369: 10 Ways to Improve Your Visualization Practice with Chip Franks

Hal Elrod: Welcome to the Achieve Your Goals podcast. This is your host, Hal Elrod, and thanks for being here today. Really appreciate you and appreciate you listening. You're in for a treat. Today is a guest episode hosted by my good friend, author, stroke survivor, amazing father and husband, and all-around expert when it comes to the Miracle Morning and the SAVERS practices, Mr. Chip Franks. If you’re listening to the podcast for a while, you've heard from Chip before, he's hosted a number of episodes. And today, he actually sent me this episode, that Hal, I recorded an episode for the audience that I think they would really value, it's on visualization.

And so, I just finished listening to it, and I thought this is great. Chip always brings, not only so much wisdom and value, but so much heart, like Chips is one of the most beautiful, authentic human beings that I know, that I've ever met. If you know anyone that knows Chip, or if you've heard him before, you really get that, you get that he is just a good, good soul, good-hearted human being, and he is dedicated to making an impact and a difference for people in their lives. And so, Chip is really, as I said, a master of the SAVERS. He has gone deeper than anybody I know, in all of the SAVERS, any practices than to a– I don't even know how to put it, just extensively, every single day, I would argue that he goes deeper and does more of the SAVERS goes longer, if you will, than even I do,

So, Chip is actually someone that I have learned a ton from, and I continue to learn from. So, if you want to improve your visualization practice, if you want to deepen it, if you want to enhance it, this is the episode for you. And if you ever struggled with visualization, which I have in the past, that's like my least strong of the SAVERS, this episode is going to give you everything you could ever need and more to really begin mastering visualization in your life and the benefits that it brings to you. And I want to tell you a quick story before we get to the episode around visualization, my wife and I have been visualizing having a property for a little under a year, but for almost a year, we've been visualizing a property, we want to have land. And it's taken patience, we've looked at different properties, they weren't the right fit.

Well, about a week ago, I sat down with my wife, and I said, “Sweetheart, we do not have total clarity on what we want. We are vague. We kind of want maybe this, but it might also be this. We're not really sure.” I said, “We need to get totally clear on what we want, we need a clear vision of exactly what we want. And then, we will put forth unwavering faith and extraordinary effort.” If you don't know that that's the miracle equation, right? The two decisions that move your biggest goals from possible to probable to inevitable. So, the miracle equation is unwavering faith plus extraordinary effort. I said, “We'll apply that. And I know I have unwavering faith that we'll find the right home, but we've got to start with that vision for what it's going to be.”

So, we sat down for about an hour, and we put it all on paper. We got totally clear on the vision that we had for the property that we wanted, and including what we could afford, because we didn't even know what we could afford. We hadn't done the math, and so, I got out the mortgage calculator, figured out we could afford it. I'm not kidding you, seven minutes later, seven minutes later, I get a notification on my phone from our realtor that we've been working with to find a property. And it's a property that just came on the market that minute. And I looked at it, and I showed it to my wife, I said, “Sweetheart, this looks like a dream. It's exactly what we just talked about.” I go, “How weird is that, like talk about a miracle?” We created a clear vision. Seven minutes later, we got the vision to come to us, like I don't mean to get too woo-woo, but that's what happened.

And so, we went, looked at the property, and our kids were with us, and we fell in love with it, and we decided that this is perfect. It's exactly what we want, and then some. And so, we made an offer that day, the sellers came back, and their offer, they said, “Your offer doesn't work. Your financing isn't correct, because this particular property is like a farm property.” It takes a special kind of financing which I knew nothing about. So, last week, I've been putting forth an extraordinary effort from 5am to 7pm. It's been my main focus for the last seven days every day trying to figure out financing for this property, and we have run into so many obstacles and so many hiccups, and it was very challenging and exhausting my brain. I was staring at a computer or on the phone with different banks and lenders and private investors, and we had to get really creative to finance this property. And we finally made another offer. They countered, we thought, Oh, this is a good sign, the counter. We countered back very mildly, thinking, Oh, this is just a slam dunk. We didn't hear anything.

