If you expect to achieve your goals, if you expect to reach your potential, if you expect to have your dreams come true, what I'm about to explain to you is mission-critical. You must become a master at visualization. For those of you that are like, “What the heck is she talking about? I did not sign up for some sort of meditation woo-woo, spiritual thing here.” Don't worry. This is Mel Robbins. There's always science and research involved in everything that I talk about.

Visualization is an extraordinarily powerful skill. You may have heard of the law of attraction. You may have heard of the word visualization. You may have heard of the word manifesting. I call it seeing signs. Your brain has a system in it. Here's the technical term. It's called the reticular activating system. It is a network of neurons in your brain.

What is the job of the reticular activating system?

What is the job of the reticular activating system? It is a filter system. It's basically a system that allows certain information in your brain, and it blocks out other information, and guess who programmed that filter. You did. And so did the people from your past.

So if you constantly feel like you're unlovable, guess what? Your reticular activating system is going through the day, and it's going to point out every single piece of evidence that confirms that negative belief that you have.

If you think that people don't like you at work, the reticular activating system, the filter, it is literally going to be looking for evidence to confirm that belief all day long.

This is one of the reasons why we have such a problem with politics. This is why there's something called confirmation bias. Confirmation bias means your mind loves to read things that you agree with because reading things that you agree with confirms your filter.

Why do we have a reticular activating system?

Why do we have a reticular activating system? There's a really important reason why you have this. The reason why is if your brain let in everything our senses are exposed to, our system would become overloaded.

Have you ever looked at a Facebook page? Have you noticed how many words are on a standard Facebook page? There's an ad over here, and an ad over there, and one over here, and the ad in the news feed. There are ads and information all over the place.

If your brain took in everything in equal value, your head would literally explode off your shoulders. Your brain would melt down. So the reticular activating system protects your brain by filtering information and only lets in stuff that it agrees with. That's the scientific reason and mandate for why you have got to get busy reprogramming your brain.

How You Can Use Visualization

Let's talk about how you can use visualization in order to start to reprogram the reticular activating system in your brain so that your brain starts to spot opportunity. Your brain starts to spot evidence that things are working out. Your brain starts to spot coincidences, so you can build momentum, and it begins with visualization.

Take all the goals that you have written down. I want you to go to each one, and I want you to do a visualization exercise. This is a two-step method based on science.

If your goal is to improve your self-worth, I want you to visualize what your life looks like and how you're going to feel about yourself when your self-worth has improved.

There are two things that you have to do when it comes to visualization. You have to close your eyes. I know this may sound stupid, but I want you to close your eyes.

STEP ONE

With your eyes closed, I want you to have a specific picture in your mind of what your life looks like when your self-worth has improved:

1. You're going to see yourself speaking up at work
2. You're going to see yourself talking more about your business
3. You're going to see yourself leaving bad relationships
4. You're going to see yourself defining boundaries
5. You're going to see yourself going to the gym
6. You're going to see yourself taking care of yourself

8. 
   STEP TWO

When you start to visualize the image of these things, I want you to consciously think of the positive emotions that you're going to feel:

1. I'm going to feel happy
2. I'm going to feel proud
3. I'm going to stand taller
4. I'm going to be so grateful that I made this change

Marry the specific images of you with your new improved self-worth together with the emotions you feel. There I am. I'm at work, and I'm raising my hand. Amazing. I'm sharing my idea. There I am. I'm getting a promotion. There I am asking for a raise. There I am. I've just signed up another customer to my business. There I am. I've gone back to school. I feel so good about myself.

When you do that, here's what's actually happening in your brain. This is the cool science part. You are training your brain to have a totally different filter. Your brain doesn't know the difference between something that actually happened to you, like the F you got on your test in 10th grade, and the things you imagine that are happening to you.

Let me say that again. Your brain doesn't know the difference between the bad things that actually happened to you. The real memories that you have and an imagined memory that you're creating. Your brain will experience you visualizing going to the gym, you visualizing how happy you feel when you do. You visualizing asking for that raise and getting it and how proud you're going to feel.

When you visualize in the way that I'm teaching you to, your brain encodes it as a real memory. That's important because when you encode it as a real memory, it changes the filter system, the reticular activating system.

And here's what we know based on research. The more you visualize things, the greater your confidence is going to be, the greater security you're going to have about it.

And here's the really cool thing. Studies suggest, and have proven, that simply visualizing yourself doing things actually develops the skill and helps you improve the skills just as if you were actually doing it.

So there's proof based on research that visualization helps you build skills. What's really important about this, is that based on research, the more that you do this, the more you start to believe what you think. This is because you are reprogramming your brain.

Reprogramming Your Brain

When you consistently visualize, you are changing the network of neurons that act as a filter. The more that you actually believe in yourself and the more you start thinking and visualizing yourself speaking up, the more confident you're going to become, and the more skills you will build. Then instead of looking for all the reasons not to speak up in a meeting, you're going to just speak up because you have changed your brain filter.

You're going to look for opportunities and live your life more courageously. This is how it works. Every single day for the next thirty days, I want you to go through all the goals that you set yourself. Spend 30 seconds each day visualizing. Your dreams deserve 30 seconds, don't you think? You're going to close your eyes, and you're going to visualize:

• What does it look like in your life when you have achieved your monetary goals this year?
• How does it feel to go to the bank and see that balance?
• How does it feel to be able to write that check and take your kids to Disney World on money that you made?
• How does it feel to be able to rent your own place or put down a down payment for the house you've always dreamt of?
• How does it feel to be able to have saved enough money, so you can quit the job that you hate and launch a business doing something you love because you have achieved your goals?

It feels darn good. That's how it feels, and I want you to just savor that. Because what you're doing when you visualize? You are reprogramming your reticular activating system. That system of neurons, that network that acts as a filter in your brain. Now you're reprogramming it so that it's spotting opportunity, so that it's helping you see evidence that you are confident, that you are capable, that you can achieve your goals.

This positive mindset will begin to replace all the negativity and doubt you previously had in your mind. That is why visualization is so important in achieving your goals. It's the number one habit billionaires practice daily.

This video was created by Be Inspired. You can see more great videos that they have produced on their YouTube channel RIGHT HERE.