This article is going to highlight the importance of visialisation to set and reach your goals. 

Mark Divine speaks about the importance of this throughout his career as a Navy Seal. Mark began his career in Business but found this wasn’t his passion. He felt that there was more to life than to just climb the corporate ladder. What got him to shift his focus is that he became involved in a martial art called sado karate. The founder become Mark’s first true mentor, what he did was to slow him down on a meditation bench every day, it was the quiet time of watching his thoughts that he was able to plumb the depths to see what’s inside of him. What first came up was that he was a misfit in his work and he didn’t belong there, the second thing that came up was if I don’t belong there where do I belong? It forced him to contemplate something really new, that when he asked the question: Who am I and why am I on this planet?

He began to break this down within his daily meditation, he tapped into his intuition, he recognised he needed a job that was high risk and he needed to be a leader. He then needed to focus. What was he passionate about? what was his purpose and then he worked out his principles. His next step: he looked at what he could do, and he kept coming back to being a Navy seal. He prepared mentally and physically which included a deep visualisation programme, every day he practiced and trained his mind to become a Seal, he states to this day, the meditation had the most profound impact, it lead to him to a sense of certainty. 

I want to be a Seal to:  “I’m going to be a Seal”

Mark spent the months ahead totally focused and that’s all he thought about was becoming a Navy Seal. He trained in his mind to become a Seal. He states that this visualisation lead to a sense of certainty, he obviously had to also do the fitness training, but each day he would sit quietly and visualise himself already a Seal. He visualised this for half hour every day. Visualisation is one of the most important concepts for people to learn, that and anchoring the correct feeling to the visual picture. When I personally train people to ‘retrain the brain’ I ensure that we not only create the picture or movie of what people want, I anchor the correct feeling to the picture and also create a strong Mantra for them to read daily. 

The Mantra is similar to that of a prescription, when we write it together, create the picture and emotional hook, we then need to repeat it between 2 and 6 times a day for a minimum of 21 days, realistically it better to do this over a course of a few months until you have reached your goal. 

This is when we see the biggest change in people. However if you are going to read it and not mean it or really feel it, it doesn’t become as powerful, you need to also believe it.  At this stage we need to be mindful of our internal dialogue, any self doubt that creeps in, needs to be grabbed and thrown away, just think about this, if you don’t really believe that you can become that top footballer, that creative actor, that successful business owner, well guess what – it won’t happen. 

In simple terms – your thoughts become your reality. 

What we think we become – Buddha 

Mental toughness +self discipline + daily vision of what you want + tied to your sense of purpose = achievement 

Get clear about this, mediation really helps here. Mark did indeed go on to become a Navy Seal and spent 9 years in active duty and 11 years as a reserve Navy Seal Officer. This is very impressive, Mark has combined the training not only to the physical and mental but also the emotional, intuitional and spiritual. The words, emotional and spiritual can often be deemed as fluffy.  Well it’s not. Let’s take our internal dialogue as an example, it is said that we have an average of 70,000 thoughts that run through our minds daily and around 95% of these thoughts have an emotion attached to them. If I was to ask you to think about the best day of your life or the saddest day of your life? Your mind will bring up the picture/memory of that event, but what also happens is attached to that memory is a feeling an emotion and it’s the emotion that can drive that forward. 

If some of us are still dealing with a bad break up? Or feeling down about not gaining that dream job. When you think about the break up, what happens?  The emotion pops up. The emotion that we have associated to that event. Mark Divine kept this vision each day before he became a Seal.  Perfect practice starts in your mind. And as Dr Joe Dispenza quotes “ The best way to predict your future is to create it.  

Some tips on visualisation 

• You need to use your senses whilst visualising, visualise yourself there in the boardroom, on the pitch, in that interview. See it through your own eyes. what is going on? feel every feeling in the now. Hear any sounds that you think might be. 

• Clear any negative thoughts or self-doubt 

• Do this daily, set your goal and create a daily plan 

• Stick to it 

• Be 100% clear on what you are focusing on – no mixed messages, if you are not sure on what you want- BE SURE 

• Write it out, making sure its stated in the now, as if you’ve already achieved it