Success Coaching and Visualization – Part 2

Welcome back!

Last week we took a slightly different look at visualization.  In Success Coaching and Visualization – Part 1 we looked at why visualization works, hope and how words create images.

Today I’m going to finish up with application for success coaching

Application

Visualization has a powerful role success coaching and in helping a person maintain their hope of achieving their goals. By using visualization, we aim to make the end point of our goals seem as normal and natural as arriving home at the end of the day.

We do this by creating a persuasive picture…by “seeing” the end point in complete detail using all our senses.  We want to see, hear, feel smell and even taste our personal goal.  Through visualization the impossible can seem possible and utterly compelling.

The Visualization Process

When I take a client through the visualization process, I normally begin by making sure my client is comfortable and will not be distracted.  I then guide them to focus on the sounds, sights and feelings of their imagined future.  By focusing only of their future goal they eliminate any present sounds, sights and feelings that might distract them.

I ask them to close their eyes and to take a few deep breaths. As they breathe out I ask them to release any tension that is in their body. If they have difficulty doing this, I might ask them to work their way up their body tensing each body part and then releasing it.

This reminds the body what it feels like to be tense and what it feels like to be relaxed and usually helps them to let go of any tension they are holding through habit or lack of awareness.

When the client is feeling relaxed, I begin by asking them to move their focus into a time and place in the future; a future in which their goal has been achieved. I take them through some questions, which complete the whole picture or the experience. Some of the questions I ask them are:

• Where are you?

• What do you see yourself doing?

• Where are you?

• What do you see yourself doing?

• Who are you with?

• If you are somewhere that engages your senses of smell and taste, what are you aware of?

• What can you hear around you?

• What do you see?

• How do you feel?

Any questions that assist them to have a full experience of their future are helpful.

Success Coaching, Visualization and The Wheel of Life

Some of my clients come to me with a specific set of personal goals. Others need more support and success coaching to focus on what they want from the future.

These individuals tend to have a general idea that they want their life, i.e. be more successful, more balanced, more meaningful or more exciting, but they don’t really have a greater sense of their end goal.

Visualization can be a useful tool for helping them to clarify their personal goals.

You may be familiar with the Wheel of Life. The wheel is a visual representation of each of the important aspects of a person’s life. It is designed to be a tool for focusing on development in a balanced way.

For individuals who are unsure about their goals, a good strategy is to look at each of the aspects of the Wheel of Life and to give themselves a rating out of 10 for each one.

Then, with either through success coaching or self-reflection a personal can then be lead through the visualization process for each of the sections focusing on the question: “What would a ?10? look like in this area of your life?”

You would be unlikely to focus on every section of the Wheel of Life in one or two hours. In fact, I would suggest that you only focus on one section in an hour or in a given success coaching session, unless of course you are have practiced and are skilled at visualization.

A good question to get started is what area of your life will have the biggest impact? You may or may not choose the section where you have the lowest score or the section where their goals are less clear or a section that they value the most.

Using Words and Pictures

Once you have visualized your ideal life, you might want to work on strategies and tactics to keep the image fresh in your mind. A great tactic is to draw a picture or produce a collage…a vision board.

Once again the Wheel of Life, can be a useful framework. Images engage a different part of the brain to words and can create a pathway into the subconscious mind. Be playful with this, choose images from magazines, draw pictures yourself, use the Internet, use any resource that will help to remind you of your personal goals, personal success and your future life.

Steps Along the Way

The next step after visualizing the end point is to determine steps along the way, the strategies and tactic to make your vision a reality.

The beautiful thing about visualization is that the clearer the image of the end goal and the more natural and normal you have managed to make it; the easier it is to see the pathways to it. The helicopter view that comes with visualization helps to clearly see multiple pathways to the same goal.

If at some point you find yourself struggling to find ways to move forward, or if your feeling despairing because you have hit a barrier on their way, returning to the visualization of your personal goals can be an incredibly powerful way to move forward again.

Visualizing Small Goals

Visualization is a powerful strategy for looking at life purpose, values and life vision. However it can also be useful for smaller goals and strategies.

If you are working on particular challenge, for example, giving a presentation at a meeting, it can be extremely powerful to visualize what it will look and feel like when the presentation has been successfully completed.

This can give you something to “hang on to” to counteract any apprehension they might be feeling beforehand.

Visualization can also be used in conjunction with role-play. For example, if you’re having a difficult conversation with your manager, it might be useful to combine visualizing the situation and then role-playing the conversation with a friend or coach acting as the manager.

You can visualize sitting in the manager’s office, reflect on what you see, the sounds, the smells, how you feel, then begin the role-play conversation. This helps fully prepare you so that the different environment of the manager’s office don’t through you off and possible forget everything that you have practiced in the role-play.

Safe Journey

I’ve notice that visualization can be confronting for someone who has never experience success coaching at this deep of a level before. It is also unlikely to work for a person that is not completely relaxed, as the individual will be too distracted to focus.

In a success coaching situation, visualization requires high levels of trust on behalf of the client. For these reasons it’s important for me to check with my client first to see if this is a strategy that they feel comfortable with. Some questions I ask are:

• Have you ever practiced visualization before?

• Are you familiar with visualization?

• Would you like to give it a try as a strategy to really focus on this challenge?

I normally begin with small visualizations so that my client can feel the power of the strategy before challenging them with visualizing big goals or aims. If you’re new to visualization, you might have a go at a “smaller” goal before moving on to the full-blown successful life.

Visualization is a skill, and, like any skill, it improves through practice. People who become practiced at visualization find that it is a resource they can draw on regularly in their lives. If they meet a challenge, they can visualize the end point.

When they reach a barrier, they are able to draw on their vision of their end goal to put the barrier in context and not focus on it to the exclusion of all other possible pathways.

As my clients and I become more comfortable working together visualization greatly enhance the success coaching relationship.

Contemplation

• What are some other ways that visualization can be used in your life?

• What area of your life can you write a visualization script for?

References

• Kauffman, Carol, (2006) Positive Psychology: The Science at the Heart of Coaching in Stober, Dianne and Grant, Anthony, (Eds), Evidence Based Coaching, New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons

• Snyder, C.R, (2000) Handbook of Hope: Theory Measures and Applications, New York: Guildford Press

If you’d like to find out more about personal success coaching and how it can help you achieve your personal goals request an Introductory Consultation today.