My friend, we’ll call him Billy (to protect his privacy), plays golf…a lot! He’s out on the fairway every weekend, if his schedule permits. But Billy is also a very busy man. As with everyone else who works for intelligence and security, Billy is on call 24 hours a day 7 days a week. He wishes to have more time to practice golf.

Now, Billy is in no way a golf newbie. He’s actually one of the best in his company. So he gets invited to play at this tournament to raise awareness for a cause. The winners get to bag trophies, some cash, and a lot of bragging rights. Billy is up against top golfers but guess what…Billy bags the top prize.

Billy lives in an apartment and doesn’t get to practice as often as he would like, yet he still bags the top prize. His secret? Visualization.

It’s not a fluke, he practices visualization all the time. I’ve watched as he shot a 5 under to win the tournament and he has had 2 hole-in-ones this year alone. He says it’s all about practice as well as mental preparation through visualization techniques.

I know it’s hard to believe but top athletes, musicians, performers, public speakers, and sales executives use this technique all the time. In fact, Tiger Woods and Michael Phelps have been reported to use visualization to mentally prepare for their games. If it worked for them, it wouldn’t hurt to try it out.

Aside from preparing physically to achieve our goals, it makes a lot of sense to prepare our minds as well. After all, what could go wrong with envisioning achieving success? Nothing. We could only expect good things, of course.

As part of our “Building SUPER Habits” series, here are some tips on developing the habit of Visualization. So how do we begin?

Mental Images:

This exercise teaches you to flex those imagination muscles. Practice by looking at a pleasant image or scenery. Then close your eyes. You have to re-create the entire scene by remembering every bit of detail that you can. What were the items, how many, what were their colors, how was the light? Can’t remember all the details? Open your eyes and look again. Be more deliberate this time.

Psych yourself up:

A study done on January of 2014 by the National Strength and Conditioning Association on 16 male sprinters reports the beneficial effects of “psyching up” to improve sprint performance. The study “used arousal to get athletes excited to race, which helped them visualize success.” So get excited and find purpose. Psych yourself up. The positive energy will help you visualize success. Imagine yourself as a superstar and actions will follow thoughts.

Practiced emotions:

I know this one is hard. You can’t practice how you react to a certain scenario. But the trick here is to pay attention to how you feel when you’re visualizing a scene. If your goal is to close out a sale and you’re preparing to deliver a pitch to someone you know is skeptical, imagine yourself as being calm and competent. Imagine being able to address their concerns and answer their question and proceed to make preparations. If you keep visualizing a calm and competent demeanor, you are likely to have the same demeanor in real life.

Do you have other visualization tips that worked for you? Share them with us! Stay humble, hustle hard!

Written by Jaie O.- The Help