Day goes by, nothing, and we're freaking out. We're going, what's wrong? We hear back, hey, we got a higher offer. Now, we have two offers. So, I had to put forth extraordinary effort and keep doing, getting creative to figure out how we could offer even more money. And long story short, because we got clear on our vision of what we wanted, because we maintained the miracle equation and maintained unwavering faith, my wife kept going, we're not going to get it, maybe it's not meant to be, it shouldn't be this hard. And I said, “No, it's supposed to be this hard. That's the extraordinary effort.” I said, “And sweetheart, don't be afraid that we're not going to get it, maintain unwavering faith that we will get it.” So, I continue to maintain that miracle equation.

And as a result, last night, our offer was accepted, and we got our dream home. And we get to move into it in June. So, it's 32 acres. It is a dream come true. We are so, so excited. So, anyway, I wanted to share that story because visualization works, the miracle equation works. And right now, you're going to hear from Chip Franks on how to make visualization work for you, but real quick, before we dive into the episode, I do have to take a minute, or I want to take a minute, I get to take a minute to thank our sponsor Organifi, O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I. Organifi is a product or multiple products. It's a brand, it's a company that makes whole food based organic supplements. So, green juice powder that you put in water, or apple juice or your smoothie, vanilla plant based protein powder, everything you make is organic, it's plant based, it's whole food, it's not synthetic. And I want to address something that occurred to me this morning, actually, it was yesterday morning when I was making my smoothie, I've never talked about the price of Organifi.

And here's what I realized, Organifi, if you've looked it up, if you've gone to their website, which the web address, I'd encourage you to check it out. It's Organifi.com/Hal, O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I, Organifi.com/Hal. And if you go there, you will see that, I would say their pricing, relatively speaking, it's not the most expensive products out there, but it's definitely more than some of the things you might find on Amazon, and what you find is the quality of the ingredients and where they're sourced. I remember my friend Brian 20 years ago, I was really into healthy eating, that's when I first started on that journey, and he went shopping and he's like, man, the stuff you're buying is so much more expensive than the other stuff, there's a lot cheaper stuff. And I said, “Can you think of a better place to invest a little more money than your health?” Like, if we're going to spend the money on something, I can't think of a better, a wiser investment than into our nutrition and into our health.

And so, while Organifi, it's a little bit more expensive than the run-of-the-mill stuff that you can find on Amazon or at the store, but again, I think you really get what you pay for in this instance, and you're getting whole food plant based organic supplements. So, check it out Organifi.com/Hal, and use the code HAL at checkout, H-A-L, if you decide to get something, and you'll get 15% off your entire order. I love Organifi products. I've used them for about, I think, four years or seven years. I'm terrible at estimating that, but for many years, I've used Organifi products, I'm a big fan. And I hope you find something there that you love. And speaking of love, I love Mr. Chip Franks. I think you will too, if you don't already. And here's Mr. Chip on visualization.

[INTERVIEW]

Chip Franks: Well, hello, you, beautiful people. This is Chip Franks, once again filling for our esteemed Hal Elrod, and I assume that he gave me a fantastic introduction before. I am a podcaster like Hal with The ChipChat Podcast. I am an author and a speaker, also like Hal, just not quite as successful as Hal yet, but I'm working on that, and have been an entrepreneur real estate, and you've heard me before, so I won't necessarily go into all of that, but just know that I am excited to be here and give you the podcast today.

And now, Hal really, really cares about you getting some great information, and I am going to do my absolute best to do that. And this gives him a chance to take a week off in the podcast, which is sometimes really necessary. And for me, it's a chance to do something that I love. And also, if I've earned it, so I can tell you about my podcast, The ChipChat Podcast, one word, ChipChat, and if I've earned the rights from you to come over and follow me on my podcast or subscribe to that, that would be fantastic, but no sweat if I haven't, but first, before I asked you to do that, we are going to go really deep into visualization today. And this is going to be a lot of fun. And if I've earned the right to ask you to subscribe to my podcast, great, but if not, that's completely cool. I'm going to give you everything that I have on visualization today.

And now, visualization, obviously, it's part of the SAVERS, and from my time in the Miracle Morning community and interacting with people on Facebook there, I believe, I'm pretty certain in fact, that visualization is the least understood of the SAVERS. And it's kind of like the problem child of the SAVERS because not a lot of people know how to do it or do it the most effective way. And they kind of treat it as an afterthought to the Miracle Morning, like they've got the other ones down pretty well, they're all pretty straightforward, and they have everything going, but they just haven't necessarily gotten it right, and that's what we're going to do today.

