By Staff Reports
(DGIwire) — Want to tackle some self-improvement with the help of your brain? In this excerpt from “The Science Behind The Law of Attraction: A Step-by-Step Guide to Putting the Brain Science Behind The Law of Attraction to Work For You” author and renown researcher Dr. Srinivasan Pillay offers the following advice.
We constantly hear that imagining what you want will help you get there, but it this really true? How does simply imagining put the law of attraction to work? Sports psychology stands out as the prime example of how imagery can be helpful. By imagining specific movement in sport, imagery can improve performance by enhancing the technical execution of movement as well as the intrinsic motivation of individuals. That’s right: imagining moving can improve the way you feel and perform. Expert athletes first imagine the record times they want to run in their races and then run their races in that exact time. If fact, simply imagining can actually improve flexibility of different muscle groups as well. Imagery helps athletes become confident, and as a result, their performance ends up being superior. It helps to prevent resignation. Studies have also shown that when we imagine moving, our eyes move as though we are actually moving, which indicates that our brains are similarly engaged in both tasks. But do we actually know this?
It turns out that imagining moving and actually moving both activate overlapping brain regions. When we actually move, we activate additional brain regions, and the movement areas of the brain connect even more. But there is still considerable overlap between imagining areas and moving areas of the brain. The imagery warms up the action brain and works as a blueprint for action.
It is important to emphasize that mental imagery is not simply thinking about something; it is actually using effort to imagine the scene as if it were a movie in your head. Simply simulating (imitating or partially representing) a movement is not the same as actively imagining it, as these activities activate different brain regions. Stop for a minute and think about this. First imitate someone giving a public speech. Now close your eyes and imagine yourself standing at a podium in front of a room filled with people listening to you speak. They are entirely different experiences!
As the other laws will show you, simply imagining is not enough, but it definitely warms up the action brain to start acting. This “start” can get the process going and improve accuracy and performance.
So what does this have to do with the law of attraction? The law of attraction says that you get what you put out. When you put out goal-directed images of what you want, the brain activates to start to take you there. Images are a powerful stimulator of automatic action and transcend merely talking about what you want or partially reading or thinking about it. They are one of the closest steps to action and also give the action-brain information about where it needs to go. You can think of them as maps or blueprints that the action brain refers to when trying to reach its goals.
In sports psychology, we know that the time course of imagined actions parallels the actual time taken to act. Thus, when we imagine, if we imagine the actual time taken to do something, we may be more likely to reproduce this in real life.
Note the following about imagery:
The goal is known.
In many cases, the process is not known or guaranteed; it is imagined. It is a “story” about breaking a record. You do not need proof of reality to imagine.
The imagery has to be practiced. It is not a one-time exercise.
Your ability to imagine movement can improve over time. Measure this ability and see if you can improve on it.
Imagine your goals in a quiet place since distractions will interrupt your imagination’s focus.