Don’t just visualise success – make a plan

Reading this afternoon about the self-help industry’s fascination with visualisation and how if you visualise your goals, they’ll more likely happen.

This may be true but I think there’s more to it than just visualising success. I’ve done some reflecting before about The Secret and what it leaves out in achieving any kind of level of success. I think it comes back to taking action and creating a plan to achieve what you want in life.

I think The Secret details very well the benefits of visualising the success you want, but it doesn’t say anything about doing anything to bring your success about. It just says if you picture the perfect abs enough, you’ll get them. It doesn’t mention doing planks, situps, garhammer raises. It says if you put up the picture on your wall of the perfect house and look at it enough, it’ll happen. It doesn’t help you plan for the work to get there. It doesn’t allow for the failure along the way, the setbacks or creating a plan that will help you get to your end goal.

And so visualising is fine, but focus on creating a plan to get you to the end goal. And then do something. Build momentum and become a better version of yourself along the way.

Visualising the perfect outcome doesn’t allow for the failure, mistakes, problems and issues along the way. Plans allow for a certain amount of “things going wrong” or at least Murphy’s Law should be applied to plans and gives some insight here: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Allow this buffer into your plan 🙂

Be ok with not perfect first time. Be ok with failure. Be ok with making mistakes. Be ok with setbacks. These are growth opportunities. These are times when you can learn and become a better version of yourself. This is exciting and these are the reasons these times can be opportunities rather than times to stop or give up. Speed bumps, not stop signs.

Keep on keeping on, you’ll get there!