So, today, I'm going to go over 10 ideas, to make sure that our visualization can be better, to be as effective and creative and as wonderful as we can with that, but before I do that, and before we get there, I want to explore why visualization is so important. And hopefully, you're already doing it, and you have a practice that works for you, but here's some of the things that I thought of, our visualization, it is the theater of the imagination. And if we can think of this as imagining and imagination, then I think that that really helps with what visualization really does for us. In fact, consider this quote from Albert Einstein, pretty smart guy, right? He says, “Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.” Now, I love that, and I've actually thought about that with goals before. And it looks like I was thinking right in line with Albert Einstein, which makes me feel pretty good here.

And Einstein also said, “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.” And if we can think of our visualization as a time to use and exercise our imagination, then that is really where it happens. As if we think about it, imagination is a godlike power, and just, we can do absolutely anything in our imaginations. And now, I don't mean to be sacrilegious or anything like that, but I personally think that along with the power of love and the power to love, imagination is the divine spark that God has given us in life when we were created. And not to push God on anyone, if you don't believe in God, that's completely cool, that's your bag, but for me, it works with that.

So, consider this very carefully, as far as our imagination goes, as I think this is a profound thought. Now, for our dreams and our goals to happen in life, and I think that's important to you, because you're listening to the Achieve Your Goals podcast here, before they happen in life, they have to be at least a thought in our imaginations. Now, think about that for a second. Now, even if it's just a little bit, if we visualize it, and we think about it just a little bit, then it happens in our minds. And that makes it so much more likely to happen in the world, but before it's happened there, of course, it's in our minds, it's in our hearts, and it's in our souls. And when we do affirmations, and we affirm things, we're thinking about it, and we're kind of imagining it's in our mind here and more on that later. Or when we're having daydreams, and we're thinking about that someday, idealized future in our life where we are actually visualizing when we do that, maybe it's a little bit of a sloppy visualization, but it is absolutely visualization.

And now, our dreams and goals following that idea, they will not happen unless we visualize them, at least a little bit, but when we do it well, when we visualize it very well, and we are super clear, and we repeat the visualization, those goals and those dreams become so much more likely to happen in our lives. Now, I've read this, and maybe you have, too, but when we have written goals, and I think the standard is, they say 3% of the population has written goals, but when we have those written goals, we make them literally 1000% more likely to happen. And if you think about that, along with being able to clearly visualize those goals and those dreams, they just become so much more likely to actually appear in the material world and in our lives. And that is amazing, but why is that?

And here it is. Our beautiful, magnificent minds can't tell the difference between something vividly imagined and reality, and it treats them the same. And by the way, I got that from Jim Kwik. And I've done a lot of research on visualization the past few days, and I've been watching Neville Goddard, and one by Brendon Burchard and a fellow named Colin Hiles from Australia. And I got a lot of the information here on visualization. Oh, yes, and also Joe Dispenza, you might have heard of him, I've looked at all of these to give us these ideas, but this is something that Jim Kwik actually talked about. And I got this from him. And this is a first example of our minds not being able to tell the difference between something vividly visualized, and something that actually happens in real life.

There was a study from University of Illinois at Chicago. And what they did is they had three groups of people, and they wanted to see how well they could improve basketball in a fixed period of time. And now, the first group of people, they had actually practiced basketball each and every day, they practiced shooting and seeing how well they could shoot the hoops, make the goal, whatever. And the second group actually spent the same amount of time, not actually practicing in physical reality with the basketball, but just imagining that. And then the third group did nothing, they neither practiced nor they thought about it, or whatever. And the results of this were pretty incredible.

Now, as you might expect, the third group who didn't practice had no improvement whatsoever, was the exact same from when they started to when the test was over. Now, the first group who actually physically practiced shooting the basketball, they got 24% better over the course of time while they did this. And here's the kicker, and this is the amazing thing, the group that just imagined playing basketball and imagined the ball going into the hoop, they got 23% better. And this is without them physically touching the basketball or going out to do that, and it's just amazing. The power of imagination and of visualization is absolutely real. And that is one example.

