Visualization: Definition, Tools, & Exercises

By Kelsey Schultz, Ph.D. Candidate
​Reviewed by Tchiki Davis, M.A., Ph.D.
Visualization can be a powerful tool for positive improvements in our lives. Keep reading to learn more about visualization and how you can incorporate it into your daily life.
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As Albert Einstein once said, “Imagination can take you anywhere.” Imagination can certainly take us to new worlds and different realities, but it can also help change our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Visualization, an image-based imaginative process, has been used as a powerful therapeutic tool for decades and can be practiced anywhere at pretty much any time (Blackwell et al., 2019). Let’s talk more about visualization and how you can incorporate visualization to help you change your patterns of thinking, improve your mood, and achieve your goals.
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What Is Visualization? (A Definition)

Visualization, also called mental imagery, is essentially seeing with the mind’s eye or hearing with the mind’s ear. That is, when visualizing you are having a visual sensory experience without the use of your eyes. In fact, research has shown that visualization recruits the same brain areas that actual seeing does (Pearson et al., 2015).

Why Visualization Is Important

Humans have evolved to rely heavily on our eyesight, making us highly visually-oriented creatures. Because our brains are adapted to easily process and comprehend visual information, visualization can be a powerful tool for influencing our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. In fact, research has shown that processing emotions using visualization is more powerful than processing verbally (Blackwell et al., 2019). For example, when research participants listen to descriptions of emotionally valenced situations (i.e., “your boss telling you that they are disappointed with your work”), participants that are instructed to imagine themselves in the situation demonstrate a greater change in mood than those that are instructed only to think about the situation verbally (Blackwell et al., 2019).

Benefits of Visualization

There are a number of emotional, cognitive, and behavioral benefits to practicing visualization.

​Emotional
Some forms of visualization have been shown to increase optimism and other positive emotions (Murphy et al., 2015). It has also been shown to be a useful method for regulating negative emotions such as anxiety or overwhelm (Blackwell et al., 2019).

Cognitive
Visualization techniques can be used to facilitate some kinds of decision-making and problem-solving (Blackwell et al., 2019). For example, visualization might be helpful when planning the best route to take on your upcoming road trip. Visualization techniques, such as the mind palace, are also an effective means of improving memory. The mind palace technique involves using a place you are very familiar with, such as your bedroom, and using different locations within that space as mnemonic devices associated with a particular piece of information you are trying to store.

Behavioral
Visualization can also help us to achieve our goals by allowing us to determine the appropriate sequences of actions needed to reach our goal and identify any potential obstacles we might encounter as we proceed toward our goal. In other words, we can use visualization as a sort of rough draft for our plans by imagining each step we need to take to reach our goal, what each step might include, what might go wrong, and the ways in which we might need to prepare.

For more on how visualization can help you achieve your dreams, check out this video from TEDx Talks:

Video: Achieve Your Dreams Through Visualization

Visualization Meditation

Visualization meditation is a form of meditation in which you concentrate on a mental image. This image may be a place you find peaceful, or a person you love, or it could be something more abstract such as visualizing your heart opening like a rose (Matko, 2019). Visualization meditation can be a helpful means of relieving stress, improving your mood, and affirming goals and values.

Visualization Music

Visualization music is music that is specifically intended to facilitate visualization and similar meditative processes. This kind of music can also be described as atmospheric or ambient, as the purpose is not to occupy your attention, but rather to help you focus your attention on your visualizations. Check out this video for an example of visualization music:

Video: Inspirational Music for Creative Visualization, Manifestation, & Goal Setting

Visualization Boards

Visualization boards, also called vision boards, are visual representations of your goals, intentions, and desires. Vision boards are typically poster-sized and include a collage-type arrangement of images that symbolize different facets of your goals and intentions. Vision boards are useful for ensuring that your goals remain salient. That is, by creating a visual representation of your goals, you can easily look back at your vision board and remind yourself of the intentions you set. When your intentions are at the forefront of your mind, you are more likely to act in accordance with them.

Other Visualization Tools

In addition to meditation, music, and visualization boards, there are other tools you can use to facilitate your visualization practice. Mind mapping, for example, is a great way to visually organize your thoughts, intentions, goals, and emotions. Mind mapping involves the identification of a core topic (i.e., goals for the new year) and the subsequent identification of sub-categories that relate to the core topic (i.e., fitness, mental health, career). 

After identifying the relevant sub-categories, each one is then examined and decomposed further into its constituent pieces or second-order categories. For example, the sub-category of ‘fitness’ in our new year’s mind map might include being able to hold a handstand, do 5 pull-ups, and run a 5k. If appropriate, each of these second-order categories can also be analyzed and broken down into a 3rd level of categories.

Visualization Exercises

There are many exercises in which you can engage to practice visualization and enjoy some of its many benefits. Here are a few fun exercises to try if you are interested in including more visualization in your life.

