Vision Versus Visualisation

What’s the difference between vision and visualization? And why is the  difference useful to know? Here’s an NLP way to explain the difference.

Vision is not the same as visualization.  The words are similar, but their meanings are different.  And although it may sound surprising, I’ve seen many people confuse these two words. And this confusion often results in unnecessary halts to people’s education, growth, progress.

Vision is the product of the brain and eye – the eyesight, what we see.  If we’re blind, we don’t see = we don’t have vision.

Visualisation is what we see in our mind’s eye, picture in our heads, imagine in our imaginations regardless of whether our eyes are open or closed, and whether we have vision or are blind.  If I now ask you to imagine  your front door, its color, the material from which it is made, its knob or handle and the color and material of the knob or handle, where on the door the knob or handle is, and which way the door opens, you’ve successfully visualised = applied visualization!

How does visualisation help in parenting and educating a child?

Here’re 3 ways:

If you often forget things (keys, glasses, phone), the next time you lay something somewhere, look at the objects. Take a mental picture of them with your photographic memory immediately after you laid them in a place. Your photographic memory will 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 before going to school in the morning, train the child to visualize a morning routine of the steps that s/he needs to take before leaving the house.

• On the first day of your training ask the child to write down the logical sequence of actions [example: get up, wash, dress, eat breakfast, clear up after breakfast, get schoolbag, put on coat and shoes, leave the house].
• 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 these actions as movies until they naturally connect into one long movie.
• Keep training your child until this natural long movie has become automatic! And then 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 things look at what you’re doing and take a mental picture of the action in your imagination. Once your photographic memory stores the movie or still picture, you’ll know you’ve done it safely!

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

Would you like more help with NLP and visualization? Let’s look at it together.