Exercise for the Brain

As I was literally spoon-feeding my 3-year-old son his breakfast this morning, as I do with at least a portion of every meal of every day, I once again found myself fast-forwarding 15 years and imagining myself feeding my 18-year-old his breakfast before he drives off to school or work for the day. I wondered if his wife will be willing to keep feeding him his meals when she takes on the responsibilities of being married to him. Should we include that in the marriage contract? Now, this is not meant to elicit comments about my bad parenting. I actually want to talk about this habit that I would guess many of us have of projecting ourselves into the future. While this is not necessarily a good thing when I am seeing my 9-year-old as a juvenile delinquent 7 years down the road because he runs off to play with friends instead of doing his chores today, or my 7-year-old flunking out of school and not being able to keep a job because she forgets to turn in a homework assignment, I do think it can have its uses if we choose to change the vision.

Our minds have so much power, more than we realize. If we will take that ability to project into the future and just change the picture a little, it becomes a very powerful mental exercise. If, for example, you lack motivation to do physical exercise at all, start envisioning yourself as someone who likes to exercise and who looks forward to getting up and doing something active every day. The more you visualize the future you want to create, the more you will lock that into your subconscious and get the wheels in your head moving so that that vision can start to be created. Most of what we do every day is controlled by our subconscious thoughts, so if we can just lock those more positive thoughts into our subconscious mind, the things we do when we are on auto-pilot will more likely be things that help us reach our goals. And in our conscious mind, visualizing what we want our future to look like will keep us motivated to keep working toward our goal. 

So take 10 minutes today and try it. Visualize something that you would like to see in your life, whether it’s a healthier body, a better job, an intimate relationship, etc. and paint a picture in your mind of just how it will look. How do you feel? What are you doing as a result of this change? Where do you see yourself? What are the sights, sounds, and smells, surrounding you? The more detail you put in, the more you will be able to lock it in. Take a few minutes to do this every day, and see how your life starts to change. You may surprise yourself!