Does Creative Visualization Really Work?

My last blog referred to Creative Visualization, and those readers who subscribe to my e-mails also recently received a free invitation to an online Creative Visualization event.

But does Creative Visualization really work?

If you simply do not believe in the power of the mind, nothing I can say here will convince you.  It is simply not possible to demonstrate an irrefutable causal link between a visualization and changes in circumstances that happen after that visualization.  In order to prove it scientifically I would need to demonstrate that the visualization was the simplest explanation for the causation of whatever materialized.  I cannot give you that proof.  In every case I could quote to you, and there are plenty, you could probably find another, simpler explanation.  But for me there is too much evidence that it does work, even though in each individual case I cannot prove it scientifically.

Take the actor Jim Carey, for example.  Did you know that he used Creative Visualization to bring on his Hollywood success?  In 1987 Carey was a struggling actor trying, like so many before and since, to live the Hollywood dream.  He wrote himself a cheque for $10 million, dated it eight years later, and noted on it "for acting services rendered".  In 1994, one year before the date on the cheque, Jim Carey received $10 million for his star role in "Dumb and Dumber".  Coincidence?  Skeptics will say yes.  But Carey doesn't think so.  And nor do I.

Or how about the golfer Tiger Woods?  The way he trained himself to make perfect shots was by consistently visualizing those shots internally.  Before he even picked up the golf club he had made the winning shot.  Not on the course but in his mind.  When he went on the course all he had to do was let that winning shot take over.

And then we have the oncologist (cancer doctor) Dr O Carl Simonton.  Dr Simonton was a very respected cancer specialist who founded a successful cancer treatment centre in Pacific Palisades in the 1980's.  He noticed that different patients with similar cancers and receiving the same treatment had very different outcomes.  Some were cured completely (to the extent that this can be said of any cancer), some died of the cancer, and many fell somewhere in between these two extremes.  The main difference, Dr Simonton found, was that those who had a positive outlook were far more likely to survive.  As a result, he began using lifestyle counselling, including techniques where the patients visualized themselves as fit and healthy, and he found the survival times of his patients doubled and they had greatly improved quality of life.

These could all be coincidences of course.  I do not believe they are but I am not going to argue with you if you believe they are.  It is up to you.

Does Creative Visualization work?  You decide.  Or better still, try it for yourself and see if it works for you.