Dreaming big and visualization are indispensable tools that help to reach any ambitious goal.
Without visionary dreamers, the human race wouldn’t be anywhere close to where we are now. We would never have made it to the moon, computers wouldn’t be a thing and there would be no art of any kind.
Transporting ourselves into the future to imagine what it’s like to succeed and working backwards from there sheds some light on the obstacles that plague the path to success and the skills required to overcome them.
Putting ourselves in the shoes of our idols can also illuminate the path from zero to hero. If they can do it, why not me?
Is there a point where visualization and dreaming big stops being a tool and becomes a nuisance?
What if visualization turns into a fantasy world of comparison and stagnant daydreaming that gets us nowhere?
Visualization As A Tool For Success
Terry Crews, actor, artist, and former NFL player has attributed a large part of his success to the ability to visualize, contemplate and focus on what he truly wants. When transitioning from NFL player to actor, his ability to imagine how a professional actor behaves and modelling that behaviour got him on the set.
In the ultra-endurance world, athletes such as David Goggins frequently say that begin able to visualize the worst moments of a race (sometimes up to 240+ miles of running in the mountains without sleep) enables him to be prepared for the worst. Having already seen himself in the pain cave, when everything is failing, gives him a sense of focus and clarity when things inevitably go south. He’s been there before in his mind and knows how to get through it.
On the other side of the spectrum, Goggins’s strong capacity to visualize the finish line and how good it will feel to reach it has been equally helpful when going through some incredible mental and physical hurdles. As the first person ever to complete BUDS, Ranger School and Air Force Tactical air controller training on top of all his endurance sports accomplishments, Goggins knows a thing or two about getting through hard things.
Often, when a dream turns into a goal that we actively want to achieve, getting started is the hardest part. It requires fighting the inertia of what we know to generate momentum in the direction of the dream.
Visualizing what actions someone might take to get started in this new venture is a great way to unearth the first steps that should be taken to start working towards the goal. Things get tricky when we get lost in the grandeur of this dream life and it all looks impossible to achieve.
Vison vs Fantasy
To illustrate this dichotomy, let’s follow the example of a young and hopeful filmmaker. For the purpose of this exercise, I’ll call him Joey.
Joey’s dream is to become a famous YouTuber like his idols before him. He’s been following the biggest names in the industry and has watched all the “behind the scenes” videos that show how the proverbial sausage is made. He loves seeing how the pros do it and cannot wait to meet them once the world sees how great his films are.
Studying the best YouTubers in the world quickly becomes counterproductive. Real YouTubers have all the latest film equipment. They work in cool studios and have a team working for them to bring the vision to life.
They also seem to spend all their waking hours doing cool things with their friends. Travelling constantly, riding fancy electric skateboards around and visiting interesting places.
Joey’s dream of becoming a YouTuber is clear. He can see himself taking impressive drone shots of a city skyline while he rides his electric bike to the beautiful studio where he has tens of thousands of dollars worth of perfectly organized camera gear waiting to be used for his next genius project. In the dream, his attractive assistant is waiting for him with a hot latte from the coffee shop around the corner and informs him that he is slightly late for his zoom call with the head of Nike marketing to discuss the logistics of his next sponsored video.
Life is good in the dream, but that’s all it will ever be. A dream.
There Is Always A Shit Sandwich
We currently have unprecedented access behind the scenes of almost any industry.
If we dream of being something, chances are there’s an interview with an expert from that field on a podcast, a detailed instructional video on YouTube or a documentary on Netflix showing how they do what they do to the world.
This is an amazing gift. It shows us that the people we put on a pedestal, the ones at the very top, are first and foremost human beings. They all have a process. They all started somewhere.
Not too long ago, it seemed like celebrities and successful artists just materialized from the cosmos and landed on earth to dazzle us mere humans with their celestial talents. Before the internet, it was hard to see how the sausage was made in any field.
To use this unprecedented access to our idols in a positive way, it is critical to remember that we only get to see what people want us to see: the best version of every day. The stuff that gets the likes. Any difficulty shown to the public is of great entertainment value and is usually followed by moments of triumph. We don’t see the shit sandwich that they eat each morning before doing the work that got them on the pedestal from which we admire them in the first place.
No matter the success, no matter how much anyone loves what they do, there is always a shit sandwich.
This is why Joey is paralyzed by the detailed vision of his dream. He can see exactly what it would be like to be at the top of his industry. In fact, he sees it daily because the people he looks up to the most make a living creating content about what it’s like behind the scenes when they create content. The information is right in front of him, but the goal seems completely out of reach. His vision is killing the dream.
People who have “made” it occasionally show their vulnerability and share their origin stories. They reveal the years of struggle that were necessary to get their own dreams off the ground. These origin stories can be quite eye-opening, but Joey doesn’t dream of living through the early-day struggles and rights of passage that his idols have.
Joey wants the result. Joey wants to live the dream.
Transforming Vision To Action
Visualizing is useful to help maintain motivation when times get hard.
It becomes counterproductive when it turns into a fantasy life, so perfect that there is no way we can ever get there. Fantasizing is a distraction.
Fantasizing and overthinking have been traps that I keep falling into time and time again.
From day one of my engineering career I was focused on trying to get ahead. Before even accomplishing anything of value, I was thinking of the next promotion and fantasizing about how I could be a better manager than my boss. I could picture myself living with all the perks that come with the status of being a partner at an engineering firm before even understanding the difficult reality of the job. Getting lost in this fantasy of rapid progression up the corporate ladder only put me in a position to receive reality checks and important life lessons.
In my arrogance, I had become so lost in the fantasy that I forgot the most basic part of growing in any field: showing up each day and giving my best effort to do things well and bring value to whatever task needed doing. I didn’t get the fast promotion I was hoping for. I got fired.
I’ve had countless great ideas and projects that I never even tried to get off the ground because of how much I had fantasized about the outcome instead of putting in the work.
Starting a blog is a perfect example. I’ve dreamed of writing for years but my idyllic vision of the writer’s life seemed perfectly impossible. I never had the time, didn’t have the right education, didn’t have a nice private office in the city where I could hide out to focus and create.
I was able to visualize all the things that I didn’t have or couldn’t do as a writer. So, I never started.
The only way to achieve anything is to take the first step, and then another, and another, until the vision becomes reality. When over-thinking turns into fantasizing it takes us away from the small actions that we can do today with the time and resources that we have.
Having people that we look up to is important. It gives us proof that the dream is possible. Instead of focusing on their accomplishments and picturing what it would be like to be where they are now, focus on the mindset and skills that got them there. Visualize what they would do if their status and resources were removed and they had to start over from scratch.
What would your idol do in your situation with the resources that you have?
Any tool is only useful if it paves the way to focused, consistent action.
A vision without work lives only in our imagination.