Lessons On Visualisation From Wayne Rooney, Jessica Ennis & Steve Backley
By Jairaj Singh, Associate Partner, Lighthouse International
"Part of my preparation is I go and ask the kit man what colour we're wearing - if it's red top, white shorts, white socks or black socks. Then I lie in bed the night before the game and visualise myself scoring goals or doing well."
- Wayne Rooney
As this quote from Wayne Rooney shows, visualisation is a practice that is absolutely indispensable to successful people, particularly for high-performance athletes, sportsmen and women. They will often spend hours in their minds playing out their goals and exercising their imagination time and time again. It doesn't just apply to high-performing athletes though but to all of us. If we don't see it in our imagination if we don't believe that we can get that job, earn that amount of money or overcome that fear, how will we ever do it?
Visualisation is something that we can all apply to create more of what we want in our lives as Jim Carrey spoke about with his first $10 million dollar cheque and as Olympic gold medalist Jessica Ennis shares below...
“I used visualisation to think about the perfect technique. If I could get that perfect image in my head, it helped me channel my physical performance.”
“I normally got nervous before the whole event started, so I got my headphones on, zoned out and visualised every stage of what I was about to do.”
This 6 minute video from former Olympian Steve Backley also powerfully demonstrates why it's so crucial for us to continually develop our imagination and visualise what we want to achieve. And why it's so important to have the right support around us.
Learning From Legends...
Legendary Mindsets
Overcoming Failure
Mind image courtesy of a Health Blog @ Flickr, Video courtesy of "The Human Mind" BBC