Can visualization really help?
I know I talk about visualization a lot, so today I wanted to take a moment and share with you 3 stories that will hammer how powerful it has been in my life.
Story 1
My first experiences with visualization came as a 14 year old sophmore in high school. I was a varsity basketball player and my coach was way ahead of his time in so many ways in developing us as players and people. He regularly used visualization techniques in our final practice of each week. As a team we would sit as a team in the locker room before our Friday and Saturday night games. Coach Tikker would talk us through each game.
I particularly remember a visualization session where we were to play our rival, Liberty High School. In the session, he even had me at the free-throw line with 2 seconds on the clock and we were down by 1 point. We all visualized me making both free throws and we “won” the game. The next night, our team walked into the gymnasium, but we had already been there mentally and we had already “won”. And by the end of the night, we won the game in real life too.
Story 2
When I was 14 (a very big year for me in terms of visualization), I was the concertmaster of the Spokane Youth Symphony. I had won a concerto competition and had the opportunity to perform the entire Bruch Violin Concerto with the orchestra (from memory). My amazing violin teacher, Sister Xavier Mary Courvoisier challenged me to use visualization in preparation for that performance.
8 weeks before the Bruch performance, my teacher challenged me to go home and play through the entire concerto from memory without my instrument. I thought that she had lost her mind.
"How can I do this?" I asked, and she patiently explained, “When you get home, go into your room, turn off the lights to eliminate any distractions, lie on your bed, and play through the concerto in your mind.”
She promised me that it would be hard at first but that I would eventually be able to do it. She also promised me that as I “played” it in my mind from memory, there would be some notes that I would play out of tune. (Then I knew that she had surely lost her mind.) It turned out to be true - I did "play" some notes out of tune and I was able to mentally correct them.
Finally, the day of the performance came. When I stood up to play the concerto, I did so with complete confidence that comes only from thorough mental preparation. I felt bullet proof. And the performance was nearly flawless!
Fast forward 5 decades. I still use this type of metal preparation today. It is an essential part of my weekly preparation for my LAPHIL job.
But there is more…
Story 3 is not about me:
I have shared this technique with my family in their various careers, including my stellar son-in-law Scott. He recently took his final board exam for dental school. Doctor Scott passed his boards with flying colors and he used my visualization technique in his preparation.
The exam is like a big, practical test where he must prove that hecan fix teeth properly. Think of it as a test where he gets to work on fake teeth set up to look and feel like they’re in someone’s mouth. These fake teeth might have cavities or damage, and he must repair them.
The day of his test, I asked him how it went.
He exclaimed, "Great! I took the operative (fillings) and perio (cleaning) sections yesterday and they went super well. I used your visualization trick the night before the boards, and it worked! Before going to sleep, I visualized every aspect of the procedure, including potential problems and how I'd handle them. And I passed everything with flying colors!"
So why do I keep sharing visualizations with you? Because our ability to visualize and mentally prepare for high pressure situations is amazing and yields equally amazing results.
Are you visualizing your practice sessions? your performances? Get in the habit of it and you will not regret it!