Durable Dad with Tommy Geary
The Durable Dad podcast gives men the skills and tools they need to be rock solid for their family, their work and their community.
Durable Dad with Tommy Geary
065: 3 Problems with Visualization
As men, here's where we tend to get visualization wrong:
1. We don’t do it. Visualization is a powerful tool, but like a brand new drill we let sit in the unopened box, the tool goes unused.
2. We picture the past that we don’t want to repeat. The future holds every possibility. We make the mistake of narrowing it down to what happened last time.
3. We fixate on a future we're afraid of – a future we DON’T want. But like Epictetus said, “You become what you give your attention to.”
Today's epidsode of the Durable Dad podcast will teach you to visualize the future you want so you walk toward it each day rather than in the opposite direction.
This is the Durable Dad Podcast. I'm your host, tommy Geary. This show is gonna give you the skills and tools you need to be a rock solid man for your work, your community and, most importantly, your family. All right, what's up? The Durable Dad Podcast. Hope you are doing well.
Speaker 1:Today, wherever you're at, it is a Friday by me and it's sunny and it's kind of cooled off a little bit at the end of May and just that sweatshirt and shorts weather, which is like my favorite kind of weather. Today we are going to talk about visualization. It's kind of a topic that's front of mind for me. I've been coaching some guys on visualizing the future that we want. I mentioned it in last week's podcast. I'm training for a Spartan race. We train physically, we push our bodies to get into good shape. Then there's also training the mind bodies to get into good shape, and then there's also training the mind. And when I'm getting ready for these races and we're kind of into race week, I'll start to do some visualizations of what I want the race to look like and we're going to talk about it today. We've heard about visualization before. We know that athletes do it, that actors visualize themselves playing different roles, speakers visualize what it's going to be like talking in front of a crowd. It's a tool, a tactic. Last week we talked about practice outside of game time. Visualization is another tool that you can implement.
Speaker 1:But the problem that I see with a lot of dads and men when it comes to visualization is one we don't do it. We don't dream and think and picture what we actually want because we feel like we're too busy, so we don't sit down to take a higher level view of our daily life. We just get caught up in that day-to-day routine. So that's one problem. Another problem is we visualize the past that we don't want to repeat. It's usually happening subconsciously and what this looks like is thinking about how something went wrong the last time. Maybe it was a career move, or it was something in your personal life that didn't work out. And then when we think about that, thinking about the past holds us back. For example, one guy used to compete in triathlons and we're back to this like race example a little bit. But all of the training became kind of this pain point with him and his wife and he had kids. And now, years later, he still avoids making time for himself, for his goals, for his ambitions, because he remembers what it was like when he was taking that time for himself, for his goals, for his ambitions, because he remembers what it was like when he was taking that time for himself. So instead of visualizing what he wants and what those conversations could be like, he imagines exactly what happened in the past and the pain points and that stops him.
Speaker 1:This is kind of a default brain attribute. We'll look at the past, we'll remember the things that kind of sucked and that'll prevent us from doing anything new in the future. If you have run a business in the past or you took a chance on something and it didn't work out, you're less likely to try again. If you ruminate on that fail, if you ruminate on that missed attempt and this is happening subconsciously it's running in the background, it turns into negative self-talk and when we're not aware of it, it holds us back from the life that we want, from the future that we want. So that's another problem focusing on the past too much.
Speaker 1:Episode number 22, I talk about cleaning up your past. So if you want a little more there, go back, listen to it. So problem number one is we don't take time to visualize and think about the future that we want. Problem number two is we default by being past focused and limit ourselves. The third problem, if we're not thinking about our past, is we tend to visualize a future that we don't want. Is we tend to visualize a future that we don't want, even if you have no past evidence to support it? We will think about the worries, the concerns that we don't want to happen. The future is unknown. There are so many possibilities in the future and if we're not careful, we'll start focusing on all the things that could go wrong, and we do this all the time, but we don't realize that we're doing it until a coach points it out to us, until we're called out, we let these thoughts run in the background and they usually look like thoughts that start with I don't want, look like thoughts that start with I don't want, and I kind of got called out on this recently, thinking about having a teenage girl with a phone and I was having thoughts like I don't want her to be on it all the time, I don't want her posting pictures of herself to dudes going down that train of thought of not wanting her to be hanging out with friends and everyone's just head down on their phones and I don't want her only learning how to communicate on her phone. All of those thoughts, the things that I don't want. It seems justified to think that way. Of course you don't want those things, but what's happening is that we're focusing on a negative future. We're focusing on a future we don't want, and we'll start going towards that. What we focus on is what we are gonna create in our life.
