This One Shift Makes Visualization Actually Work

Hi there,

Last week, I sat through a mandatory active shooter training at work.

(Nothing builds team morale like strategizing how to outrun Karen from accounting.)

But somewhere between the “run, hide, fight” slides and the color-coded threat levels, the trainer dropped this gem on why we had to practice the drills:

He was talking about visualization. Not the Instagram kind, but the kind that could save your life. He explained that under extreme stress, the rational mind checks out.

If your body hasn’t rehearsed the pattern, it freezes. If it has, it embodies movement.

And it hit me: This is exactly what we get wrong about visualization.

The Myth of Magical Thinking

You’ve seen it: TikToks that tell you to script your dream life into a notebook. Coaches promising if you just vibrate higher, the universe will deliver.

Pop psychology loves to dress visualization in glitter and call it “manifesting.” Like suddenly, your self-doubt’s supposed to disappear because you bought a crystal and lit a candle.

Sure, picture the dream job. The soulmate. Or your next home.
But picturing the win doesn’t guarantee the win.

In fact, it can do more harm than good. Research shows that when people only visualize the outcome, their motivation to action often drops.

Why?

Because when you only focus on the end result, your brain gets a little taste of the reward and loses motivation to work for it.

But there’s a fix: it’s called mental contrasting.

You still imagine the goal, but then you also picture where you are now. You see the gap: the things that still need work and the obstacles in your way. That contrast is what actually gets your brain into gear. It doesn’t just feel good; it also triggers you into action and problem-solving mode.

Visualization Is Rehearsal

What that speaker got right, and what neuroscience backs up, is this:

Visualization is not wishing. It’s rehearsing.

When you vividly imagine a situation, especially with emotion, sensory detail, and context, you activate the same brain circuits involved in real-life perception and movement.

That’s why elite athletes, Navy SEALs, and surgeons visualize. But the key difference is they run mental reps of the tension, the pressure, and possible errors. They rehearse the stress so the body remembers through muscle memory.

The Contrarian Twist: Visualize the Struggle

Most people never train for the things they fear. We avoid them.

And when you avoid something, your nervous system doesn’t just label it “unpleasant.” It codes it as unsafe.

In other words, when the pressure’s on, you won’t rise to the occasion. You’ll fall to whatever feels most familiar and safest.

But here’s the unpopular truth:

Visualizing things going well is less effective than visualizing things going sideways and then seeing yourself moving through it.

This is called “stress inoculation.” When you imagine yourself making mistakes, adjusting, and recovering, you prepare your subconscious to stay online when the stakes are high.

Take Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps. His coach had him mentally rehearse races where everything went wrong, especially his goggles filling with water. In Beijing, during the 200-meter butterfly, it happened. He swam blind… and still won gold. Because his mind had already been there. His body knew what to do.

Visualization Isn’t Magic. It’s Mechanics.

The subconscious doesn’t distinguish between real and imagined input, so it learns from both. But here’s what most people miss:

Anything you move toward, your body interprets as safe. Anything you avoid, your body codes as a threat.

Your mind doesn’t just avoid hard things because they’re unpleasant. It avoids them because at some point it linked them with death.

Not a metaphorical death. But an actual real life, primal, this-will-kill-me extinction.

So it freezes. Or over prepares into perfection. Or overthinks into paralysis analysis. (Or suddenly decides now is the perfect time to deep-clean the fridge.)

That’s not a bug. Its a feature of your nervous system. And its doing its job to ensure you survive.

But when you visualize walking toward the very thing you’ve been avoiding, whether it’s the podium, the hard conversation, the spotlight, your mind experiences it as something survived. Something familiar and something that is no longer fatal.

And the charge starts to fade. The alarm quiets down.

That’s how visualization lowers the shock. It’s not because you raised your vibration. But because your system got the message: “Oh… we’ve been here. We lived.”

READER POLL

Final Thought

You won’t rise to your vision.
You’ll fall to your preparation.

Most people visualize success.
Few rehearse failure.

They picture the stage.
But not the silence.

They picture the win.
But not the doubt that comes before it.

Your nervous system doesn’t want your dreams.
It wants survival. And safety which comes familiarity.

It wants proof you’ve been here before.
So give it something to work with.

Picture the trigger.
The stress. The moments of doubt.
The moment you want to run.

Then walk yourself through it.
That’s how you rewire fear.
Not by avoiding it. But by rehearsing for it.

Let your body practice the things you avoid so when it comes time to do them, it knows what to do. When your mind has been there, your body will take the lead.

Catch you next week,

Shakila

P.S. Here’s the results of last week’s poll.