Stress is a condition that occurs to everyone at some point in their life. Mostly it occurs due to overthinking about tough situations you face and may also be due to undergoing difficult situations in life, for example, an exam, a job interview, etc. Normally, a little bit of stress is considered to be good for you. It helps us to achieve better things in our lives and experience our life more. But for some people, it can lead to severe stages of mental abnormalities impacting their day-to-day life. It all depends on your attitude toward the problem you encounter. With the increment of stress, people have been implementing various stress-relieving methods to decrease its effects on their day-to-day activities. And visualization is considered one of them.
Visualization is considered one of the proven methods to reduce stress and enhance your quality of life. It has helped many people to reduce stress and envision a better future for themselves. In this article, I will express facts about visualization and how it promotes relaxation and stress reduction.
Table of Contents
What is visualization?
Visualization can be described as mentally imagining the required process or outcome of your desired goal. It’s like a type of meditation where you focus all your stress on a simple thought process of imagining you have reached your targeted goal or similar experience. This also includes the sensory experience of sound, smell, taste, sight, and touch.
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How to practice visualization?
Visualization can be done in several methods. You can choose any plan that fits your lifestyle and what’s best for you. I’ll be discussing a few methods here.
- Breathing exercise.
This is a lot like meditation or you can simply call it a type of meditation technique. Simply what you do is you practice your breathing in a calm way and then when your mind is fully focused, you visualize whatever your desired thoughts are. Even though it’s a very simple exercise, it can help you a lot to reduce your stress levels and also to increase your concentration abilities.
So here’s how you do it.
- Select a good sitting posture whatever that works for you. (It’s better if it’s the regular meditation posture).
- Keep your back straight and your arms on your lap.
- Next close your eyes. (This helps you to focus more and would be less distracted from outside actions.)
- Take a deep breath and inhale.
- After a few seconds exhale. Don’t hurry the process. Do it at your own pace.
- Focus only on how you inhale and exhale air, how it fills up your lungs and gets out of your body.
- Do it until you feel like your mind is completely blank.
- Next start visualizing your desired outcome and try to feel like you’ve already achieved it. Start to feel all the emotions you might get when you achieve that goal. be happy about your accomplishment. Start to think you have already achieved your desired outcome. Let the universe feel your energy.
- Then with time, you will be able to see yourself going through the process and achieving it exactly like you wanted it to be.
And also through this process, you can decrease the stress and anxiety you are going through in any situation.
- Using affirmations
By using powerful positive affirmations you can reduce stress and lead a positive life. It helps you to change your regular thought patterns and add positive behavioral patterns to your lifestyle.
It can help you not only when you are in a stressful situation, but also during your day-to-day life to have a more productive and happy life. When you start to have positive thoughts about your day, you instantly turn the energy around you to a positive one.
It would lead you to have a cheerful day instead of the one that you might have if you a stressed about everything around you. One thing a lot of people might not understand is that the energy and the vibe they are radiating, the thought process they have within their day has a lot of impact on their life. The attitude in which they see the world is very important to lead a happy life.
If you describe it in one sentence it’s like “You are what you think”.
- Visual imagery.
Using visual imagery is also a successful method to achieve relaxation during a stressful time. When you visualize the process of achieving what you desired it helps you to reduce the stress and worry you have on the outcomes that haven’t happened yet. You can simply imagine the favorable outcome you wanted out of the process.
For example, if you are participating in a dance competition before you perform you can mentally visualize yourself dancing on the stage and imagine you have done it perfectly and the judges are praising you for your performance. This type of visualization may help you to reduce the amount of stress you might be dealing in that point. Through this method, it helps you to focus on the positive and not worry about anything that could go wrong and even prevent you from overthinking about the situation.
As for these methods, you may also find many other ways this can be implemented in your life.
One thing to remember is if you are using visualization for long-term goals or for bigger changes in your life, make sure to be patient about it. Visualization doesn’t work the same for everybody. Based on different strategies it may take time, for some it may work more quickly than for others. but don’t lose faith in the process, make sure to understand that wishing without hard work is also a no-go.
Visualization helps you to achieve your goal quicker and lets the universe know about your plans and help you. But you should also understand that while practicing visualization you should also work hard for your goals.
Benefits of visualization
There are numerous advantages to practicing visualization and making it a part of your life. Some of them are,
- Able to succeed in achieving your goals with less amount of stress.
- Reduce anxiety and fear of failure.
- Promotes better functioning of the body due to reduced stress levels.
- Improves one’s focus and concentration on a specific task.
- Ability to heal traumatizing experiences you might go through in the past.
- Avoid unnecessary worry about the unpredictable future.
- Promotes better quality of life.
- Improves mental, physical, social, and spiritual well-being.
- Ability to live life more happily.
As a human being, I think you might like to have the above-mentioned advantages in your life. Practicing visualization might help you to achieve your goals with much less stress. You will be able to live a much more relaxed life.
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