SUMMARY APPLICATION FOR VISIONING 1
Summary Application for Visioning
Ann Caroline Hoegardh
FW311
Introduction
Having a vision, a goal, a picture of what you want to do and reach in your life is a very important part in order to feelhappiness and excitement for life. Everyone can create pictures in their minds, and people do it all the time such as dreaming, or just by closing their eyes. Visioning is about controlling those pictures, and make it to your own reality and future. “Visualization is a tool used to solve problems and to generate alternative futures and alternative strategies to achieve desired futures” (Kowalik, T. F 1991). Visioning is the ability to dream about tomorrow and being able to inspire that dream and make it happen.
I am very interested in visioning because I have had experiences with this in my running career. I have always seen this practice as a very fascinating and interesting tool to use in order to be mentally strong and accomplish what I want to do in the future. During the time Ipracticed visioning I learned a lot about myself, and I started to develop a tool for myself that I will continue to build upon in the future. Visioning have many different modes and types such as memory, imagination, daydream/fantasy, hallucination, dreams to name a few types and guided, active/programmed, receptive and many more different modes. Visioning has such a broad field that everyone can find some kind of visualization exercise to benefit from.
Personally, I used the imagination method during the time I practiced visioning. I decided to use this type because I wanted to imagine how I would run well, be stronger, and have a good finish in a race. “Through imagination imagery, people can invent a new reality” (Kowalik, T. F. 1991). The brain can sometimes not realize if my imagined visioning was real or not, which benefits me when I get to a similar situation and know how I can manage it. Based on this transformational practice I learned that visioning is something that I benefit from in my running career, it is something that will make me stronger mentally, which is an important part for success. I now know different methods to use, I have discovered different affirmation words that I can say to myself and take me back to my imagination mode where I vision myself succeed. I am excited to try more of the different types of visioning.
My suggestions for personal use is to start off with choosing which kind of visioning you think will be the best fit for you, since there are many different ways to create pictures of a desired future. By doing some background research about different types of visioning, and trying a few exercises would be a good start, but remember to give it time. It might take a few weeks in order to feel the benefits and get the hang of the exercises. For me I believe that listening to a CD where you first go into a relaxing mode and then the CD voice will tell you what to think about and what images to create in your mind is a very good tool to start off with.
My suggestions for professional usage is to apply visioning as an alternative when the person doesn’t have any specific goals with the future, doesn’t have a concrete path of what he or she would want to do, visioning can help with that. One exercise the professional could start off with is to make the person collect pictures and words to make a collage of what makes them happy and what they wish they could do in the future, such as traveling, get a dog, get a new job, run a marathon etc. By viewing and analyzing pictures of what makes a person happy, wanting to do and achieve is a good start for a visioning exercise and to eventually make it happen.
References
Kowalik, T. F. 1991. Visioning your future.Continuing Education: A Capital Idea. 34-43.
Latham, J. P. 1995. Visioning: the concept, trilogy, and process. Quality Progress.65-68.