I’m starting this article with the assumption that you are able to sit still for extended periods of time. It always behooves you to practice stillness pretty regularly.
In my personal practice of stillness recently, I noticed images. As I began to examine them, I realized they were from television or Instagram. That raised the question whether they should be in my mind, my subconscious. It’s obviously been processed at some level. Images are powerful and they linger. We tend to think in pictures. That brought the next question: What are the images we’re putting into our brains?
Our sight is really, really powerful. Enter the vision board. Determine what it is you want to achieve and then create a visual representation of it, i.e., a vision board. Images linger and a picture is always worth a thousand words. Vision is instantaneous. If you look at an image, you immediately know what it is, and you know that far faster than you can read or even listen to a description of that image. If I show you a picture of a zebra, your understanding is immediate. If I say, “Picture an equine-like animal that is white with black stripes,” you’ll probably understand and envision a zebra, but it takes so much longer. From an evolutionary standpoint, we could see long before we had language to describe it.
You can create a slight edge for yourself by the images you put into your head—the films you watch, what you see scrolling on social media, things you expose yourself to visually, etc. The critical question to ask is: “Are they in alignment with your design and what you want for yourself.” Back to the vision board. You are obviously not going to include images that represent failure or images of things you don’t want for yourself.
When it comes to the power of vision, watch a movie and see if you aren’t still thinking about it a day or two later. One of our clients shared that the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan stayed in his head for a couple… months! Admittedly, it was a visually stunning and long, powerful scene.
What is lingering for you? You can make that a probability stack in your favor. What is worth allowing into your head by design? On the other side of the coin, what are you allowing in there by default that’s probably not serving you?
Tangentially, you should also be focusing on your wins. As high performers, we often fail to do that. Consider the power of the image of how successful you really are. It’s easy to get focused on where we may have failed. I’ll admonish you. If you focus on failure and reimagine where you went wrong, you’re doing yourself a huge disservice. What you give attention to you always get more of. No matter how small, focus on the wins. A small win, with your attention and focus, becomes a slight edge.
Be aware of what you expose yourself to. It all has an impact—either positive or negative. Garbage in, garbage out. Slight edges bring exponential rates of return. Never underestimate the power of vision. Use it to your advantage.
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