♪ [music] ♪So there's this great quote by the American entrepreneur Mike Dillard
and Mike says, "The greatest achievement in life is to have the ability to create the
world around you so that it matches the dreams in your head."
I strongly agree with that statement.
I think one of the greatest things we can teach people in our education system is how
to translate the ideas, the dreams, the ambitions in their head into the real world.
Think about what this means if you could take those thoughts in your head, dreams for healing,
dreams for creating works of art, or companies, or contributing to the world and more rapidly
get them out into the physical world.
See the thing is our education system teaches us to function purely as a physical being.
To create things you create them physically, but what if there are tools, powerful tools,
that exist purely in terms of using our minds, our intellect, our abilities such as dreaming
and visualizing with our minds to accelerate the creation of the world that we want?
These tools exist.
It's called creative visualization and if you can learn this art it is one of the most
incredible things you can gift yourself in the world.
Here's why I believe in creative visualization.
I've always believed that there's a slow way and a fast way to create change in the world.
I've always been able to do it in a fast way.
For example, if you look at Mindvalley today we have one of the most gorgeous offices of
any company.
It was voted "Inc. Magazine" Top 10 Coolest Workplaces but just a few years ago this is
what our office looked like.
A few years ago, this is what our diner looked like.
This is what it looks like today.
This is what our team looked like just 10 years ago.
This is our team today.
Once a year we take our entire company to a little team retreat on an island.
This is what that looked like a few years ago.
Today, we rent private islands.
Just a few years ago, when a new person joined Mindvalley we inducted them into our business
in our Hall of Awesomeness, which was this tiny living room, but this is the Hall of
Awesomeness today.
So if you look at those pictures you see dramatic changes, dramatic shifts.
Beautiful things being created.
All of that came unnaturally fast to me and when people ask me how I did it, it wasn't
because of a specific set of knowledge or ideas or money.
It was because every single day for the last 20 years, every single day in the morning,
I start my day by visualizing my life 3 years ahead.
This is the essence of creative visualization.
♪ [music] ♪Creative visualization is based on the idea that the thoughts that you have
in your head influence physical reality in deep, meaningful ways.
It creates situations where you can accelerate healing.
For example, the doctor O. Carl Simonton used it to help cancer patients go through spontaneous
remission or healing.
He called it imagery therapy.
Bodybuilders like Arnold Schwarzenegger say that this is the secret for how they were
able to create muscle growth.
There are studies of athletes and Olympians that show that creative visualization dramatically
helps accelerate their sports performance.
Now it's easy to measure and study this when it has to do with the human body.
It may be a little bit of a job to then say that our thoughts could influence the wider
world.
Can we, in effect, create coincidences, synchronicities, opportunities?
Maybe.
Maybe not.
The fact is we don't know how it works.
Some theories say it has to do with the brain's reticular activating system.
When you have a dominant thought in your brain, your brain throughout the day is more likely
to look for opportunities that fit that dominant thought.
For example, in a classic explanation of the reticular activating system you might read
the example of how if you were to buy a white Volkswagen, all of a sudden as you're driving
you will start to notice more white Volkswagens on the road because it's in your brain.
Likewise, the thoughts you have in your brain about your future create an opportunity where
you're more likely to look and seek and identify opportunities to help that future come to
you.
So that's the scientific explanation, but there's also metaphysical, spiritual explanations
emerging.
For example, biocentrism by Doctor Robert Lanza.
Doctor Robert Lanza made the "Time Magazine" Top 100 Most Influential People in the World
list for 2014.
In his theory of biocentrism, he suggests that consciousness conceives, governs, and
becomes a physical world.
Do we know it's true?
No.
It is just a theory but the thing is just because we don't understand how something
works doesn't mean we cannot use it.
Think, for example, about the sun.
Today we know that the sun is a star.
It's a giant thermonuclear reaction in the sky.
We know how it works from an atoms and molecules and fusion type of perspective, but if you
go back 40,000 years ago human beings had no idea what the sun was.
The ancient Egyptians thought it was the fire god Ra in the sky.
Other cultures believed it was a glowing orb of fire.
Nobody knew what the sun was but, at the same time, we could still use the sun.
Our ancient forefathers could use the sun for farming, for navigation, for warmth, for
light.
They didn't have to know how the sun worked to be able to use it.
Perhaps someday we will understand human consciousness in a deeper detail that we can scientifically
explain how our consciousness might be creating our reality, but until we figure it out it
doesn't stop us from being able to actively use it.
This is where creative visualization comes into play.
In fact, the evidence for creative visualization is becoming so much deeper every year that
the author of the book "Happiness Advantage," Shawn Achor, says "We are all in effect reality
architects."
