EP106 The 4 Types of Visualisation That Change Everything

The Power of Mental Rehearsal: Why Visualisation Actually Works

You’ve probably heard about visualisation before….. maybe in the form of vision boards, manifestation, or writing down your goals. All of that has its place.

But what I want to get into this week is the real power of mental rehearsal 

The part where science meets your nervous system, and your brain starts believing you before the world catches up.

Inside this episode….

 ✨ Why your brain literally can’t tell the difference between something vividly imagined and something lived (yes, that lemon exercise proves it)
 ✨ Four types of visualisation (outcome, process, situational, and identity) and how each one fuels your reinvention differently.
 ✨ Famous examples (Michael Phelps, Jim Carrey, Oprah, even chess champions) that show how mental rehearsal creates results.
 ✨ Why anxiety is actually visualisation working in reverse…. and how to turn it into trust instead of fear.
 ✨ Practical tips to make visualisation land, stick, and start rewiring you today.

If visualisation has ever felt “a bit woo” or like something you’ll get around to later, this conversation will change that.

Because reinvention isn’t about waiting for proof. It’s about rehearsing the life you want until your system expects it.

Do text the episode to let me know how you get on…. And also please like and share, rate and review…. Do all the shizzle to help others too.

Can’t wait to hear your visualisation successes.

Loads of Love,

Sarah x

🩷

P.S. And if you want to visualise yourself Rich as Fuck, come join us pronto ⬇️

📚 JOIN The Badass AF Book Club

🔥 DOWNLOAD FREEBIES TO FUEL YOUR REINVENTION

📲 FOLLOW on Instagram and Facebook

🩷

Transcript

00:00

Hello, hello, and welcome to the reinvention era podcast where yes, life might have handed us some shit at times, but instead of pretending it smells like roses, we're here to compost it like my grandad used to into something that actually freaking fuels us. And we're deep into September energy in the badass AF book club as well, with a rich as fuck uncovering some wild money bullshit stories, oh, like money doesn't grow on trees. That's a Fave for the Gen X generation, I think, or rich people are greedy. Erm. Why do you want to be rich then? Or my personal lie, money burns a hole in my pocket courtesy of my dad. Cheers, dad. But overall, there are so many aren't there, but the rich as fuck book is already helping us rewrite this bullshit that has well and truly stopped us into our words and our bank accounts. So if you too need to get wired for wealth instead of perpetually poor, check out the show notes. Come join us. It's a tenner month for so much value you would not believe. So if you want to be rich as fuck, if you want rich as fuck vibes, then you know where to invest that tenner don't you? But what rich as fuck has also, like many other books we do in the book club, it's shown us the sheer power of using our thoughts for us, instead of going through this one life, we're living on fucking autopilot. And so this week, I want to go into something that might sound a bit woo woo on the surface, but I promise you it's not. It's an absolute game changer for powering up our thinking to fuel us.

02:27

And that is drum roll mental rehearsal visualisation, basically seeing something in your mind before you actually do it, be it, get it whatever. And look, I'm not just talking about the Pinterest board. Cut out photos of Malibu houses, type visualisation that people slap the word manifestation on, and you think you just have to lie back and wait. Thank you, no no no no no. This is about rewiring your nervous system so your body, your brain, your energy, stops, treating your desires, your wants, like fucking strangers. This is about walking into the thing you want, feeling like it's already yours, and not because You've tricked yourself, because you've trained yourself. And you know what? Science backs this shit up? Seriously, top athletes use it. Public speakers, use it. Surgeons, fucking use it. Anyone who performs under pressure has been training their brain this way for fucking decades. So if Serena Williams can use mental rehearsal before a final. You can show us how to use it before that difficult conversation with your boss or the ex, or before that career leap, or that night where you want to feel bloody magnetic and on fire walking into a room. Because what most people don't get is that your brain really does not know the difference between something vividly imagined and something physically experienced. Honestly.