The second example here is from Colin Hiles. And actually, I'll make this the last example here because I'm looking at the time, and we gotta get through this, but Colin Hiles, he said, “Imagine a lemon, like if you could close your eyes and just imagine one half of a lemon in your hand in front of you. And if you can, just take that lemon and bring it up to your nose and you can actually bring your hand up to your nose and pretend there's the lemon there, and you can smell the lemon. And what I want you to do is actually imagine and visualize yourself taking a bite out of that half lemon and feeling the taste of it, smelling this, and feeling the juices like come through your teeth and get on your chin a little bit and smell it and hear yourself taking that bite and just visualize that as deeply as you can.”

And if you're like me, you actually got the lemon, you know the sour taste. Oh my gosh, I'm about to gag a little bit. I gag really easily, but it is real to us and our brain enacts and it activates all kinds of wonderful things to actually make that real for our subconscious. And that's just amazing. Did you feel that? Now, what happens and I've read about this in this research that I've done here is that we engage our frontal lobe when we do that, and it tells our subconscious mind what to do. And of course, when we're visualizing with this lemon, all of that is coming to our prefrontal lobe, and all the rest of our brain and our senses and everything that we have is actually coming to the aid of that to make it real for our lives. Now, if you can imagine the vividness of doing this, of the lemon exercise and visualizing that, imagine taking that experience there and applying that to our lives, our goals, I mean, how amazing would that be. And this is so, so powerful.

And now, my visualization, because I've been studying all of this and going through it has been phenomenal the past few days. And I'm hoping that as we go through these ideas, that you'll get a lot of these, too, because this is going to be fun. So, now, we know why it's important. Let's get the ideas out. And before we do that, just real quickly, I want to tell you that, and hopefully you know this, but experiment with these, see what works for you, see what doesn't, and I really distrust someone when they say no, no, no, this is the way, this is the only way, this is my way. So, you need to do it that way. No, no, obviously, do it the way that works for you. Take what works, discard that which doesn't, and try this. And what I would say is treat this visualization exercise as an experiment for you.

So, knowing that and getting into it, let's hurry up and get into the actual ideas for this. So, number one, the first idea is that clarity is king with our visualization, and maybe this is the most important thing. So, know what you're going to visualize. When you sit down to do that, or you lay down to do that, be clear on what you want to visualize, use your goals, or use a feeling that you want to have happen in your life during the visualization. Now, if you have one of those goals that is clearly written or an affirmation that you have written down, which includes why it's important to you, and what it is obviously, in the process that you go through it, if you have those, use them, because that will make your visualization more and more clear. And the more clear that we can make our visualization, the more powerful this will be for us. So clarity is king is the first idea.

And actually, thinking about this, here is the deal. Ambiguous visualization will lead to ambiguous results. And a clear visualization will lead to clear results. So, be clear with that. And here's just a quick little tip for that to make it happen, write down what you want to visualize before you actually do it, and that is going to help make it clear and concise in our minds that make our visualization better. So, that was idea number one. Idea number two, the butterfly versus the hammer. And I'm using those terms. I don't know if I like hammer because that sounds pretty forceful, but this will make the points for you. So, just like clarity is really important for us, consistency is also important.

Now, with my visualization, a lot of times, I've used the butterfly approach which is what I'm calling it. And that just means that I visualize all different kinds of futures, and I'm kind of going and visualizing what kind of shape I'm in and how much money I have and where I'm visiting and the sun shining and the relationships being perfect. And I'm just kind of going like a butterfly from visualization to visualization in my mind during the visualization process. And I have to tell you, I've done that for too long. And while it makes us feel good, and it does make us feel good, that's a really good feeling on this, it doesn't do nearly as much for the achievement of our goals and our dreams, and changing our behavior as the hammer approach. And what the hammer approach is doing consistently each and every day, time after time after time, and doing the same one, time after time, the same visualization and the same ideas that we have with that.

And to give you an example, my current goal for this quarter through the end of March here is energy, and I want divine enthusiasm when I leap out of bed in the morning, have energy to go all day long, creating my dreams, being with my family, and having that bright-eyed enthusiasm throughout life. And it sounds a little ambiguous, but I have milestones and things that I want with it. And now, because that is my goal, that is what I'm visualizing each and every day. And I'm getting as clear as I can, and I'm being very consistent. And I'll talk a little bit more about how I do that, but it's the exact same goal. And now, to take this home as an idea, it's a quote from Bruce Lee, you know him, the martial artist, and he says, “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” And it's the same with our visualization, the more we are clear on it, and the more consistent we are day after day after day, taking that hammer approach instead of the butterfly, the more effective our visualization can be. So, that's idea number two, the butterfly and the hammer.

