Even back in college, when I started my first novel-length project, I was visualizing for success. Back then I liked to visualize to inspiring music. One of my favorites was a song called “Going the Distance” from the Rocky soundtrack. The sense of triumph at the song’s climax never failed to get my adrenaline going and I felt that the sense of visceral emotion would combine with the mental movie I was playing in my mind to make what I was imagining a reality.
If you know the song, it starts off with a sense of struggle, like the dark moment in a story before the climactic success. So, being a writer, I tried to create my mental movie to match the music. In my mind’s eye, I saw me typing away at my computer day after day, superimposed with the image of pages and pages of written material rolling out of my dot matrix printer.
This happened a long time ago, if you haven’t already guessed.
These mental pictures were juxtaposed with me going to the mailbox day after day and getting rejection letters from agents. This went on until the music bursts into a sense of triumph, one minute and thirty-one seconds into the piece. This is where I imagined the moment I get the acceptance letter and I begin jumping up and down in my front hallway, adrenaline pumping through me at the emotion of my success.
It only occurred to me years later as those rejection letters came in, one after the next, that I had manifested just what I had visualized. Eventually, the triumph I had mentally mapped out did happen, several novels later, and the sense of triumph I felt was much the same as I imagined. (Although I didn’t actually jump up and down. I was in a shopping mall when the call came in.)
I’m not saying that I wouldn’t have received those rejection letters had I not visualized them, but maybe I wouldn’t have received as many as I did. There is no way to know. However, I’d advise you, when you are visualizing for you own success, maybe don’t put any struggle in there, even if it does “fit with the music.”
Brian Mercer is the author of Mastering Astral Projection: 90-Day Guide to Out-of-body Experience (Llewellyn, 2004) and the Mastering Astral Projection CD Companion (Llewellyn, 2007). A board member of the Pacific Northwest Writers Association, he is the webmaster of and occasional contributor to Author Magazine. When he’s not working as a programmer analyst or exploring alternate dimensions out of body, he can be found writing novels. He lives in Seattle with his wife, Sara.
Site: http://www.brianmercerbooks.com/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/BriMercer
Twitter: @BriMercer
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