Visualize Your Way to Success: The Power of Vision for Personal Development

Hey there,

Welcome back to Upgrade! Today, I want to talk about the power of vision and how it can help us achieve our personal and professional goals.

One of the biggest failures of startup founders is their inability to achieve their goals. People, in general, are ambitious, and we all aspire to do great things and become successful. We constantly seek a way to a happier, wealthier, healthier and more fulfilling life.

"A goal is a dream with a deadline" - Napolean Hill

But unfortunately, only a fraction of us do what we say we will do and achieve our personal goals. In this post, I wanted to share my experience and journey of developing a growth mindset and disciplined entrepreneur to focus and achieve my goals.  

A quick look at my past

I am from a humble and middle-income household, and growing up as a young teen, I was not the smartest kid on the block or someone with a high level of intelligence, and I was an average student at school with decent grades. I was active in learning new things, challenging myself to acquire new skills and had grand ambitions.

As a young teen, I faced multiple setbacks and failures, from securing college admission to financial loss. Though ambitious, I was simply not focused on what I wanted to achieve and did not know how to reach my goals.

Over the last 15 years, I have been practising myself to focus on building a growth mindset and building the life of dreams one step at a time.

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I am going to brag a little about the crazy things I have done so far

• Successfully built 3 startups in the last 4 years
• Built an investment portfolio (28% return)
• 10x my productivity
• Built a software development company from 0 to $50K monthly recurring revenue
• Attempted two World records
• I fell in love and married the love of my life  
• Built my radio station at the age of 12
• Become a professional pianist from Trinity College of Music London
• Lost 10 kilos in 14 weeks and more...

Enough of your bragging 👊  Benji - What's your point?

I am going to share three strategies that can help you achieve your goals both in your personal and professional life.

#1 Write it down

The first thing you need to do to achieve your goals is to write them down simply. It is straightforward yet most powerful in reaching your goals. All you need to do is take a pen and paper and write down the goals that you want to achieve.

Research by the University of Scranton suggests that 92% of people fail to achieve their New Year’s goals. In another critical study, Dr Gail Matthews, a psychology professor at the Dominican University in California, studied the art and science of goal setting.

She gathered 267 people together — men and women from all over the world and from all walks of life, including entrepreneurs, educators, healthcare professionals, artists, lawyers and bankers.

She divided the participants into groups according to who wrote down their goals and dreams and who didn’t...

And she discovered that those who wrote down their goals and dreams regularly achieved those desires at a significantly higher level than those who did not.

She found that you become 42% more likely to achieve your goals and dreams simply by writing them down regularly.

I use the NOTION to write on my goals and I also write them on the whiteboard. I keep them right at the centre of my workday so that it constantly reminds me of my north star

#2 Visualise your goals

One of the most underrated skills and underutilised skills is the power of visualisation.

Visualisation is a simple technique that you can use to create a solid mental image of a future event. With good use of visualisation, you can practice in advance for the event to prepare properly for it. And by visualising success, you can build the self-confidence you need to perform well.

Let's say I wanted $200,000 in savings in my bank account. All you need to do is close your eyes and visualise what that would look like.

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Visualise opening your banking app and then looking at that six-digit figure in your balance. The power of visualisation is, in my opinion, what separates us from animals. Humans can visualise, foresee and they tend to focus on their gods.

Michael Phelps: The Olympic swimmer used visualisation techniques to prepare for his races. He would visualise every detail of his races, from his stroke technique to the crowd cheering him on. This helped him stay focused and confident during his races, and he became the most decorated Olympian of all time.

Oprah Winfrey: The media mogul has long been a proponent of the power of vision. She often speaks about creating vision boards and visualising her goals. In 1991, she wrote herself a check for $1 million and kept it in her wallet until she actually made that amount of money. She credits visualisation as one of the keys to her success.

I recommend that every day you spend 15 minutes visualising the key goals you wanted to achieve. I love early mornings for this activity

#3 Strategise your goals

Just having goals is not good enough. It would be best if you had a well-thought strategy and a plan to execute over time. You know what the end looks like; you need to know, work backwards, and figure out what the steps.

In my opinion, strategy is playing a game of chess. Think about this: to win the game, sometimes you have to sacrifice a few key players, and sometimes you will hold your position and not move forward. Some of this action creates a defensive position before getting ready for an attack. Your goals in life are like playing chess, and one has be to strategic when it comes to choosing when what and how.

More methods and tips

In addition to visualisation, journaling and affirmations are two other proven methods that can help you harness the power of vision for personal development.

Journaling involves writing down your thoughts, goals, and aspirations regularly. By putting your thoughts on paper, you can gain clarity on what you want to achieve and create a roadmap for reaching your goals. For example, if your goal is to start a business, you could journal about the steps you need to take to make it happen.

Affirmations involve repeating positive statements about yourself and your goals to help reprogram your mind for success. For instance, if your goal is to improve your self-confidence, you could repeat affirmations such as "I am confident and capable" or "I trust in my abilities to achieve my goals."

Here are my personal book and podcasts recommendations to help you harness the power of vision:

Book recommendations:

1. "The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle
2. "Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill
3. "The Magic of Thinking Big" by David J. Schwartz
4. "The Miracle Morning" by Hal Elrod
5. "Atomic Habits" by James Clear

Podcast recommendations:

1. "The Tim Ferriss Show"
2. "The School of Greatness" by Lewis Howes
3. "The Tony Robbins Podcast"
4. "Optimal Living Daily"
5. "The Life Coach School" by Brooke Castillo

Scientific studies have shown that visualisation can help improve performance and increase motivation. A study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology found that visualisation helped enhance the performance of basketball players. Another study published in the Journal of Sports Sciences found that visualisation helped increase the motivation and confidence of athletes.

I encourage you to take action and start harnessing the power of vision in your own life. Whether it's creating a vision board or writing down your goals, taking the time to visualise your aspirations can help you achieve them.

Do you use any of these methods? Share your experience in the comments below.
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