Idea number three, this is good, engage all of our senses in our visualization. Now, going back to the lemon example, you remember that, and hopefully you remember the taste of the lemon in your mouth, and just how real that felt to your brain. And part of that is because we were smelling it, and we were listening to it and we were thinking about it and hearing the sound of us biting into the lemon. In fact, it's coming back to me right now while I'm thinking about it, but what we do with this is we use all of our senses, and make sure that we engage all of them when we're doing that visualization is of course, most all our visualization and of course, that's the root of the word visual, we are seeing everything, but what we want to do is engage our senses and think about what we're smelling and what we're hearing, and the taste in our mouths at the time of what we're feeling physically while we're doing that, because remember that sight, as important as it is, it's still 20% of the senses. So, when we can do that to engage all of our senses, it makes it a lot more clear in our minds, and it makes the experience of visualization that much more real to us, which, of course, is awesome. And I love that.

So, idea number four, deeply feel your visualization. And that's what I mean is just concentrate on how you are feeling during the things that happened during your visualization. Like for an example, like I talked about energy earlier for myself, now I'm vividly imagining leaping out of bed, like taking some deep breaths, going outside in my backyard, bare feet, and putting my bare feet on the ground, filling the grass with those. And I'm feeling the energy inside of me as I put my arms up in the air. And I say to God, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” And when I'm doing my visualization, I'm actually feeling how I feel at that moment while I'm doing that visualization. And it is so much more powerful, and very, very useful for our subconscious to actually have that emotional feeling of what we are doing. So, concentrate on that and think about that. And let's say if you are visualizing earning a certain amount of money in your life, of course, you can see that, you can imagine that you're doing the things to make that, you can see your bank accounts and imagining yourself in that, but think about how that makes you feel when you see it. And whatever it is that you're visualizing, if you're thinking about moving to a new location, and you want to move to the mountains of Denver, for instance. And you go to Denver, and just imagine how you feel as you're looking out over those beautiful mountains. And as you're smelling the crisp clean air of Colorado, and going to work wherever you're out there. And just imagine again, that feeling within your heart and your soul. And it is so powerful for the subconscious, like science says that this makes it more likely to have happened, and it gives our subconscious something to work on with that feeling. So, that is awesome. And again, think about how you're feeling during your visualization. And that is idea number four.

Idea number five. This is the two-part visualization and in fact, I believe that Hal talked about this in his Miracle Morning book, and it's so, so powerful. Now, one of my favorite quotes is by Henry David Thoreau. He's one of my very favorite philosophers. Literally, I have a T-shirt with Henry David Thoreau on it because I am a geek, but I love this guy. And here's the quote, if you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost, that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. And what that means to me is what we're doing with our visualization, the two parts. Now, what I suggest is the first part, to think of the end goal. Whatever it is in your mind that you're visualizing, I want you to think about it as clearly as you can with that, and engage all of those senses, and feel what you're feeling, and take note of that. And if you're visualizing a marathon, for instance, you can actually see yourself crossing the finish line of the marathon, do that vividly, use all of those tools that we talked about before, including how people around you, how they smell, how the air feels on your skin, and what music they're playing at the time, and all of that, and actually feel that feeling of success that you're visualizing. And that's the first part of the visualization.

Now, the second part, and maybe this is the most important, and this is where Thoreau said, “Now build your foundations under them.” So, take that dream, and what you want to do is build the foundations under it by vividly imagining yourself doing everything that you can to get to that final destination on that, like in this example, you're in the marathon. So, you want to see yourself training for that moment. And all of the hard work that you're doing, the long weekly runs that you're doing, and the daily runs that you're doing, you're eating right, you're getting massages, you're doing your workouts, you're calling your accountability buddy, or whatever that is, you want to make sure that you are visualizing all of that, the whole process of going through it. And I think that the process of doing that is just as important, or maybe even more important than the actual goal. And that is the two-part visualization, and I find that to be very, very effective with what we do. So, I like again, the first goal, and then shrinking back a little bit to how we get to that goal.

