Over the next few weeks, the Olympics will no doubt generate many headlines focusing on inspirational stories, unexpected successes, good/bad television ratings, and even scandals.
But here's a fact you probably won't hear much about: With each Olympics, countries throughout the world rely more heavily on sports psychology to help their athletes achieve success and win gold.
Canada, for example, is hoping to rebound from their disappointing 2002 effort by sending 12 psychologists with their team to the Olympics in Turin, instead of the seven they sent to Salt Lake. The U.S. took just two psychology experts to Lillehammer in 1994, and then attempted to achieve greater success by taking 11 to Salt Lake.
Why this increased reliance on sports psychology?
Simple. Sports psychology works.
Numerous studies have shown that the techniques of sports psychology significantly enhance success and performance. That's particularly true in the Olympics, when the different between gold and silver is often hundredths of a second or fractions of a point. When physical performances are nearly equal, the mental edge determines winning and losing. Psychology becomes crucial to success.
Sports psychology features a number of proven techniques to enhance success and performance, but this article focuses on one in particular: Visualization.
Visualization goes by many names, including mental practice and covert rehearsal. It's been a favorite tool of sports psychology experts for many years, but it has an even longer history as a technique for motivation, self-help, and self-improvement.
In the late 1800s, many popular self-help and self-improvement movements swept the country, including Christian Science and the "New Thought" movement. Some of these "schools" of self-improvement were overtly religious, while others took a more philosophical approach to the psychology of success. But they all shared a common belief in the importance of psychology as crucial to success. Specifically, they all taught that our beliefs literally shape our reality, and that visualizing the future *creates* the future. In a sense, they preached that psychology is destiny, and the path to self-help and self-improvement begins with visualizing what you truly want. Many of today's motivational gurus borrow heavily from these century-old self-improvement movements.
In the 1920s, followers of Freudian psychology also preached the benefits of visualization, but for different reasons. They believed that visualizing the future influences the unconscious mind, and in turn, the psychological dynamics of the unconscious would push you toward what you visualized, without you even realizing it. Again, the fundamental philosophy of self-improvement at work is that psychology is destiny, and visualizing the future is crucial for motivation and success.
==> Why Visualization Really Works
Today, research in sports psychology has made it clear that visualization can enhance success and performance in sports. But parallel research in positive psychology has confirmed that visualization can enhance success in everyday life, making it a valuable tool for those interested in motivation, self-help, and self-improvement. But the reasons that visualization enhances the psychology of success are more practical and pragmatic than followers of Freudian psychology or popular self-help movements would have us believe. Here are the three main reasons that visualization enhances success and self-improvement:
1) Visualization enhances confidence
Research in the field of positive psychology shows that simply thinking about an event makes it seem more likely that it will actually happen. As you think about an event, you begin to construct mental scenarios of how it might occur, and even more importantly, how you might *make* it happen. The result is often greater confidence, and self-improvement occurs via a "self-fulfilling prophecy." The psychological process is simple:
Visualization => Confidence ==> Action ==> Results ==> Success
2) Visualization boosts motivation
Visualization boosts motivation as well as confidence, making self-help and self-improvement more effective. As your dreams for the future seem more likely, you become more motivated to initiate and sustain action.
Setting goals is often a very rational, even "dry" element of one's efforts for self-improvement. But visualizing your desired future is a very different psychological process, making abstract goals very tangible and concrete in your mind. This process engages your emotions as well as your thoughts, and generates an authentic excitement that motivates self-improvement.
Visualizing your future also makes you aware of the gap between where you are now, and where you want to be. The result is more motivation for self-improvement, as you strive to close the gap between your future ambitions and your current reality.
3) Visualizing is a form of practice
This is the most important reason that visualization enhances success, but the one most often overlooked in self-help and self-improvement books. Like any kind of practice, visualizing a behavior makes you more skilled and successful when it comes time to actually engage in that behavior. Moreover, visualized behaviors can be practiced more quickly, easily, and frequently than actual behavior