Speaker 1:Epictetus, the Stoic philosopher, said you become what you give your attention to. Highly successful people, big thinkers, they know this. Oprah said what you focus on expands. So this is the concept of manifestation, it's the secret, it's the law of attraction. It's not a concept, it's actually reality. It's how reality works. And this stuff can get a bad rap, but it's actually really quite logical and guys like to think logical. So let's go with that route, because it's smart to focus on what you want rather than what you don't want.
Speaker 1:And this crazy phenomenon of our human brain is that what we fixate on is what we start to See in the world. It's what we start to create. It's where we go. It's just like riding a bike or snowboarding, like one of my buddies once told me look where you want to go right, you're shredding through the trees. You don't look at the trees, you look at the spaces between the trees where you want to ride Soon. As you look at a tree and focus on that, you're going to go towards it. Focus on where you want to ride. As soon as you look at a tree and focus on that, you're going to go towards it. Focus on where you want to go. So it's the same thing with your brain in life. All right. So we know the problems. We know that we want to start focusing on the future that we want.
Speaker 1:I was talking to a guy about this. He's a CEO of a tech startup and he's seen a lot of success already. He's raised a lot of money, there's a lot of proof of concept, making sales and it's a lot of work. They're still in that startup phase. He's the sole provider of his family and he's working a lot and he's feeling the pressure that a lot of us feel, and the pressure comes home with him sometimes and as we're talking about his situation, he says I don't want this to fail, I don't want to let my investors down, and right there, those thoughts are visualizing a future he doesn't want, a future he doesn't want. So when we realize this, right those problems of ruminating on the past, mishaps or thinking about the future we don't want we realize it, we understand it, we get to know it.
Speaker 1:And then what do we do? So there's different tools to visualize your future. You can do a vision board and it might sound kind of lame but it actually is a cool family activity you could do. Go, look in magazines, cut out pictures of the life you kind of want and glue, stick it onto a board and you look at it often. That's starting to live into your future. It's starting to visualize your future. Or you can write a letter from your future self, your future self that has the lifestyle that he wants. That guy writes a letter to you right now talking about it, talking about what life is like, and both of these tools are new. They're things we probably don't do often, right? Problem number one men don't visualize the future that they want. So here are two tools you can use. But the most important part of these kinds of future pacing exercises is to close your eyes and actually feel what it's like when you're there, feel what that future is going to be like.
Speaker 1:So for this CEO that I'm talking about. We did a future self-visualization. So what you do is you get super detailed about the future. All right for this guy. What annual revenue do you want your company to have? What do conversations look like with investors and clients? What does your office space look like when your business is thriving? What's the company's valuation? These are the details that we really get honed in on. And then we sit there, we paint that picture and we sit in that future and his body starts to understand what it feels like to be there. And when our body starts to feel like we have everything that we want and desire, then the wisdom comes out and we can start to think how our future self would think. And for this guy, when we were there in our future self, the thoughts that came up were just keep going. The hard parts are supposed to be there. You got this man. That kind of self-talk is going to give you the emotions whether it's confidence or excitement or focus or determination that are going to help you live into your future. And when I asked him where was he in relation to his future self, to his future self, he said I'm not far at all, I'm like right there and that when he said those words I was like how do you feel he's like I feel lighter so he can think those future thoughts today, without even having the money, without even having the company valuation yet he can think those thoughts. You got this man, just keep going, my future is right there. Feel those feelings right now and then you're going to start being that future vision. You're going to start attracting those things to yourself.
Speaker 1:And it's tricky because we default to the stress, to the pressure, to thinking about what we don't have, what we don't want, and that stress and pressure isn't going to create bigger things in our life. Think about the difference in yourself. How do you operate when you're feeling stressed, tired, pressure, frustrated? Usually we're triggered more easily. Usually we don't have that much energy. And now think about how you operate when you're feeling lighter, when you're feeling confident, when you're feeling motivated. You're more fun to be around, you're bringing a good energy and more of a lighthearted not taking everything too seriously vibe to life. So what we think about actually matters, what we're visualizing for our future actually matters. And the problem is is we don't take time to visualize and live into that future we want. We default to worrying about our past or worrying about the future, judging our past or thinking about the things we don't want to happen. So switch that up.
Speaker 1:There's some tools that I just listed out in this podcast Get a coach, have them, do some future visualizations with you. And on my meditation app today, when I opened it up, there's always a quote when you open it up, and today it was. Everything is created twice first in the mind and then in reality, and it was attributed to Robin Sharma. Not sure who she is or he is, but the quote lands right First who she is or he is, but the quote lands right First.
Speaker 1:We create things in our mind and then they happen in reality. So I want you to have the future you want, and if you're like, I don't even know what I want for my future, that's a place to start. Write out what you want, what you want your future to look like, because then you'll start creating it. And that's what I want for you to have the future you want, so you can be proud, so you can be an awesome dad and have no regrets in life. All right, that's what I got for you guys today. Have an awesome week and I'll catch you next time.