Idea number six, the two views idea. And you might have heard this one, and I'm calling this the personal view and the theater view. Now, the theater view is actually where you see yourself like you're watching a movie, and you're outside of yourself, and you're seeing yourself cross the finish line, whereas the personal view is the first-person view, of course, is you looking through your own eyes as you're crossing that finish line, and you're experiencing everything as you in that moment. Now, for many, many years, for some reason, and I don't know why I started this, maybe it's how we default, but at least for me, it was. And I have seen myself in the theater view. And what I've been doing lately this last year, especially, and to me, it's been a lot more effective is going to that first-person view and experiencing everything as myself. Now, of course, it's more effective for me, I think it brings my visualization to life a lot more, but you decide on which one feels better with you, but if you've been doing one, try the other. And make sure that you do both and see how it works for you.

And maybe, going back to the two-part visualization, maybe you want to see the theatre of you finishing your goal and accomplishing the things that are in your head and what you want to do with that, and do that in the theater mode. And then, the work that we're doing, and the things that we're doing to achieve that goal and to work with that goal, we're going to do that in first-person mode. So, it's actually us going through it, and we get those feelings. And I think maybe, if we do that, then the end experience is going to be a little bit different than we imagined it, because we will actually be experiencing it and seeing it first person when we accomplish those goals. So, it's still going to have some of that mystery and that excitement for us when we do that. And I believe that Hal has talked about this before and some scientists, but they say if you get too used to actually completing the goal, then we kind of consider it done in our minds, and then we don't do anything for it. And that, of course, is not right. So, try those both yourself, the theater mode and the personal first-person view.

Now, number seven, idea seven, push through the hard parts in our visualizing. Now, I got this from my buddy Akshay, he's been on the podcast a few times. He is a former Marine, he is an adventurer, an Arctic explorer, and can do more burpees than just about anyone you can imagine. The guy is really, really tough. And what he does with this is he visualizes the hard parts. Now, I think that the reason that we most often fail with the things that we're doing or we're attempting or trying is that we don't either realize or plan for when things get really, really tough. And when they get hard, most people, and if we're honest, a lot of times, it's us, bail out of it. So, with this technique and this idea, what we want to do is imagine all the obstacles and the problems, we can clearly see them and we can fill them, and then we see in our own minds, in our own mind’s eye and feeling us going through those obstacles and climbing above them and going through them, finishing them, and doing that. And what we want to do is we want to visualize our own physical and emotional stamina to get through those tough parts.

So, if you know you're going to be running tomorrow, you know you're going to be tired, what you visualize is yourself in that run being extremely tired and wanting to quit and putting a smile on your face as you visualize this, and pushing through that feeling to actually finish the run strong. And when we do that, of course, we are a lot better at taking on those obstacles and those problems. And this is just a great way to keep going and to help direct our behavior, which a lot of times, that's what visualization is, is the best tool for us, is to kind of direct our behavior in the future. So, I love that one.

Idea number eight, deep intention with no attachments. Now, this is kind of an advanced technique, but I think that you're ready for it. And this is the thing, when we visualize, we can want the things that we're dreaming about and the goals that we have planned and the life that we have in our mind, we can want them so much. And our intention, of course, is to accomplish those goals in our dreams and use the visualization to help it. Now, when we visualize, we can feel that desire, and we can feel how much we want it in our chest and our heart there, and we can see it so clearly again, in our mind's eyes when we're visualizing. However, we often know that it doesn't always work out exactly as we imagine, and that of course, makes sense. I mean, sometimes it's not as good, and oftentimes, it's actually even better, but it's usually different. Now, sometimes they can be exactly the same as in your mind's eye and how it happens and that in itself is an amazing experience, and that is one you chalk up to divinity and how were divinely designed, which is wonderful, but usually it's going to be different. And that's where this philosophy comes into play, the philosophy of deep intention and no attachment. And when we have that, of course, we have the intention, and we know that it's going to be different than what we're visualizing, and that's completely fine because we don't have that attachment to the outcome happening exactly as we are visualizing this. And no matter how it ends with that, it's going to be perfect. And if it were different, we wouldn't actually have to live it out because it would have already been done in our minds. So, really, this is just good life advice, but I think it's really, really good for visualization.

