Visualizing Your Success: A Script

Naked Leader Week – 218 (w/c Monday 30 July 2007)

Visualizing Your Success: A Script

A while ago I was seeking a visualisation script from the USA – and received this. The author wishes to remain anonymous.

I am inviting you on an adventure of the mind. Your imagination will soar into the future and inhabit a potential future self of yours, a self that has attained the goals to which you aspire. You may adopt any comfortable posture. Sit on a chair, sink into a sofa, lie on the floor, even stand against the wall if that’s what you find conducive to imaginative thought.

Arrange your limbs loosely, eliminating all strain in your joints. Close your eyes and relax, truly relax. You must loosen your facial muscles. Let your day face drop away; allow your features to settle into true repose. Breathe deeply and not forcefully. Draw the air down into your lungs and hold it for a beat, then release it and let your chest subside. Pause for a beat. Draw another lungful of air. Hold. Release. Pause. Again, breathe in. Hold. Release. Pause. Again.

Twenty years from now, in a house at the top of a hill, you are asleep. The bedroom windows are open to admit the bright summer sunshine and the fragrance of the warm earth. You wake in this morning of the future feeling rested and alert, looking forward to the day ahead. White curtains rustle in the breeze. Outside your window, a songbird trills a sweet aria. A gentle gust of wind plays over your face, caressing your skin. You sit up effortlessly and swing your legs over the side of the bed. The textured granite floor is pleasantly cool under your feet, these feet that have trodden so many miles to bring you here. Every tile in the floor, every slate on the roof, every brick in the walls of your house is a testament to your hard work.

And you have arrived, and this is a day to appreciate your accomplishments. You stride through French windows onto a broad terrace overlooking the rear garden. At a round, glass-topped table sits your consort, who greets you with a glowing smile. You make light conversation as you breakfast on succulent slices of your favorite fruit, grown here on the surrounding land. The talk digresses briefly into a matter of finance or household management, and only to confirm that all is well. Your affairs have reached a point of equilibrium where the gaping holes have long been plugged, where no major shifts can occur any more. Contemplate this briefly.

Security is yours. Your mind is at ease. You rise from the breakfast table and stroll down the terrace, approaching a further set of French windows where sounds of merriment are audible. Other members of the household are at play. You look in for a moment, scanning their countenances for signs of worry, and there are none. You see their faces unlined by anxiety, mirroring your own contentment. By achieving stability in your life, you have also granted it to those who depend on you. Your success is a gift to others. It belongs to you, and you can share it freely without diminishing its worth. You return to your living quarters, where you wash and dress for travel.

Today’s journey is a brief one, down to the shore and across the strait to visit some friends. You descend the front steps of the house to the drive, a carpet of smooth gray pebbles, where your steed awaits. A horse? An elephant? A Ferrari? You mount or enter, as the case may be, and lightly grip the reins or the steering wheel. You pause to gaze at the horizon, an indistinct line separating the glittering blue of the sea from the milky blue of the sky.

The sight infuses you with joy, with a sense of absolute liberty, because there is nowhere you have to go today. You are setting forth not from necessity and because it pleases you. The days of duty are behind you, the arduous chores are in the past. No one is riding you now. You are in the driver’s seat. The road winds through fragrant orchards, then among rolling hills overgrown with wild grasses. It peters out on the soft sands of a beach that seemed much less friendly when you landed here some years ago under a stormy sky. The sand was grittier then and the winds were fierce, the very waters hostile. In those days, it had seemed a dire matter to cross the water, to battle your way onto the shore, up the slope, onto the plateau where now you dwell in peace. You have since recognized that what appeared to be a raging sea is only a channel of water separating two landmasses.

What was an arduous crossing of days and nights on a warship has become, with the benefit of experience, half an hour by rowboat. Waiting on the sand is a small rowboat in good repair, freshly painted in your favorite color. Red? Purple? Green? You ease it into the water. Warm waves lap against your ankles. You grip the oars and row easily, leaning back with each stroke. No need to look over your shoulder. You know this crossing well. It holds no more hazards for you. When you first came this way, your greatest fears rose from the deep to assail you, the glistening coils of sea serpents looming from the swell to sweep you overboard and drown you.

And you prevailed. You fought through. Now, on this bright and perfect day, you can be glad that your resolve never left you. Your fears are vanquished, the sea serpents dead. Where you land on the opposite shore, there lie in the sand the bones of creatures that stood in your path. No longer do they menace you with claws and fangs. These were your anxieties, your neuroses. Only their skeletal remains are left in the sand, polished by abrasion to a jewel-like finish, suitable for a necklace. You stand now on the beach, gazing at your friends’ house nestled between sand dunes. The dunes rise into grassy hillocks, which are the foothills of a mountain range you once had to cross. It is a small mountain range with gentle inclines, yet how steep they once seemed. The mountains are much diminished in hindsight, their contours softened, the crags worn smooth. These paltry barriers, how threatening they once appeared. Yet you forged ahead. You persisted where others lost hope, you went on where others faltered from complacency or anxiety. And here you are, on a sunlit day without trouble or care, looking back on the obstacles you have overcome.

The day is warm. Your friends are near. Your troubles are behind you. You are at leisure to enjoy the best that earthly life can offer. You have arrived. Hold this moment of the future in your thoughts, fix it clearly and firmly. This is what awaits you. It must not preoccupy you. Your vision of the bounty that is to come must remain a solace, a source of comfort into which you can dip from time to time as a reminder of your ambition. It must not take on a life of its own. You are not to spend your daylight hours wandering this dreamscape or embroidering the vision. It is merely a point toward which you are working. You will live it when you get there. Now you must return your attention to the present, where duty calls. Breathe deeply, not too forcefully, and gird yourself for the day to come. Draw in a lungful of air, and then hold it. Release. Are you ready? Another lungful of air. Pause. Release. You are ready. Another deep breath. Pause. Release. You will shortly open your eyes and address the present with calm strength. Act with purpose.

Live in the moment. Look forward to the fruits of success, and do not dwell upon them. It is enough that you know what is to come. Now is the time, right now, to begin. You are ready. It is time. Open your eyes and seize the day.

I send you my love and best wishes

David

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