Color breathing​
  1. Start this exercise by identifying an emotion or feeling you would like to bring into your body or conscious awareness. Once you’ve identified the feeling, assign it a color. For example, if you want to bring joy into your body, you might assign this feeling the color yellow. 
  2. The next step is to find a comfortable position and relax, just as you would for any other type of meditation. Close your eyes and take slow deep breaths.
  3. Then visualize the color you have chosen. Keep breathing deeply and slowly as you hold that color in your mind and consider what it represents for you.
  4. As you inhale, visualize the color gently washing over you and slowly filling your entire body.
  5. As you exhale, imagine any undesirable emotions being washed away as your color washes over you and fills your body.
  6. Continue this process for as long as you need.

Guided Imagery
Guided imagery is a visualization exercise in which you engage all of your senses as you imagine yourself in a positive, peaceful environment.
  1. To start this exercise, find a comfortable position, close your eyes, and begin breathing slowly and deeply as you start to relax.
  2. Next, visualize a place where you feel calm and content. This can be a place you’ve been before, a place you would like to go, or a place that is wholly the product of your imagination. Engage all of your senses to add depth and detail to the place you are visualizing. Can you feel a soft breeze? Do you hear birds or the sound of water lapping on the shore?
  3. Reflect on the calm that emerges as you move deeper and deeper into your vision.
  4. As you inhale, imagine peace washing over you and filling your body.
  5. As you exhale, imagine exhaustion, tension, and stress being washed away.
  6. Stay in your vision for as long as you like.

Loving-Kindness Meditation
Loving-kindness meditation is a visualization exercise that promotes feelings of compassion and kindness toward yourself and others.
  1. As with the other exercises, begin this one by getting comfortable, closing your eyes, and taking slow, deep, relaxing breaths.
  2. Next, visualize the person to whom you want to extend compassion. This can be anyone—someone you’re struggling with, someone you love, or even someone you don’t know. Picture this person as clearly as possible and hold their image in your mind
  3. Reflect on your feelings for this person. Do you feel love for them? Resentment? Sorrow? Or you might simply feel neutrally toward them.
  4. Consider any challenges they might be facing or pain they might be holding. It’s okay if you don’t know of any specific challenges in their life, the point is less to think about their life and more to recognize your shared humanity.
  5. Next, focus on the feelings you’d like to send them such as comfort, love, healing, or happiness. Imagine these feelings as a warm, golden light that extends from your heart to theirs. It may be helpful to include a mantra in which you verbalize these feelings as you imagine sending them to the person you are focusing on. For example, you might say “May you be happy, may you be free, may you find comfort and peace.”
  6. With every exhale, imagine this warm light leaving your body and carrying your feelings toward the other person. Continue this visualization for a few minutes or until you recognize feelings of compassion and light-heartedness spreading throughout your body. 

Visualization Quotes

  • “Visualization is daydreaming with a purpose.” – Bo Bennett
  • “When you visualize, then you materialize.” – Denis Waitley
  • “You are more productive by doing fifteen minutes of visualization than from sixteen hours of hard labor.” – Abraham Hicks 
  • “Proper visualization by the exercise of concentration and willpower enables us to materialize thoughts, not only as dreams or visions in the mental realm but also as experiences in the material realm.” – Paramahansa Yogananda
  • “I would visualize things coming to me. It would just make me feel better. Visualization works if you work hard. That’s the thing. You can’t just visualize and go eat a sandwich.” – Jim Carrey
  •  “The clearer you are when visualizing your dreams, the brighter the spotlight will be to lead you on the right path.” – Gail Lynne Goodwin
  • “Visualization and belief in a pattern of reality activate the creative power of realization.”  – A. L. Linall Jr.
  • “Ordinary people believe only in the possible. Extraordinary people visualize not what is possible or probable, but rather what is impossible. And by visualizing the impossible, they begin to see it as possible.” – Cherie Carter-Scott
  • “Visualize this thing that you want. See it, feel it, believe in it. Make your mental blueprint, and begin to build.” – Robert Collier
  • “Look at things not as they are but as they can be. Visualization adds value to everything. A bigger thinker always visualizes what can be done in the future. He isn’t stuck with the present.” – David Schwarts
  • “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For while knowledge defines all we currently know and understand, imagination points to all we might yet discover and create.” – Albert Einstein 
  • “Visualization is the act of willfully forming mental images. To affect material reality using visualization, form images for your subconscious mind to use as patterns to work from.” – James Gor Jr.
  • “Visualization is the process of creating pictures in your mind of yourself enjoying what you want. When you visualize, you generate powerful thoughts and feelings of having it now.” – Rhonda Byrne

Articles Related to Visualization​

​Want to learn more? Check out these articles:

Books Related to Visualization​

If you’d like to keep learning more, here are a few books that you might be interested in.

Final Thoughts on Visualization

Visualization is a simple yet powerful technique that we can use to improve many facets of our lives. We can use visualization to improve our mood, help us remember important information, facilitate problem-solving and decision-making, and boost our progress toward our goals. Depending on the purpose, there are many forms of visualization we can practice. For example, if we are trying to regulate our mood we might try visualization meditation, whereas if we are trying to solidify our goals for the new year we might use a vision board or a mind map. For more on visualization, check out this video from TEDx Talks:

Video: How Visualization Can Change Your Life

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