04:33

You might have heard this before, but let's talk lemons for a minute and make lemonade while we're at it. So lemons, right? If it's safe to do so, close your eyes. I do not need to be getting sued for you walking into something or driving into something. So if it ain't safe, do it with your eyes open, just saying. Now eyes open or shut, whatever. Now think about where in your house. Yes, you keep your lemons, might be the fridge, might be in a bowl, feng shui, style, wherever. Now, imagine taking a lemon and putting it on the chopping board, go to the drawer, get out a knife and then imagine cutting up that lemon however you want to, as you're holding it with one hand to chop it, you can feel that waxy skin on the lemon. It's gorgeous, beautiful, bright yellow, beautiful. So you've pictured yourself cutting into the lemon. Is it in quarters? Is it in slices? Have you done it however you've cut it, pick up a piece and give it a sniff. What can you smell? Gorge, a citrusy scent. Are there any pips in it? Give it a little bit of a squeeze on your hands, and then just put a little drop of the lemon juice on your tongue, on your lips. What does it taste like? Does it make you want a G&T? Seriously, open your eyes now, if you weren't, was you able to feel the waxy skin of that lemon? Was you able to feel as the knife cut through that lemon? Could you smell it? Smell the lemon? How did it taste? Did you salivate? All of that lit up, nearly all your senses. And yet, and yet, there was no fucking lemon. Our brain can not tell the difference between real and imagined, and that's exactly where we can use it to our advantage. Because what tends to happen, what I see with clients, with friends, whatever is that we use this part of our brain, often unknowingly, to relive crappy moments.

07:21

So just as if, I don't know, say you were in a playground when you were seven, right? And one of the boys just called you a really nasty name, and your mate fucking laughed, didn't she bitch? Anyway, off you ran crying, and then I dunno, tripped over your shoelaces, right? Which makes them laugh even more, by the way, and makes you cry even more, or something like that, right? Just something like that happened to you in the playground, right? Just think about something that was a bit shit that happened to you when you was a kid. You can bet your bottom dollar that thinking about it now feels just as upsetting, even when that happened 40, 50, years ago. Or maybe we go back to being dumped by your first boyfriend, not getting a job you really wanted worrying about how to pay your credit cards. All of those are varying degrees of shitty experiences, right? That if we really think about them, we end up reliving them as though they're happening now, and so our brains and our bodies react as though it's happening now, and because of how our nervous system works, it's doing it because it can see that there is some kind of threat, and it's trying to keep you safe by putting you into fight or Flight, even though it's not happening, it's not real. So can you see how we have this tendency to use this function of the brain to relive shit to our own detriment?

09:15

So instead, why the fuck don't we use our brains and choose to use this for us to our advantage. Now, whether it's lemons or whether it's trauma, when you visualise in detail, the sights, the sounds, the sensations, your brain lights up the same neural pathways as if you were actually doing the thing, right? So let's make this shit work for us. It's called neuroplasticity. Is the ability of your brain to reshape itself based on repeated thought and action, right? So. When you rehearse something in your mind, you're literally creating a shortcut for your body to follow in real time. Think about it. That's why anxiety works so well, right? Like I said, you imagine the worst case scenario, and your body responds. You've got sweaty palms and a racing heart and shallow breath, even though you're just sitting on your goddamn sofa, and visualisation is the same process. But instead of rehearsing fear, you're rehearsing trust. Instead of practising failure, you're practising success. Now there are a few different styles, and depending on where you're at, one might work better than another. So let's go through some 

10:49

First up, we've got outcome visualisation. Now this is the one people tend to know the best, and that's seeing the end result. You picture yourself crossing the finishing line. You see yourself in a size 10 killer outfit after living in size 16 for years. This type of visualisation works because, as we've said, your brain doesn't know the difference between vividly imagined and actually lived. So when you rehearse the end goal, your body creates the belief that this is possible, this is available to you now Olympic athletes have been using this technique for literally decades. Michael Phelps, the swimmer he was famous for mentally rehearsing his races so thoroughly that when his goggles filled with water at the Olympics. He didn't panic because he'd already seen it. He'd rehearsed swimming blind, as you do, so when it actually happened, he stayed calm, trusted in his strokes, whatever they're called, and won gold fucking anyway. Oh, another one. Jim Carey, before he was famous, he wrote himself a check for $10 million for acting services rendered. He wrote it to himself for acting services rendered, and dated it Thanksgiving, 1995 carried it around in his wallet, right in 1994 he got paid exactly 10 million fricking dollars for Dumb and Dumber. Was it magic? It was outcome visualisation, making the possibility real enough for him to keep chasing it, even when it looked near damn impossible. So for you, it can be anything you want it to be. Let's go delulu. We all know I love living on the Isle of delulu, but it might be something instead that feels like, almost like an internal gold medal. So like seeing yourself at the dinner table laughing freely because you're not carrying the weight of what every fucker thinks anymore. You don't give a shit anymore. It might be picturing yourself waking up without dread and bouncing out of bed. Instead, it's imagining yourself walking into a room, not shrinking, not apologising, but fully there, fully you. That's the internal gold, whatever it looks like, internal, external, whatever. This is the end goal, that's outcome visualisation, or we have process visualisation. 

