping into your hidden dreams, aspirations and goals. 

What’s the purpose of a vision board?

Vision boards help you sidestep the whole mental goal-setting showdown by using visual metaphors that speak the language of your heart rather than the logic of your mind. Because images can circle around your policing mind, they make for amazing tools when deciding what you deeply desire at critical junctures in your life. Like when you’re shifting careers. Ending a long relationship. Moving countries. Saying goodbye to a familiar way of living (aka 2020). Or welcoming in another trip around the sun (aka 2021)! 

How do vision boards work?

Your vision board is like a dressing room for your future. You try on the "future you" outfit, let your brain get comfortable with it so it green lights the vision, allotting energy and resources towards bringing it to life. This is the law of attraction at work. You’re putting a highlighter around your deeper goals so that your conscious and unconscious minds can team up to help you achieve them. The vision board acts like an intermediary between your heart and your mind—kind of like a couples' therapist for your dreams. 

How can I make a vision board?

I’m so happy you asked,! I’ve got a couple of ideas for you: 

1. You can go back to the free Guide to Great Goal Setting I have on my site and follow the instructions. 

2. If you speak French and want to have a collaborative, energy-lifting experience, I’d be thrilled to see you on January 24th with my dear friend, author and kundalini yoga teacher, Lili Barbery-Coulon for our Atelier Kunda & Creative Flow for 2021. During the two-and-a-half hour webinar Lili will lead us in a communal mediation to help us tap into our intuitive, creative cores before creating our vision boards. To sign up click the link here.

PS. Vision boards help sidestep the whole mental showdown going on in your brain, making them amazing tools for 2021 intention-setting! If you speak French and want to have a collaborative, energy-lifting vision board experience, come join me on January 24th with my dear friend, author and kundalini yoga teacher, Lili Barbery-Coulon for our Atelier Kunda & Creative Flow for 2021 webinar. Lili will be leading us in a mediation to tap into our intuitive, creative flow before creating our vision boards. To sign up click the link here.

Like bad ass flowing water

I reluctantly turned down a perfect margarita on the rocks at the lively Mexican restaurant we were dining at. I had to drive the whole kit and caboodle back to my mom's house in upstate NY and the roads are tricky there at night. 

It was a good thing I didn't indulge.

Fifteen minutes into our drive we had to shut off the radio, get the kids to stop fighting and seriously focus on the road because we were suddenly caught in a thunderstorm so intense it felt like an end-of-the-world action film.

I’ve never seen that much water fall that hard and that quickly. And for miles and miles and miles. I kept my calm for the kids but I was freaking the hell out. 

It reminded me how bad ass water can be. It’s super discreet until it’s totally not. And it never seems to try that hard. 

It doesn't second guess itself and wonder:

"How am I going to get around this thing?” 

“Is this too much?” 

“Am I allowed to be here?“

"Should I be doing it this way?"

Nope. It just flows. Over, through, around or in-between with a force that’s relentless, rhythmic, mesmerizing. 

I’m fascinated by the concept of “flow.” Being in it. Watching it. Seeing what comes out of it. 

My favorite part of my visualization workshop is when the group arranges their cut-out imagery on their vision boards with my R&B play list going on in the background. 

Everyone's so focused and absorbed by what they’re doing there’s this humming flow to their movements. With little time to question their moves, they just have to go with what feels right. 

Like bad ass flowing water. 

When we behave like water we learn a lot about what we naturally migrate towards. 

What we do when we are at our intuitive best. When everything feels totally in sync and easy and fluid. 

For me that happens on a few specific occasions. 

• When I cook. 
• When I converse. 
• When I walk. 
• When I coach.
• When I write. 

We so often over-complicate things. Try to force ourselves to be or become someone that we’re not. But what if there was less friction and more flow to our goals and our desires?

Try that idea on for size if you want with these questions:

• In what three situations do you intuitively know what to do?
• What's going on in those moments? 
• How does it feel to be there?
• How often do you allow yourself to go there?
• What would happen if you strengthened that flow in you?
• Where would that get you?

PS. Speaking of "flow," there’s a three-hour Life Flow exercise that I love that clarifies desires based on natural tendencies, strengths and passions. At the end of the experience you’ll know exactly what steps you need to take right now to bring your goals to life.  