So, if you visualize, for example, going back to our marathon example, you visualize a sunny, slightly cool day for your marathon, and it turns out to be rainy, like slightly rainy and cold and clouds everywhere, that's going to be fine. It's absolutely no problem, because our visualization prepared us for this. And we weren't attached to that specific outcome of exactly how it goes, and we used our intention and the visualizing to shape our behavior to get there and to have the performance in that marathon that we wanted. I hope that makes sense. And the whole purpose again, of this is to direct our behavior and our actions. And that's what the visualization helps us to do.

Idea number nine, continuing on with the actions and actually, we're getting close to the end of this. I'm going through it pretty quickly, which is good, because Hal likes to keep these on points and on task here, but idea number nine is use visualization to act perfectly. And what we want to do, and this is one that has actually served me very well for a few years, and I got this from a guy named Sadhguru. And he uses it as part of his meditation. Now, what we want to do with this is visualize us acting perfectly just as it says, we will treat ourselves from there, we'll figure out how we treat ourselves, how we treat our loved ones, and all of the people that we meet, all of our daily interactions with everybody, and treating them perfectly, and being a perfect, wonderful, idealized version of ourselves. And we imagine this in our mind's eyes, and we visualize that and again, using all those wonderful tools and the senses and the intentions, all of those in our hearts when we are dealing with other people and that again, helps shape our behavior to be a lot better.

And here's where the other thing happens, we can also visualize us making the right choices throughout the day, like we have a choice, we can either eat that greasy double cheeseburger with bacon and ketchup only, just how I prefer them, or we can visualize ourselves choosing the keto-friendly meal and eating a salad with some lean protein on it, and doing that. And we can actually do that and those hard moments of choice for us in our visualization, so that we make the right decisions. And that is something that can completely and totally help us doing that, and we can go throughout our day. If we know that we have an appointment later on, an important business meeting, or if we're talking to our child about their behavior at school, we can visualize how it's going, and most importantly, how we are showing up and how we are acting, and that is so powerful. And it makes us much better people through the power of visualization, which of course, I just love with that.

So, idea number 10, and this is the last one I'm going to bring for the day, but this one, it's a powerful one. And actually, it's going to need some explanation with this. And idea number 10 is to combine our visualization with our other SAVERS. And this one is really important to me, it's been fantastic in my life, and I never really thought of it per se to just combine it, it just seemed like the thing to do and they kind of ran together and they complement each other really well, but if we actively think about combining our visualization along with the other SAVERS, then visualization can be just that delicious sauce that brings the best out of everything.

And to give you a few examples, here are some. For silence, now, if we're taking our silence, which for me is pretty much the first SAVERS, of course, and I like to pray during my silence. And what I've done is rather than speaking in my mind with the prayer, what I'm doing is I'm visualizing my prayer. And to give an example, I'm visualizing me taking care of myself, and I'm visualizing my bride at work and having a good day of work and seeing her happy and smiling and with friends and that she feels fulfilled and wonderful with what she's doing. And I think about my kids, I think about them in school and that they're happy and they're excited about going to school, and they have enthusiasm there, and that they're meeting other friends, and they're feeling really good about themselves and their friends. And I'm visualizing that in my head. And to me, that feels like a more effective prayer than just using the words and saying something. And that's something that you might want to give a try. And also, with our meditation, if you choose to do meditation during your silence, which I also do, is you can visualize yourself meditating, visualize yourself actually holding on to the focus with that, and visualize yourself breathing with it, and visualize yourself getting through the meditation and starting it at the right time, and visualize the feeling that you're going to have after the meditation. Those are the things that we can do with the silence part.

And now, with the affirmations, this is even better, because if we write our affirmations like Hal tells us to or suggests that we do, we can visualize the affirmation that we have, the affirmation and the intention that we have. I want to double my income, I'm going to double my income by March 30, 2022, and there's no other option. And this is important to me because of the security it will give my family, the freedom, the feeling it will give me to know that I'm accomplishing so much more in life, and that we can save for our future and leave a legacy for our children. I'm doing this off the top of my head, but that could be it. And to make sure that I double my income, here are the steps that I'm taking, I'm learning more about my business and my profession, I'm shadowing someone else who's doing a really great job of it, I am putting in extra hours with this, I am making my time more effective, I'm getting a personal assistant to help me with this, whatever that process is, you have it written down in your affirmations. And what you want to do, of course, is just visualize each of these, as you're going through your affirmations. Rather than just saying it, you want to actually see it in your mind's eye and visualize it or maybe say it and then close your eyes and actually feel that, and use all those beautiful tools that we talked about in visualization for it. And that is amazing. And that's something we can do with affirmations.

