Yes — you heard it right. Your brain is a powerful tool and you can use this tool to visualize and create your own realities! You can be anything you want and you can achieve anything you want by using this proven technique. I have tested this on myself several times and I have always had success!
Research has supported the ability of people successfully achieving tasks just by thinking and visualizing them. Athletes visualize before performing, dancers visualize dance moves, and painters create through visualization and imagination. Even in things like losing weight; the power of visualizing your end goal has proven successful for many in their weight loss journey.
I have personally benefitted by implementing this idea of visualization and I am willing to share my journey with everyone in hopes that it will help many out there. This is certainly not an easy task for me as this is something I still feel sensitive about but if sharing it helps even one person out there, the benefit is much greater than the cost!
During my time in high school I had put on a lot of weight. I made many attempts to lose it as it was affecting my life. I felt awkward in social gatherings and developed depression and social anxiety. This was very difficult phase of my life as I had always been a bubbly cheerful outgoing person. Every attempt I made was unsuccessful and in my frustration I began accepting my reality which I told myself was that I’ll always be overweight. “This is who I am” — I put that tag on myself. As a result I began to put on more and more weight — I went from 65kg to 70kg to 75kg and to 78kg.
Then one day I took a personal hit from someone close to me about my weight so I told myself this is not who I am! I was someone who was confident and happy and that is the person I am going to be. So I began my journey.
How did I do this? Well, one of my favorite authors (Wayne W. Dyer) has laid down 4 principles of visualization in his book called “You’ll See It When You Believe It”. Putting them into practice has helped me a great deal and could be the start to your personal transformation as well.
1: Your actions come from your images: You act out what you visualize. If you always imagine yourself as being successful you will act out that image. You will attend school, learn, associate yourself with other successful people and read about them. If you always imagined yourself to be mediocre and poor you will act like you do not have enough. You will make excuses like “I am not lucky enough”; “I don’t have the right circumstances” etc. Your mental images tell you that you cannot achieve therefore you do not achieve.
It is important to realize that your current circumstances reveal the mental pictures you have drawn for yourself up until now. So work on your thoughts not your actions because your actions are followed by your thoughts, not the other way around.
How I did this: I imagined myself to be skinny, I always pictured it in my head and never let go of that image. As a result, my actions changed to adopt a healthier lifestyle. I began picking out healthy options, my taste buds changed automatically and I started to like walking over driving. These decisions were made subconsciously without me having to actively give it much thought.
2: Tell yourself that everything you visualize is already here: Once you have visualized your reality, you have to believe it like it is already here! You can not just sit around and wait for things to happen. The reality you visualized already exists in this universe and it is up to you to make a connection with that reality. Elbert Einstein taught us that time doesn’t exist; it is a man-made concept. So once you create a reality and clearly picture it, know that it already exists somewhere in this universe and you have to make it your burning desire to connect to it.
The person you picture yourself to be is already in existence and through the power of your thoughts, which control your actions, you will make a connection to that person. This is a very hard concept to grasp so I encourage you to read Wayne’s book if you want more detail as he describes it beautifully in the 2nd chapter called Thought. You will find that this concept makes perfect sense and has been proven through history, scientifically as well as spiritually.
How I did this: I told myself the skinny me was already here in this universe and I just had to connect to her by catching that train of willingness which transports you to your visualized realities. Once I believed that the skinny Iqra already exists in this world, it made it so easy for me to stick to that image and believe in it. As a result my actions changed to allow me to become that which I believed I could be. For example I was now starting to actively look for things to do that involved physical activity and like it, whereas previously I hated anything that involved me being out of breath! I liked all the changes compared to before when I always thought I was on a “diet” and looked forward to when it would end as I thought of it as restrictive and “torture”.
3: Be willing: this is the most important part of your visualization. Whatever your pictured reality is, you now know that it already exists, waiting for you to connect to it and willingness is the means of transportation that will take you there. You will do anything it takes to accomplish your burning desire — anything!
If you constantly find yourself unwilling or making excuses, it may be that something is telling you this is not really what you want or this is not really a “burning desire”. Ask yourself this, how many of us want a million dollars? The answer of course is everyone! But only a few manage to acquire it, why? Because it is only those few that had that burning desire to acquire that much wealth. For them, there was no other option and no excuses. If it is your burning desire, you will be willing to do anything it takes, you will be undeterred by any obstacles that come your way; what people think or what evidence exists that tells you that you can not achieve the task you are wanting to achieve. All these excuses will cease to exist and what will remain is your willingness. It is in that state of willingness that you will bring your reality from another dimension of existence to this world of physical form.
How I did this: I was willing to do anything it takes. I was willing to wake up early to exercise, if it meant going out with friends and passing on desert or alcohol. If the doctor told me I had thyroid and I will not lose weight or my results will be low and very difficult to achieve, I did not pay any attention to that. For me there was only one reality and no excuses!
4: Realize there is no such thing as failure: You never fail. You only produce results! Failure is someone else’s opinion of how we should have done what we did. Never tell yourself you failed. You produced a result! If you tried to lose weight, but you did not or put on more weight than your actions have produced a result. You then scratch these actions as not helpful and you try again to produce different results! Get this written in your brain: you never fail; there is no such thing as failure! If you keep telling yourself there is no such thing as failure, you are teaching your subconscious mind to always win as it won’t recognize failure as a concept.
How I did this: I told myself on this train of willingness I will never fail; I may hit a few bumps or come to a few stops but my destination I will definitely reach. That is how I connected to the healthy me.
Miraculously within the next year I shed all the extra pounds. People were now calling me “small” and I was wearing size “S” or “XS”. How did I do this?! Why did I not do this before?! When I look back I see exactly what the difference was in me being unable to achieve it before — I always made excuses “I am born with these genes”, “I am just big boned”, and “It’s my circumstances, I am living a student life”. I could not picture myself as the person I wanted to be because it just seemed so impossible. I was placing blame on outside factors that had nothing to do with my ability to achieve my desired goal. Once I put the blame aside and believed in that image I instantly achieved what I previously thought was impossible.
At my heaviest weight: 78 kgs (Left) and at my current weight of 60 kgs (Right)
Your thoughts have the power to connect you to any reality you imagine for yourself. So go ahead, create your own realities and connect to them! Do not place blame on anyone or any external factors. The power is within yourself, within your mind and your thoughts to change yourself. It is a choice YOU make and YOU own your life, YOU create it and YOU live it! It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but ourselves — William Shakespeare