14:05

Now this is not focusing on the end goal, but the steps you're going to take to get there. So this is less sexy, but honestly, it's where the change sticks right. It's not the end result, it's the steps that get you to it. There was this psychologist who ran this study where one group physically did finger exercises right, while another group just imagined doing them after four weeks, the mental rehearsal group increased strength by 22% 22 fucking percent without lifting a finger. Why? Because the brain still built the pathways for action because it didn't know it wasn't physically happening. I. Like athletes, don't just picture the medal. They visualise tying their laces, stepping on the track, hearing the crowd, feeling the crowd, hearing the starter gun. Every single micro step gets rehearsed so the body can run it like a script when the pressure hits. So for you, this might be seeing yourself making the morning coffee and not scrolling. It might be imagining yourself opening your journal and actually writing that first sentence and getting that shit out. It could be running the movie, the mind movie of how you're gonna set a boundary with someone who fucking needs it, from the text you type to pressing send to putting the phone down and going, outcome shows You the dream process shows you're capable of it,

16:03

then we've got situational rehearsal, which is a bit like running through a specific scenario in advance. So this one is like super powerful for anything that's likely to make your nervous system spike. It's like mental prep for specific moments, like a job interview, the date, the phone call You've been avoiding, asking the boss for a pay rise, you know, anything like that. And studies have shown right that public speakers who rehearse not just their lines but the audience reactions, so someone coughing in the back, someone having a coughing fit, someone checking their phone, those public speakers end up with way less anxiety and far more flow because they've seen it and they've prepped for it. So have a think about how you might use this like it could be imagining yourself at a doctor's asking the question you know you need to ask, but you usually swallow down and go, oh no next time. Or it might be running through a family party in your mind, so you already feel yourself going, Yeah, I'm going now without any guilt, or, like I said, a day, but it's rehearsing a day where you don't perform you sharp as you it's literally lowering the resistance. So when it happens, your body's not in shock. Michael Jordan used visualisation, not just for winning basketball, but for every possible scenario. So he'd like rehearse missing shots, fouls, noise in the crowd, and he'd see himself getting over it, getting his focus back, taking the next shot. And that's why he was unshakable in the big games, in the high pressure games, situational rehearsal is where I can't do that turns into I've already fucking done this 100 times in my head. It lowers your nervous system's resistance. So when it's go, time, go, go, go, it's basically amazing prep, right?

18:29

And then we have identity visualisation. Now this is one of my absolute faves, and this is deeper. This isn't about what you do, it's about who you are, because the truth is, you don't rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your identity. There was this guy once who famously raised three daughters to become chess champions, including two grand masters, not by focusing on their wins, practising the moves that too, but by raising them in the identity of chess players, their environment, their daily life, their sense of self, every single bit of it was rehearsed into being. Their identity was freaking chess the results followed. Or another one. Oprah. Long before she was Oprah as we now know her, she visualised herself interviewing the world's most influential people, but it wasn't about the end. It was about carrying herself as that woman every damn day, even when she was broke, even when she was doubted, even when she doubted herself. And now people visualise themselves on Oprah's famous sofa. But really, for me, this identity visualisation is where reinvention lives, seeing yourself not just achieving the goal, but being the woman who chooses differently, be it to see it, the one who already dresses in a way that feels like her, who already says no without feeling guilty, the one who already trusts herself. Identity visualisation is like you rehearsing the version of you that's been waiting. It kind of bridges the gap between where you are now and who you're becoming. 

20:38

So outcome shows you the possibility. Process shows you the steps, situational lowers the resistance and identity. That's the rebirth love together. They're not woo, woo. They're really not. They're wiring. They're how you stop being bloody shocked by the life you want and start living it like it's inevitable.

