Vision Versus Visualisation – and NLP

Vision is not the same as visualization.  The words are similar, but their meanings are very different.   And although it may sound surprising, I’ve seen many people confuse these two words and this confusion result in unnecessary halts to people’s education, growth, and progress.   So let’s clear the fog on these differences.

Vision is the product of the eye, i.e. the eyesight, what we see.  And if we’re blind, we don’t see, so we have no vision.

Visualisation is what you see inside your mind’s eye, what you picture in your head, or what you imagine in your imagination whether your eyes are open or closed, and whether you have vision or are blind.  If I now ask you to imagine / picture / see in your head your front door, its color, material from which it is made, its knob or handle and the color and material of the knob or handle and where on the door the knob or handle is, and which way the door opens, you’ve just successfully visualised!

How does visualisation help parenting and education of a child?

Here’re a few ways:

If you often forget things, such as keys, glasses, or umbrellas, next time you put your keys, glasses, or umbrella down somewhere, look at them and take a mental picture of them with your photographic memory immediately after having laid the objects in a place. Your photographic memory will now store the picture [with the background on which the objects are laid] and you’ll know where to look for them.

If you have a child who is scatty and disorganized in the morning seconds before you need to leave for school, train your child to visualize the morning routine of the steps that need to be done before departure for school.

• On the first day of your training ask the child to write down the logical sequence of actions [example: get up, wash yourself, get dressed, eat breakfast, clear up after breakfast, get your schoolbag, put on coat and shoes, leave the house] on a paper.
• Now ask the child to imagine doing each of those things as a movie.
• On each consequent day of your training ask the child to repeatedly visualize doing each of these actions as movies until they naturally connect into one long movie chain.
• Keep training your child until this natural long movie has become part of his/her bloodstream! And then the screaming tantrums and  late-running panics will be history forever!

If you have the OCD syndrome of never knowing whether you switched off the oven or locked the door properly before you left the house, the next time you’re doing one of these actions, look at what you’re doing and – again – take a photo of the action in your imagination. Once your photographic memory stores the movie [or still picture], you’ll know you’ve done it for sure and safely!

When helping your children with homework, encourage them to visualize the concept they’re learning about. It’ll help them absorb, understand, and remember the subject in detail and fast!

Contact me for more information on NLP and visualization.