I don’t usually offer Life Flow as a stand-alone coaching exercise, but it’s a great tool to get through the overwhelm of Fall in order to find your footing to move ahead with confidence during this tricky time of the year. 

Book a free discovery call to learn more about my Life Flow experience (price 340€) 

How I Got Over My Fear Of Cold Showers Using Visualization

Minutes after the French won their nail-biting match against Argentina during the World Cup, my husband noticed a giant water splotch the shape of Russia on our carpet. 
 

We looked at it and immediately blamed it on our 2-year old. He’s at an age where he will only drink from big cups and when he does he opens his mouth so wide that he spills 89% of the water on himself and the ground. He refuses to go with a smaller cup.  #toddlerdetermination #whyaretheylikethis

But after 30 minutes that water splotch started to brazenly conquer new land. We ran over to the hot water heater, felt the ground, and realized we had a huge problem. We had a leaky tank and it was the weekend and no repair service was open. 
 

My husband is pretty handy. He figured out how to stop the leak, shut off the electricity on the heater while keeping the cold water running in the house. So we have water, thank god, but it is cold as a cucumber. 

Now, as I said, Paris is having a heatwave so it’s not like we’re freezing our tushies off in the house. But still, a cold shower is a cold shower, and I don’t like cold. In fact I hate the cold. Hate it, hate it, hate it. HATE it! My 25% Greek genes are to blame for my extreme intolerance. 

Thinking of showering in cold water (with not even a little warm water to cheat) makes my shoulders bolt up and my chest heave in. 

I immediately think of Surprise Lake Camp in Cold Springs, NY, the summer day camp that I went to as a pre-teen. I signed up for swimming class there (like a fool) and we often had to practice early morning when the lake was super cold. I remember that horrible feeling of jumping in, my breath seizing up for a couple of seconds before I got used to the temperature. It was the worst feeling. 

Well that was what I felt again when I thought about my upcoming shower. 

My husband’s advice about my impeding shower was to just go for it. Not to dance around and delay the torture, just embrace it. 


I didn’t like that idea. So I texted my friend Lili who has been very vocal on her blog about her daily cold shower ritual. I told her my situation and asked her advice about how to do the cold shower in a more gentle and humane way. 

Her instructions were totally compelling, clear and easy to follow. 
 

• Massage your body with oil before getting in the shower
• Introduce the cold water to your feet and hands first
• Work the water up to your chest
• Breath deeply and then scream if you have to!
• Then shower your back, arm pits, arms, etc :) 
• Don’t direct water to your thighs (they have a lot of veins, and you don’t want a flush of blood there)
• Don’t let the water go above your chin
• Wash your head/hair in a sink with warm water (boiled in my case)
• Feel amazing and alive after your shower. 

So, I've been following her instructions to a T since and I have to say I feel like a million bucks afterwards. My skin is silken smooth, taught and tingly in a good way for hours . 

Why should you care about my cold shower story? Well because the whole process is a great example of how visualization works. 
 

• We often fear the unknown because the experience we predict reminds us of something we already lived through and didn’t enjoy. (e.g. swimming early morning in a cold lake at sleepaway camp)
   
• We think we can’t possible get over our fear because we are just built that way and lack the resources. (e.g. my Greek genes making me unable to like cold).
   
• By imagining someone else, someone not so different from us, even an ideal version of ourselves overcome that challenge, we start to realize that there might in fact be a way to move ahead (e.g. remembering Lili's love of showers)
   
• By projecting into the future, and then retro-planning how to get there, our brain becomes more familiar with the task (e.g. preloading Lili's step-by-step action plan)
   
• Our excitement to accomplish our end goal helps us find the motivating and energy to get us there (e.g. the excitement of feeling alive and amazing after shower)

So next time you’re confronted with a challenge that chills you to the core try to find the root of the feeling. 

And know there there is someone in the world that overcame a similar obstacle. How were they able to do it? What action steps did they take? How could you do the same? How would that feel once you overcame your fear?

What shower challenge you're working through right now?  Write a comment below or email me directly at zeva@zevebellel.com and let me know what you've got going on!