Now, the exercise, of course, this one's pretty self-explanatory, you can imagine yourself pushing through the hard parts of your exercise, you can imagine yourself getting there exactly at the right time, you can imagine yourself victorious at the end of it, dripping with sweat and feeling that wonderful feeling of self-satisfaction that, yeah, I am a bad ass because I did this. You can do all of that with your exercise. Now, reading, reading is the same kind of thing. You can visualize yourself reading, being on time with it, and imagining and visualizing the new knowledge and the new information, the life-changing, profound, wonderful wisdom that you have gained from your reading. And that will help enhance your reading, of course. And then for me, the one that I liked the most is the scribing. And I think that the scribing and visualization are just such a powerful one-two punch because with visualization, you can enhance everything that you write down, and you can write down things to enhance your visualization.

Now, in this case, you want to write down exactly what you are visualizing, you can write down the goals that you have, you can write down the process that you have, you can write down what those dreams are. One of the things I like doing is an ideal day, where somewhere in the future, you are writing down and clarifying what your perfect day would look like from the moment you open your eyes to the moment you go back to sleep. And you can make that anything and everything that you want to, you can include yachts and private planes, and all of your family around and maybe singing in front of thousands of people, whatever it is that floats your boat on that ideal day, you write that down, and then you can visualize that to help make it part of your subconscious to come into fruition later. And I love that. And then, the other thing is, after you visualize, you can write down what worked for you, what felt good for you, what didn't feel good for you, so that you can get better and more effective at visualizing it the next time out, which again, I think is just amazing.

And that, my friends, are the 10 ways to help your visualization process each and every day. And I love being able to give this to you. And just like I said before, if this is something that you enjoy, that you like, you can come back to it, you can write this all down, but I've even saved some effort for you, if you would like to actually get a visualization cheat sheet that you can print out, that you can have with you on your phone, whatever it is, the next time you sit down for visualization, so you can look at all 10 of these ideas, and just make sure that you can apply them or at least try them in your visualization. To do that, just go to ChipFranks.com/visualization. And when you go there, it will ask for your email address, you can give that to me. You can make up a fake one if you really don't want to hear from me, but I promise I don't spam. You typically hear from me about once a week, and it's always good information about leading a better life because that's what it's all about and that's what I like to do is help people love life again. And that's what the emails are directed towards, but of course, you can get this visualization cheat sheet by going there, ChipFranks.com/visualization, and I promise not to spam.

Now, the other thing, and I told you about this at the very beginning, if I earned this, and this was good and you enjoyed listening to me go on about this, then I humbly ask you to look up The ChipChat Podcast, and that's ChipChat, one word, ChipChat Podcast. And unfortunately, I should have done more research with this when I named it, but I love the name. There are a couple of ChipChat podcasts. So, when you do it as one word, ChipChat, and you look for the heart and the thumbs up, and you will know that that is my podcast, and you can listen to that. And if you feel so inclined, I would be honored if you would subscribe to that. And each and every week, you will get a new conversation about leading a better life. Sometimes that's me just talking like I did through this one, and oftentimes, it's a conversation, typically long-form conversation with a thought leader. I'm having billionaires on, I've had a general. We've had New York Times bestselling authors. Hal was on the podcast, and health experts, everything, and we have a real deep dive into conversation about leading a better life. I'm a little biased, but it's a lot of fun, but if you feel like it, take your phone or wherever you are listening right now, look that up and click subscribe to The ChipChat Podcast, and maybe Listen to this.

And in fact, one of my favorite reviews, someone reviewed the podcast on Apple, and they said, “This is a great podcast, and I love that I can listen to this while I'm waiting for Hal’s podcast.” And that's completely fine with me. Obviously, I'm no Hal Elrod, but I would love to have you listen to that as well. So, with that, thank you. I know that you could have listened to about anything else in the world, and you chose to listen to this today. And that is something I appreciate a lot. And by listening, you're helping me do something that I love doing. So, I really, really appreciate that. I will not take that for granted. And I just love you for it. So, with that, please know you are loved and deserving. And this is Chip Franks on the Achieve Your Goals podcast. Thanks.

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