Visualising Your Life

Visualising Problems and

How to Overcome Them

If you’ve been reading my articles you will know I tend toward positivity, managing our thoughts and looking on the bright side of life. I’m also a believer in the power of the subconscious and in visualisation and they are both things I have written about before. The subconscious is always trying to work things out for us and many of you will have experienced this in ‘overthinking’, when thoughts keep coming to your mind - often when you are trying to switch off or sleep, anxiety may play a part but essentially it is our subconscious searching for solutions for ways to work out what we have seen as a problem.

Visualisation is a powerful tool as it can give our subconscious a taste of what we want to experience. When visualising it is helpful to get in touch with the emotions we’d feel so it’s not just imagination, though that is part of it, visualisation is about painting a detailed picture in our mind of something we want to see happen in our life and painting it in glorious technicolour adding in the detail and importantly getting in touch with the emotions.

The power behind it is in the belief that if we can envisage something, we can create it, make it happen. In fact, if we are visualising it, we can get into the feeling place of it already happening.

Visualisations helps us to feel empowered, we may not be in control of everything that happens but we are in control of a lot and it is a great way to focus our minds and stay in touch with our goals and purpose. It’s also a great way to stay motivated whatever we are working towards or trying to achieve, the chances are there will be some things we have to do that we aren’t so keen on or take more effort than we’d like. There may be things that make us a bit afraid – after all risk is often an element in achieving our goals, being prepared to put ourselves out there. Of course, if we don’t take risks, we may never fail but we may never reach our more ambitious goals either.

But importantly the brain doesn’t distinguish between real and imagined so it will start work to achieve it when you start visualising.

But recently I have come across the suggestion that we should not just focus on the good outcomes, the things we want to achieve but also on the things that might get in the way. Both sport men and women and personnel in the armed forces have used visualisation powerfully to help overcome problems. By imagining, in detail, the obstacles that may appear or the problems we may have to face, or the things that can go wrong that can put us in a good place to overcome them. That is the important part we don’t just imagine the problem we imagine the solution or at least we identify the possible problem and let our subconscious identify the solutions. It may take a while but by posing the problem our subconscious is able to trawl the memories and knowledge we have about other similar situations we may have encountered and what the solutions to that might be.

In essence it’s about imagining falling over or coming up against a wall but then imagining getting up again or finding a way over under or round the wall.

Think of it as contingency planning. When service men prepare for missions they will run through every possible scenario – all the things that might go right but also all the things that could go wrong. What if the intelligence wasn’t accurate, what a vehicle doesn’t start, or weather conditions change? They could all present problems but if these scenarios have been anticipated and solutions found then the impact may not be as negative.

Visualising a problem allows your mind time to start being creative about solutions or alternatives. In some ways it does involve a degree of pessimism but it is a purposeful pessimism – it’s purpose being to prepare you so when something difficult happens you aren’t thrown or ready to give up and instead you can think ‘yes – I know what I can try now’.

Effective visualisation involves getting in touch with the emotions and the same is true when we envisage problems. One of the things that make emotions a challenge is if they are unexpected, they really can throw us. But if we have already anticipated the problem have some ideas about solutions or at least allowed both our conscious and subconscious mind time to be creative and allowed ourselves to imagine the emotions we may feel then the obstacle will probably be much easier to overcome.

So, next time you find yourself with a few minutes spare use it wisely by allowing yourself to daydream, but with a purpose, envisaging the life you want or an aspect of the life you want and harnessing the power of your subconscious through visualisation to get it – it could be the most productive part of your day.

For a regular dose of positivity follow us on Instagram – Sheila Mulvenney or visit our website www.attunededucation.com for articles, blogposts and events.

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Midlife Madness

I may have mentioned before how delighted I am to have reached an age – possibly beyond mid-life and teetering on the brink of seniority in the age department - but given that life expectancy is increasing I’m at the upper middle end of the midlife spectrum where I am entitled to certain things because of my seniority and upper middle midlifeness. emotionally demanding things like literally seeing people die so I did feel a bit affronted when asked my age if I was trying to get into a night club, though it happened far less than it does now and the notion of carrying ID to prove age really wasn’t a thing! Unless you were my friend Julia who was only about 4 foot 3 so she carried it till she was nearly 30! She didn’t grow taller she developed a few wrinkles.

I may have been denied my pension for several more years but I can get a discount on my rail fares and given that I am still working, (me resentful? No I love my work but I do think if you ‘buy’ into a system- as in pay every month for decades of working that you’ll get a pension at 60 - moving the goalposts when you are late fifties is, frankly, on the despicable end of the unfair spectrum) this is a real bonus. There seems to be a lot of mid- life years when age doesn’t seem to feature much – you clearly look old enough to purchase pretty much whatever you like and if as a parent someone suggests you look like your children’s big sister, well you know it is a cheesy chat up line and you should run headlong in the opposite direction, however flattering it might feel at the time!

I remember as a teenager being affronted if I was asked my age when buying alcohol and I must say in those days it didn’t happen a lot – I lived in a small village so I was never silly enough to attempt to buy anything contraband – one shop was run by Mrs Mullarky (you wouldn’t mess with her) and the other was run by Mr Hopwood who was a friend of my dad, so it would have been an extreme act of selfsabotage to attempt to buy anything there. So, my own purchasing of anything that could remotely be called adult didn’t begin till I moved away from home at 18, probably looking like 16 but feeling I wanted to be treated like a 25-year-old. To be fair I was training as a nurse and doing all sorts of very responsible things, like caring for the sick, and Then you progress to the upper end of the mid-life scale and suddenly I want to be asked for my ID honestly I do! I enjoy my ‘senior’ railcard and I can’t afford not to enjoy the substantial discounts BUT I do not want people to assume I am old enough to have one! I want them to be surprised and ask for proof that I am indeed that age. If they could then muster a bit of surprise and tell me I don’t look a day over 50 that would be even better. In this evidence obsessed society please don’t make assumptions when it comes to age or I am left with that awful feeling that I am not only getting older, I am looking older! Surely that can’t be right! 16