One Idea!

imagination“Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life – think of it, dream of it, and live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, and every part of your body, be full of that idea and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success.” Swami Vivekananda

Some of the world’s greatest musicians, surgeons, writers, CEOs, athletes use this approach – it’s called internalizing success; making your success or the outcomes you want a daily part of your active imagination.

This art works on a simple but fundamental premise that what you focus on, you attract in your life.

The greatest inventions of today began as an idea in somebody’s mind.

And now there is scientific data to support this premise. Scientists believe that our mind experiences real and imaginary actions in similar ways. For example, whether you imagine yourself eating your favorite ice-cream or thinking about it, your body produces the same salivary response; i.e. you activate the same neural networks in both cases in your mind, which then pass on the information to the body, producing the expected response. So every time your brain learns something new, the neurons inside of it create a pathway. The more you use this pathway the more it becomes a habit.

Let’s explore some tools to create the success we want in our lives by internalizing the results we want.

1. Visualization – As soon as you wake up, spend the next three minutes imagining and feeling your best day ever. Picture the ideal outcome you expect from the day in terms of activities you want to complete, the state of mind you are aiming for, the win-win outcome you are hoping for from a scheduled meeting. Delve into that imagined outcome with as much detail as possible, right down to your body language, words you speak, or the reactions you invoke.

2. Vision board – Visuals communicate ideas and stories instantly with impact and emotion. Plus they linger in our memory much longer. One way of internalizing your success is by creating a vision board. Create a collage of images cut out probably from magazines that most ideally represent the goals you aspire for. Paste them onto a cardboard or chart paper and position it where you can see it daily in your room. Kate Perry in an interview with MTV described how as a nine-year-old, she had created her vision board by pasting a picture of her favorite star, Selena, (who had then just won a Grammy Award), holding her golden statuette.” Fifteen years later, Kate was nominated for her first Grammy Award.

3. Affirmations – An affirmation like a mantra is a powerful statement that describes the outcome or the goal that you are aiming for. It functions on the simple premise that you become what you think. Reiterating an affirmation several times a day not only keeps your mind focused on the goal, but also strengthens your resolve. Once you repeat your affirmations daily, they become a part of your subconscious mind and subliminally prime your whole being for that state of energy. As a child watching her grandmother toil away, Oprah Winfrey says she’d tell herself over and over again: “My life won’t be like this. My life won’t be like this. It will be better.”

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