Using visualization successfully is an art (and a bit of a science), and there are lots of ways to mess it up and make it less effective. Being too specific is mistake number one from seven common mistakes in visualizing.

So just how can visualizing lots of very specific details cause your creation to bog down?

You’ll get thrown off your creation path when your desire and your belief that you can actually have what you want don’t match.

You want to be just as specific as you can be and still believe it to be possible - and no more.

Let’s use an example of wanting a positive, supportive relationship in your life.

Maybe you already have a specific someone in mind when you think of your perfect relationship. Or maybe you just have tons of details - height, weight, age, career, hair color, degree of attractiveness. The list can go on and on.

Well, these details can be exhilarating…or they can totally derail your dream. It depends.

If you are visualizing a specific person, for example, but that person is so totally unavailable, your mind probably also says ‘Get real. It’ll never happen!’

Then you are being too specific.

Plus, if you are like me, you don’t always know enough to be very certain that this is your perfect person. You don’t know everything there is to know about him or her.

There was a time in my 20’s when I was absolutely certain that I had found my ‘one and only.’ My soul mate. We dated for a while and it was rocky. Then he broke the relationship off.

I continued to want that relationship back for a long time, and focused my desire and attention on that person, and that person only. Nobody else would do!

I don’t need to tell you that I didn’t get that guy back.

But my continued focus on that one person certainly blocked anything positive from happening in my relationship life for a long time. Too detailed. Too specific.

It wasn’t until I wrote my list of desired relationship aspects in a way that allowed the universe some elbow room for creation that I attracted Mynders into my life.

I wrote a list that described aspects I wanted in a relationship, not just a specific person. And then the universe went out and found me a perfect match. And arranged a meeting, even though I lived in Minneapolis, and Mynders lived near Seattle.

So when you are starting to visualize your desires, back off a bit. Make a list of the aspects that you desire and value about that specific person or job or car (or whatever), and recognize that there are many ways these qualities can be delivered to you.

Just leave that detailed picture a bit blurry and speed up your creating.

Deb here -

I have created some pretty amazing things in my life by writing a simple list.

Mynders has already written a short blog on how I attracted him into my life, but I wanted to add my own thoughts. After all, I’m the one who wrote the list!

It was November of 1989. I was in graduate school at the University of Minnesota, finishing up my Ph.D., writing my dissertation, and taking some neuroscience classes in the medical school. My mom was really ill and was in the hospital in intensive care. And I was working full-time as a School Psychologist.

Stress? You guessed it.

I decided to take a week over Thanksgiving and visit a friend in Denver. Lorie was also a School Psych and in grad school, so we had lots of book-related needs. Naturally we headed to The Tattered Cover bookstore.

I wanted a book on Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), and it was shelved in the metaphysical section, so we headed over there. While I was looking through the NLP books, a white book fell from a shelf high above me and landed on my foot.

I picked it up and paged through it, and saw comments about joy and creation. It looked interesting, and so I put it in the bag with about 17 other books I wanted to buy. I was also picking up books on visualization and stuff like that, since my neuroscience research was showing me some very interesting stuff about how the brain works.

And a few months later, I got around to reading the white book. One of the exercises in the book was creating a list defining something I wanted. And in the back of the book there was a free audiotape offer, which I requested. When it came, it included a list of classes I could take, spread out over the next 18 months.

I’d just come out of a pretty messy relationship, and was fed up. I wanted a positive and supportive relationship, so I wrote out a list of qualities I wanted in a guy. I meditated on the list for a few minutes, and then folded it up and put it in my underwear drawer.

And promptly forgot all about it.

But while I didn’t obsess about the list, I did start to do the things that brought me joy in my life. I took classes for fun, I hung out with friends, and I signed up for a class from that white book. The last one on the list.

I flew to Washington state for the weekend class, and really enjoyed it. I decided to go to the next one as well, and it was a week-long class in August of 1991.

At the August class I was standing in line for my ticket, and a cute guy was standing behind me. Mynders. We chatted, and ended up sitting in the same row for the class. We hung out a bit during the class, and then I headed back to Minneapolis at the end.

A few days later, Mynders called. We talked, he visited, I visited. And we decided that mid-October was a great time to move to Washington to hang out with Mynders.

He came in to town to help me pack for the move, as I was still working. One day I came home from work and saw a yellow sheet of paper thumbtacked to the front door.

It was my list!

And it had a note on the top that said “I know this guy!” and signed with his initials, MG.

Mynders had found it while packing my dresser, and every single item on the list fit him.

We got married and have been happily living the Law of Attraction since we got together in 1991.

Here’s a picture of my list. Can it get any simpler?

Oh, I almost forgot. In a recent post about common mistakes we make in visualizing, I discussed seven common mistakes in visualizing what we want. The first was being too specific - and I did just that in my list.

Know what it was?

Yup! I wrote down the age I was at the time, wanting a guy my own age. Well, it was a couple of years before Mynders appeared, and sure enough, he was almost 38. I, on the other hand, was almost 40 by that time. I guess I should have written ‘My age’ instead!

On the other hand, if I had written that, maybe I wouldn’t have attracted Mynders. It’s all good!

