Mel Robbins’ Simple Steps for Visualizing Your Success
I really like Mel Robbins. I guess it’s because she’s so real.
And I guess too because she is helpful.
Recently, I listened to her explaining visualization, the skill of being able to imagine and feel your life the way you want it to be when things are going well, when goals are accomplished and life is sweet.
I have read, listened, practised and learned about the skill of visualization for years. I mean more than 30! I have never heard it explained as well as she did in her 2019 Mindset Reset program. You can find her YouTube Video HERE
Here’s how she explained visualization.
We have a part of our brain, the Reticular Activating System or RAS for short. Sounds more fun to pronounce the S as Z… RAZ… 🙂
The RAS filters stimuli from the world, like a strainer filters water when you pour the cooked pasta shells through it. If we didn’t have this RAS filter, there would be just too much information coming at us all the time.
For example, stop and look around the space you are in right now. There is more going on with the colours, sounds, movement, light shining, book titles, people talking than you realize.
Whew, I can’t begin to list it all.
And so, we filter the world in order to survive in it.
But where does this filter come from? …Our Thoughts!!!
Yes. Really. We construct this filter with our thoughts. The experiences of our life create a lot of thoughts, opinions, conclusions and ideas about life. Then, those thoughts become the filter through which all the rest of life passes through.
For example, let’s say you have the thought once in a while that you don’t have what it takes to be successful at something, …say building an online digital life coaching business. (Asking for a friend!) 
All the thoughts related to “not good enough”, “don’t have what it takes”, “I don’t know how to do this”, act like a filter only letting other thoughts, ideas and experiences like them reach our conscious brain.
The idea of the RAS is that we only see what we are looking for.
Those thoughts about not knowing how to create this new fangled online business mean I will see only the experiences in my life that confirm it.
Yes, you guessed. It’s about me.
Hence, I only see the ways I am not measuring up. I notice all the stories of people who don’t succeed. I tend to see how hard it all is.
But wait, there’s more!
Not only does the RAS filter according to our thoughts, it is also looking for things to validate and confirm them. I don’t actually see the other stuff, the good stuff. It doesn’t stick. The good stuff, the successes, the history of achieving other difficult things, that is basically now the pasta water that flows right through the sieve of the RAS. I’m left with the pasta shells that prove I am not good enough.
Here’s where visualization comes in.
Visualization creates a new filter.
The brain cannot tell the difference between real or imagined experiences. It simply encodes everything as memory. Isn’t that just amazing? So these new thoughts that you are producing in your visualization become your new filter and voila, you are reprogramming your mind for success.
And it’s not just thoughts. It’s important to imagine how you would feel also. So, today, when I did a few minutes of visualization, I also imagined how I would feel at the end of this new online coaching project.
I imagined feeling proud and excited and honestly relieved.
Okay? So let’s do this thing.
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Mel Robbins’ Simple Steps for Visualizing Your Success
Here are Mel’s simple steps:
- Close your eyes. Start to imagine what your life would be like with the new goal or a new behaviour improved. Use your imagination. For example, imagine yourself speaking confidently to a new client, or raising your hand in an important business meeting, or going to the gym.
I imagined looking at my website promoting my new digital course that is all done and looking so good. I imagined lots of happy clients changing their lives for the better because of my course.
Now it’s your turn: What are the things you would be doing if you were achieving your goals? Can you close your eyes and imagine it? Give it a try.
- Bring your feelings into it. For example, maybe you’re after a raise at work. How will you feel as your manager tells you the good news. Proud? Excited? Relieved? Grateful? Really try to feel it.
- And now, do it. Every day. Maybe for a minute or two. What does it look like when you achieve your goals and how does it feel?
That’s it.
That’s how you reprogram your brain so that it starts to support you going forward, keeps the good stuff in your awareness and washes the not so good stuff down the drain.
Now your remaining pasta shells are full of evidence that you can and will achieve your goals.
One last spiritual perspective here.
In the Yogic tradition, we all carry these little energy vortexes called Samskaras. They are stuck energy spinning in your inner energy field. They are created from situations you don’t like, big and small. And when life experiences hit those Samskaras, that’s when you feel terrible, get angry, upset, lonely… you name it, you’ll feel it and think all the thoughts that go along with it.
Let’s just call it “a disturbance in the Force.”
Well, visualization can help here too. Before you even start reprogramming your RAS, take a few moments to breathe, relax and release the negative thoughts and feelings that are already stuck there.
I like to think of it as purification.
Let yourself feel it, then let it pass.
Okay. That’s it for today.
I can hardly wait to see how this visualization practise changes things, what my life will look like through the filter of positive thoughts and feelings about myself and my life.
It’s just got to be good.
I’ll keep you posted. And let me know how you do in the comments below.
Talk soon,
Lisa