I love that word reality architect because think about what it means.
It says that you can choose to live a life where life happens to you or you can live
a life where life comes from you.
What this means is that whether you like it or not, you create your life.
Your dominant thoughts shape your life.
The problem is your dominant thoughts are always shaping your life and to most people
in the world their dominant thoughts are often thoughts of anxiety, fear, worry.
It's the human brain's tendency to obsess over danger, over fears, and so to most people
in the world their brains, their thoughts are focused on what could be taking things
away from them.
What could be harming them.
Loss of love.
Lack of health.
But if you understand that your thoughts are shaping your reality and you learn the tools
to shift it, you can now choose dominant thoughts that propel you forward.
Fears and worries create negative situations that attract more fears and worries, which
create negative situations which attract even more fears and worries.
This becomes a negative spiral pulling you downwards.
But when you learn the tools of creative visualization, you create beautiful visions to pull you forward.
These beautiful visions attract the types of events and moments in your life that make
you even more optimistic because it's self-affirming.
This helps you expand your vision and thus pull you forward even more.
As the philosopher Esther Hicks says, "For an observer the better it gets, the better
it gets.
Or the worse it gets, the worse it gets.
However, one who is a visionary thrives all the time.
So get with the program.
Be a visionary."
And this is where creative visualization comes in.
What does it look like?
Well in the book "Cycle Cybernetics" Doctor Maxwell Maltz describes it this way.
"Simply define your goal or end result.
Picture it to yourself clearly and vividly, then simply capture the feelings you would
experience if the desirable goal were already an accomplished fact.
Then you are acting spontaneously and creatively.
Then you are using the power of your subconscious mind.
Then your internal machinery is geared for success to guide you in making the correct
muscular motions and adjustments to supply you with creative ideas and to do whatever
else is necessary in order to make the goal an accomplished fact."
So it's time to get off the train of mediocrity.
How long does it take?
Well in the book "Creative Visualization"by Shakti Gawain, Gawain says "The technique
is so powerful that as little as five minutes of practice starts to create ripples of change
in your life."
I believe that because I practiced this for no more than three minutes every single day
for the last 20 years.
And the latest science is showing that it actually does create changes in your brain.
They call this neuroplasticity.
So the thing is anyone can practice creative visualization but there's an ordinary hack
way and then there's a spectacularly advanced way in which you can do it.
You could decide you want to write a book.
You get on your computer, you punch a couple of keys, and boom you've translated words
onto a page but is that a book?
No.
To actually write a book, to get a best seller, there are methodologies.
There are frameworks.
There are writing techniques.
There are content framework techniques that you can bring in to create a best seller.
When it comes to creative visualization this task, this skill is so important you don't
want to be a dabbler.
You want to be a master.
So you want to invest time to learn the right techniques, the right ways to really make
this work for you.
There are deep questions to be answered in terms of what are the best approaches to creative
visualization?
Questions such as what levels of brain frequency are optimal for this?
How do you bring in your other senses?
How do you set the right goals?
How do you identify goals that fit in with your level of human awareness?
How do you even know what is your level of human awareness?
How do you use creative visualization as a group?
As an individual?
As a couple?
As a family?
What's the difference between aspiration and healing and goal setting and dreaming and
problem solving?
These are all different things and different tactics and tools of creative visualization
are applied differently in these frameworks.
How long do you do it?
When do you stop?
How do you know you're being successful?
What do you look for?
What thoughts do you carry in your head when you come out of your creative visualization
session?
I love this technique and so for 20 years I've been studying, fine tuning, reading hundreds
of books on these ideas from philosophers to biohackers to extraordinary entrepreneurs
and how they used it in their lives.
And that's why I'm really excited about this upcoming class on the Mindvalley Academy where
me and Lisa Nichols are going to be teaching you some of the most powerful tools to bring
creative visualization into your world.
Doctor John Eliot of Harvard University in his book "Overachievement" wrote this: "I
insist you throw caution at the wind.Ignore the pleas of parents, coaches, spouses, and
bosses to be realistic.Realistic people do not accomplish extraordinary things because
the odds of success stymie them.
The best performers ignore the odds.I will show you that instead of limiting themselves
to what's possible, the best will pursue the heart pounding, exciting, really big, difference
making dreams so long as catching them might be possible."
Creative visualization gives you that heart pounding attitude towards life.
Pains, trauma, things holding you back no longer jar you as much and realism is tossed
behind you as you move towards creating that epic life that you've always dreamed about
as a child.
So join us for this next class on the Mindvalley Academy.