21:07

So a few more ideas for when to use visualisation so before a tough conversation, instead of obsessively replaying all the ways it could go wrong, before presenting, teaching, recording, before workouts, performances, exams, job interviews, before asking for something you would normally hold back like a vase or intimacy or a boundary. When you feel stuck in autopilot and need to imagine yourself actually fucking moving differently, and a sneaky one. When you want to rest without guilt, you can literally rehearse what it feels like to stop doing so that your system learns it's safe.

21:56

But first I just want to just highlight about the emotional cycle of visualisation linked to the emotional cycle of change, because here's where people quit. They'll try once or twice. Feels a bit awkward, and then they decide that visualisation doesn't work. This don't work. This is bullshit, but what's actually happening underneath is like, at first, your brain will reject the image. It feels bit fake, a bit the low, low a bit uncomfortable. Your brain doesn't recognise it, so it's trying to protect you. It's doing its job. But then, if you keep at it, your body starts to normalise it, and the resistance to it lowers, and the story starts to shift. And then, only then, after repeated practice, does it start to feel real and believable, and that's when change sticks love. It's not magic, it's reps, just like going to the gym, this shit takes practice. So then I've got some tips for making visualisation work. So just like we did with the lemon, get sensory. Use your senses. Don't just see it, hear it, smell it. Feel the chair you're sitting on. Feel your breath steadying. Your brain needs all of it, the whole picture, almost like texture, 3d, 4d, whatever, not just vague vibes. Another tip, keep it short. You don't need unless you want to 20 minutes. Half hour, you don't need to do that. Two Minutes of good focus, embodied focus, is enough to rewire and start to build up, like all these things, it's the reps. It's a practice. I keep saying it just like you don't go to a gym once and walk out with a six pack. You've got to train and keep training to keep it up. Get what you want and keep it up. And knowing what you want whilst I'm on that, please, please, please, make it yours. Make it yours. Don't borrow someone else's dream life from Instagram. If your version of freedom is dancing in your kitchen with the music blaring that counts, whatever it is that you want, just focus on what it is what you want, not what you don't want.

24:40

And one more tip, rehearse both the success and the setback. Imagine some obstacles and imagine yourself recovering. That's what the athletes do. It's not about pretending it's perfect. It's about trusting that you'll handle it you can hold that so whether it's walking into a dinner party with confidence and having shit to say, whether it's seeing yourself saying no, without the guilt and without the story and just no then silence, whether it's booking yourself a solo trip, the click, the confirmation email, the first sip of wine on the balcony might just be opening your bank app without your body thinking your face with a real life sabre tooth Tiger,  whatever it is that you truly want visualise that shit. It's not about pretending. It's about preparing your brain and your body to believe you. Reinvention is not a checklist, right? It's not willpower. It's teaching your body that the life you want doesn't just exist out there somewhere, somewhere, someday, it lives in your mind, in your breath, in your daily rehearsal, so that by the time the opportunity arrives. You're not scrambling and in blind fucking panic because you're not actually ready to receive your dreams and desires. You're already living it. You're ready because you're living it. I've got a recording of a mind movie on my phone that I play every single fucking morning, and every single night I see it, I'm living it. When I'm listening to it, I'm there. And that's why visualisation is fire for reinvention. It collapses the gap between desire and identity. So if you've been rolling your eyes a little bit at visualisation going on, sounds bit woo, woo. Sounds a bit like a vision ball with glitter pens. This is your invitation to see it differently. Start with a couple of minutes. See the detail, feel the detail, feel the shift, and keep rehearsing until your system doesn't just imagine it, it fucking expects it love. That's the power of mental rehearsal,

27:11

and that's why this month, this September energy, might be the perfect time to begin. And if you want to visualise yourself rich as fuck, all the better get over to the book club, pronto. Make that shit happen. Love. And by the way, if you're not actually sure what it is you want in life, you don't know what to visualise because you don't know what you want. Get yourself the one tool that changed everything for me, it's free, it's fabulous, but so So myself and future. You well. Thank you muchly. It's on the website, and I'm thanking you muchly for being here with me for this episode. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I've truly loved recording this, so I hope you enjoyed listening to it just as much this shit is so good. I love this stuff. I will be back in your beaut badass earbuds again next week. So I'm sending you loads of love and happy, dreaming big until then, bye.