We talk a lot about using visualization to improve performance, augment memory, and provide motivation by helping you focus on your goals. Visualization is an incredibly powerful tool, and can augment almost every facet of our lives. For instance, studies have found that kids who visualize their white blood cells (the warriors of the immune system) beating up germs get over colds faster. Other studies show that sales people who visualize closing deals before meeting customers are more successful. Reams and reams of evidence of the capacity of visualization to augment sports performance have been piling up for decades now. There really are no limits to the ways that you can apply visualization in your life. But how, concretely, do you put visualization to use?

Visualization principles:

1. Visualization is Like Mental Practice

If you want to get better at a sport, what is the best way to practice? By doing the actual activities involved, of course. To become a better basketball player, you practice dribbling and shooting. To improve at golf, you drill your swing and your putting stroke. The same principle applies to playing an instrument, or to any other skill. The way you improve at any activity is to practice the relevant skill set. 

Have you ever wondered how practice actually makes us better at things? There are a number of factors involved, but the biggest one is probably the fact that practicing any activity creates new connections between nerve cells. Everything we do, from moving, to talking, to thinking depends on connections between nerve cells. In general, the better a group of nerve cells involved in a given activity connect, the more skilled we are at that activity. Whenever we do any activity, the nerve cells in our brains and bodies involved in that activity fire electrical impulses and talk to one another. Critically, the more often a given group of nerves cells talk to one another, the stronger the connections between them grow.

What this means is that by doing any activity repeatedly, you actually end up creating stronger connections between the nerves involved in that activity, which makes that activity easier to perform in the future. This is where a lot of the benefits of practicing come from. Repeating an activity like a golf swing, a field goal, or a slap shot over and over again creates stronger connections between the nerves in your body and brain that coordiante these activities, meaning you can do them with greater ease, fluidity, and precision.

Believe it or not, visualization works just like practice for your brain. Scientists have found that when you visualize an activity, you activate many of the same nerve cells that you use when actually doing that activity. Pretty Amazing, right! And the more you activate these nerve cells, the more they talk to one another, strengthening the connections between them. In this way, practicing in your mind by visualizing can actually improve your ability to perform physical tasks.

A physical practice session for a sport should be comprehensive. You should go over all the skills you will need come game time. The same thing is true of a good visualization session. If you want to become a better soccer player, richly visualize a solid five minutes of play in which you run through all of the skills you want to have on the field. If you want to nail a presentation, visualize yourself giving the whole thing. Include the audience, and their rapt attention and glowing applause at the end, in your picture. Making your visualization sessions as comprehensive and detailed as possible is the best way to prepare for success in the real world. This rule applies to visualizing all sorts of things, and not just to sports. Public speaking, acting, playing an instrument, and virtually anything else you might want to improve at all depend on connections between brain cells, and your skills at all of these activities can be enhanced with visualization.