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And now, Part 4 of the Follow-Through Series where you’ve already learned:

* Why it can be difficult to follow through on plans to reach your meditation goals  

* How to use mental contrasting to boost your commitment 

* How to create implementation intentions to make obstacle-management automatic  

Today, let me show you how visualization can help boost your chances of successfully reaching your meditation goal.

Visualization is a powerful technique for guiding you toward success. Studies show, however, that imagining success is not as helpful as imagining the process you undertake to reach success. Visualizing the steps you’ll take is similar to what elite athletes do to prepare for an event: They visualize themselves performing at the event, making all the correct moves they need to reach the finish line.

You’re going to visualize two things:

First, you’ll imagine yourself practicing meditation

Second, you’ll imagine yourself taking action to overcome any obstacles to your planned practice

The second visualization requires you to have planned strategies for overcoming obstacles. I provided an exercise for creating these strategies, called implementation intentions, in last week’s post. If you haven’t completed the worksheet, click here and do that exercise, first. 

The key to a successful visualization is to bring all your senses to bear. Imagine what you see, hear, and feel. If it’s relevant, you can also imagine what you smell and touch.

And, the more often you practice this visualization, the more helpful it will become. I recommend doing this exercise once or more per day for the first week or two, then you can taper down to three or four times per week until you reach your goal.

Join me for a guided visualization exercise

Forward to 2:41 in the podcast or video, above. Before you complete this exercise, be sure to have planned some implementation intentions. Have your list of intentions handy so you can refer to them during this exercise.

Next Week:

Next week, tea meditation, an activity for bringing mindfulness to daily life. Subscribe to our newsletter for a reminder email. I’ll also send you a free deep relaxation as a thank you.

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