What if simply imagining your success could help make it a reality? Visualization is a mental practice of picturing your goals and the steps to reach them, and it has been used by everyone from Olympic athletes to entrepreneurs to boost performance. By vividly envisioning a desired outcome, you prime your mind and body to work toward it. The idea might sound far-fetched, but science backs the power of visualization. Studies have shown that mental rehearsal can produce real results – for example, participants who only visualized exercising their muscles for a few weeks increased their strength by 13–35%, compared to no gain in a control group. The brain has trouble distinguishing between a real action and a deeply imagined one, so when you visualize achieving your goals, you are essentially training your brain for actual success.
