I have been doing a daily meditation every day for a long time now, probably just about 2 years. I have had some ups and downs in the process. As with anything, the initial start caused me to have some significant benefit, but after the initial gains I found finding mindfulness challenging. I still have great moments of relaxation and peace, but consistently gaining the benefits that I did when starting out are not as easy to come by.
However, as with all things a consistent and constant approach produces results over a long time. Progress has been slow, but I have, on occasion, made significant leaps forward. That is what this blog is about, one of those big leaps forward. It is something that I have started to call the Journey Visualization.
There is something profoundly unique to the human ability to imagine a journey. A starting place, the path along the away, and then the conclusion. A simple journey that you can create in your mind, will occupy many of your senses and help you to become acutely aware of how you are feeling, or perhaps distract yourself from feeling a way that you do not want.
Sitting in a quiet place, and taking yourself through a visual journey can have profound implications. Of the many, the most important is that you can start to associate that journey with some thing specific. For example, I am starting to formulate a journey that I repeat in my mind every night when I go to sleep. This now creates a mindset that I get into when I am going through the process of falling asleep. I can include things that I want to shut down, close out so that I can allow myself to relax. These journeys become part of a repertoire that can help in various aspects of your life. A journey for handling stress, getting ready to workout, staring the day whatever you need. I have even used journeys to memorize important concepts and even speeches that I needed to give.
Journeys can do more then help you though something difficult, they can also be a source of power. If you visualize your successful path enough, eventually your success will become so familiar it will be like a memory of the past. When you can visualize your success so much that it becomes a memory, then you know you are on the path of visualizing your way to the future ambition that you have set for yourself.
Guy Reams