https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNCmvkJRjoY&feature=youtu.be
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 thing here. Don't worry, this is Mel Robbins. There's always science and research involved in everything that I talk about. So visualization is an extraordinarily powerful skill. You may have heard of the Law of Attraction. You may have heard the word visualization, you may have heard of the word manifesting. I call it seeing signs. I am a master at seeing positive signs. I am a master of creating coincidences. I have the world's most incredible luck. You want to know why? Because I understand the science and the skill of visualization. I know that your brain is a gigantic, detective machine. Your brain is a filter. Your brain is constantly looking for evidence. And that's good news. It's good news when you know how to use it to your advantage. Let me explain. 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 all up in here. 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. Guess who programmed that filter? You did and so did the people from your past. And so, if you constantly feel like you're unlovable, guess what? Your Reticular Activating System is going through the day, and it is 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 filter 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 in this country. This is why there's something called a 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? There's a really important reason why you have this. The reason? Why is if your brain let in everything -- have you ever looked at a Facebook page? Have you noticed how many words are on a standard Facebook page? And the ad over here in the ad over here and the ad over here and the news feed and the stuff up here -- if your brain took in everything at 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 letting in stuff that it agrees with. So that's the scientific reason: if you're going to do a mindset reset you've got to change what you believe about yourself.
Those of you that had a very negative assessment of 2018 and feeling down about your goals, already as you look at 2019, you have a very negative belief system about yourself. That's going to stop right now, because now we're going to talk about visualization and how you use it 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. It begins with visualization. So, as you take your goals, I want you to go to each one and I want you to do a visualization exercise. Here's how you're going to do it based on science, because there's a particular way you have to do this based on science. Ok, it's a 2 step method. Let's take self-worth. 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's 2 things that you have to do when it comes to visualization, you have to close your eyes. I know it sounds stupid, but I want you to close your eyes and I want you to in your mind have a specific picture of what it looks like in your life when your self-worth has improved. You're going to see yourself speaking up at work … talking more about your business … leaving bad relationships … defining boundaries … going to the gym … taking care of yourself. When you start to visualize the image of that, I want you to consciously (this is step 2) consciously think of the positive emotions that you're going to feel. I'm going to feel happy … proud … going to stand taller …going to be so grateful that I made this change. Marrying the specific picture -- so there I am, I'm at work and I'm raising my hand. Amazing. I'm sharing my idea … getting a promotion … asking for a raise … I've just signed up another customer to my business … 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. You see your brain, my brain, doesn't know the difference between something that actually happened to you, like the F you got in your test in 10th grade. 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 … how happy you feel when you do … asking for that, raise and getting it … how proud you are going to feel. When you visualize in the way that I'm teaching you to, it encodes that as a real memory. That's important, because when you encode it as a real memory, it changes the filter system -- that Reticular Activating System. 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: the more you do this with your goals, you wake up every day and you just visualize (it takes 30 seconds for crying out loud), you visualize having a great day at school … curing your panic and how proud you're going to be. What studies suggest and have proven is 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. Finally, the other thing that's really important about this is that the more that you do this -- what we know based on research -- is that the reason why you start to believe what you think is because you are reprogramming your brain. You are changing the network of neurons that act as a filter. So the more that you actually believe in yourself and you start thinking and visualizing yourself speaking up, the more confident you're going to become. The more skills that you're building and you're actually going to do it. And then, instead of looking for all the reasons when you're sitting in a meeting to not speak up, you're going to just speak up because you're going to have changed the filter, you're going to look for opportunities, this is how it works. This is why this is so incredibly important.