Visualisation can help YOU achieve a better future! - BBC

Boxing legend Muhammad Ali once wrote, if my mind can conceive it and my heart can believe it, then I can achieve it. But is that really true? Visualisation, or mental imagery as it's called in psychology, basically means creating a vivid experience in your mind first, using the same senses as we use to perceive the world around us in real life. And it's a tool that's long been used by footballers and elite athletes. Visualisation is like seeing with the mind's eye. While humans can think in either words or images, images are faster to retrieve in your mind and can feel more real. What we think happens when you imagine is that related areas of the brain are activated through neural pathways, as if you're actually doing it. And this is what we call a neural overlap. This means that if you imagine lifting weights, for example, the parts of your brain involved in hand and arm movements will become more active. There was a study that showed you can actually increase your muscle strength just by thinking about doing reps. And it doesn't only work in sports. As an economist, I've always been interested in how to improve people's livelihoods. And I wondered, could this be achieved by visualising a better future? My colleagues and I worked with traumatised communities who had experienced poverty, violence and adversity in Colombia and Ethiopia to teach them mental imagery. And the results really surprised us. We found that in Colombia, where we offered nearly 2,000 people to participate in either standard business training, business training with mental imagery or no training at all. Those who opted for training with mental imagery started to earn more money and improve their living situation. Amazingly, when the team then decided to try this out in another country, Ethiopia, we found that people who were taught how to use this technique when making important decisions about the future had better job and food security outcomes a month later. They set short-term goals for the next week or month and then visualised the steps they would need to take to achieve those goals. For example, they visualised reaching out to someone who might be able to help them find a job. Under the right circumstances, this technique could be used to help people with certain mental illnesses, such as PTSD or social anxiety. What was interesting in our study was that the most vulnerable and traumatised people had the best results, showing how much potential the simple technique has for those who've experienced adversity. Using visualisation exercises, we were able to help refocus the brain on planning for the future rather than being stuck in the past, which is often an aspect of trauma. And the great thing about it is that most of us can practice it to help us achieve our goals, whatever they are. If you're curious to try this out, this is how we did it in Colombia and Ethiopia. We asked a person to get comfortable, relax and start making a film of the future situation in their mind, really immerse themselves in the detail. What can they see, smell, hear, feel, taste? What is really important is to imagine the steps towards achieving a goal and not just the outcome itself. This includes potential obstacles and the scenarios for how to overcome them. The more realistic you're able to make it, the better. We worked with a young entrepreneur in Colombia who had gone through so much in life. Her dream was to create clothing for pregnant women, as she saw this as a big gap in the market. The challenge was that she had never had children herself. She used mental imagery to imagine what it would be like to be in the shoes of potential clients and identify what they needed most. This really helped her empathise with her prospective customers and give her the motivation and self-confidence to start a great business. One year later, her business was thriving and she was able to employ others. Practice makes perfect. When you visualise every day, you can actually rewire the neurons in your brain so you think, feel and perform better. So I use this technique in my everyday life. I use it before having a difficult conversation, say with my boss, and that helps regulate my emotions beforehand going in. This technique can be applied to so many different situations. I think once you start practising it, you realise that it comes far more easily in your daily life. We can all capitalise on this and the more we use it, the more we can improve it. It may seem like such a simple skill and yet it's almost like a superpower. Tapping into the amazing abilities of our mind can really help us achieve the future we've always wanted.