1. Being too specific.

When you sit down to visualize your future, do you already have a specific something in mind that you want to create? Can you list detail after detail of how you want it to show up in your life?

Well, these details can be exhilarating…or they can totally derail your dream. It depends.

You need to know just HOW specific you should be to create efficiently and effectively. Just enough, and no more.

2. Concentrating on what you want to have, instead of how you want to feel when you have it.

There’s a big difference between concentrating on your thoughts…and focusing on your feelings. And it’s often easier to know what you want than why you want it.

Your ability to create a result that you truly enjoy often depends on where you focus your attention.

3. Spending as much time visualizing what you DON’T want as what you DO want.

This is really a follow-up to No. 2, because most of us get caught right here.

Have you noticed those times that you sit down to spend a few moments visualizing what you want, and all of a sudden you notice your thoughts, and you realize that you are lost in what you don’t want? That you are revisiting past horrors?

Well, time spent on this type of visualization is time spent derailing your dream.

4. Misinterpreting evidence of your creation.

When you ask for something new in your life, you will notice all kinds of evidence showing up all around you.

When you are you are using the Attraction Principles consciously, then you know how to interpret the evidence.

And accurate interpretation is critical. Otherwise you can find yourself discouraged and frustrated in your creation process. And you can easily give up on your creation then and there.

5. Justifying why you don’t have your creation yet.

You know how it is when you have been wanting something, but just don’t have it yet?

You spend a lot of time telling yourself and your friends why it just hasn’t happened yet. You give your excuses, and justify your current situation. Maybe you think you aren’t smart enough, connected enough, old enough, young enough.

Everyone has their favorite reasons, but focusing on them doesn’t help you get what you want.

6. Not realizing that every thought is an invitation to more of the same.

Have you ever had a day where you woke up cranky, spilled your coffee all over yourself, and then locked your keys in your car? One of those ‘the worse it gets, the worse it gets’ days? Well, join the club – we’ve all had them.

And I’ll bet you’ve also had the opposite – ‘the better it gets, the better it gets.’ Aren’t those days GREAT?!

Spending lots of time in the ‘worse it gets’ scenario is like taking one step forward…and two steps back. Once you get in there, it’s easy to get stuck.

7. Visualizing positive outcomes, but then thinking ‘I can’t have it’ thoughts the rest of the day.

Have you noticed how much of the time your thoughts seem to be thinking you, instead of the other way around? How they just seem to appear, as if by magic, out of nowhere?

Your thoughts need supervision and direction…and in some cases, full-on training! And they need that 100% of the time in the beginning, when you are trying to make changes.

It’s not the big events and programmed actions we take that have the biggest impact on our creations.

It’s the small, constant everyday thoughts, feelings and actions that have the biggest impact. Your habits. And chances are, you don’t even know you are doing them!

Do you recognize any of these common visualization mistakes in your life?

If so, that’s good news. Because as you eliminate these pesky mistakes, your ability to create what you want in your life will improve exponentially!

Deb here -

Examples of using the Law of Attraction and the Principle to attract what we want into our lives are everywhere…if we just pay attention and know what to look for. For example…

Mynders and I built a cabin in SW Colorado a number of years ago (that’s a great manifestation story we’ll tell you later…), and we simply love it here. It’s one of my special places where I can really relax and release resistance.

The first spring after the cabin was completed, friends John and Paige were visiting us from Scottsdale, and we spent a lovely morning on the deck, watching the river and drinking our coffee. We chatted a bit about elk and the lovely racks they have, whether they really do shed their antlers every year, and we wondered a bit about why we never seem to find elk antlers just lying around on the ground. We must have chatted about this for about 10 or 15 minutes, and then we changed the subject.

A bit later that day we decided to hike on Elk Creek Trail (are you sensing a theme here?) and headed out into the glorious sunny day. At the end of the hike, Mynders and I took off up a hill and got a bit ahead of John and Paige. We sat on the hilltop waiting for them, enjoying the scenery and the fresh mountain air.

All of a sudden I noticed the sun glancing off of some whitish material a ways in the distance. We headed over to check it out.

You guessed it! A bull elk skeleton was lying there, complete with a set of wonderful antlers. We celebrated the fact that we had manifested such a wondrous thing, and headed off home with our friends and our new elk rack.

We took our treasure to the taxidermist and had it mounted. It now hangs above our cabin fireplace, reminding us of how quickly the universe can deliver anything we put our attention on, if we don’t start talking ourselves out of it!

Here is a picture of that amazing elk hanging above our fireplace.

I love these kinds of reminders that I can have, or do, or be anything I desire. And so can you.

To your wealth!

Deb

We would love to hear your questions or comments. Please comment here.

Three months after we first met, 17 years
ago, as I was helping Deb move from Minneapolis to
my home near Seattle, I found in one of her
drawers a list of attributes she was looking to
attract in a relationship. The list of 10 or so
items described me to a “T”…right down to my
then current age.

Mynders

One of the techniques that I have been using successfully for as long as I can recall is to sit down with my journal first thing in the AM. I start the day by writing down at least 5 things I appreciate that have happened in my life in the previous 24 hours. This sets my day on the right path, and I find that I am in a mode of looking for things to feel good about throughout the day.

Mynders