As I sit here typing, I am staring out my window at a lake and a yard covered in two feet of snow. If you aren’t shoveling it or freezing in it, it’s kind of pretty.

However, how many people besides me are visualizing palm trees?

So, you may ask, what is visualizing? Is it just pipe dreaming? (an expression, by the way, originating with the turn of the last century opium pipes and the hallucinogenic haze of the smoker.)

Visualization is using the power of the mind to create a lifelike image, often with sounds and even occasionally smells, to be in some future time and place. Its corollary is worry, but that post is for another time. So, why have a vision? To riff on one of my favorite wisdom quotes, “without a vision, the people perish”.

So now what? Do you want it? Do you really, really want it? Next, when do you want it? If you don’t pick a when and where, it stays a whim, which is OK, but not very powerful. It is also unlikely to give you the drive and resilience to make it an accomplished goal! It can’t be vague or hazy, -imagine the clarity of a photograph. So what do you want in the picture? If this seems scary or difficult, check out YouTube, or give me a call if you are ready for the next steps.

And yes, I’m visualizing something specific myself – a 2024 Jimmy Buffett cruise! And I even added an action step – I called a travel agent.

Next week, I will go deeper into what visualization is and is not, as well as explain a powerful and thoroughly overused word, Manifest! As always, I would like to know if you think I am on the right track, and how to make it more specific to you and your life.

Till we chat again,

wayne@waynepratt.ca