The Power of Negative Visualization: Motivation for Success
By Barry  Maher

Tactic: Tap into the power of negative visualization. 
Before undertaking a course of action, visualize what might go
wrong.  Then figure out how you're going to deal with it if it
does.  

I’ve known Pollyannas who insist that this is the worst 
thing you could possibly do. “You need to visualize success,”
they'll  tell you. They'll say that visualizing problems is a
prescription for  disaster.



Not being prepared is a prescription for disaster. That's
why  pilots spend hours on flight simulators, struggling with
every possible  difficulty that could arise.

And I don’t know if even the  most die-hard Pollyanna would
want their heart surgery performed by a  surgeon who was trained
using positive visualization exclusively, someone  who never even
considered the possibility that something might go wrong. 

Visualizing success without taking potential problems into 
account is more magical thinking than serious preparation. By
increasing  your preparedness and helping you to feel ready for
every foreseeable  eventuality, negative visualization increases
your confidence, and your  performance.

Of course, after you've completed your preparation, you
can and  should visualize success. And you'll have a much greater
likelihood of  actually achieving it.

When he was president and COO of Sun Microsystems, Ed
Zander held  weekly, "whack-o-meter" sessions to try to figure
out how competitors could  try to whack Sun. "It helps us think
strategically," Zander said. And when a  competitor did act,
Zander and his team were usually ready for it and  reacted
accordingly.



The Best Preparation

If you’ve ever worked with salespeople, you know that the
good  ones prep thoroughly before every call, anticipating the
difficulties they  might encounter. And you certainly want to do
the same in preparing for  whatever it is you’re trying to do.
Still, no one can anticipate every  eventuality; and some
salespeople paralyze themselves with over-preparation, 
forgetting that the best preparation for making sales calls is .
. .  making sales calls.

As Napoleon, one of the greatest strategists of all time,
noted,  "The torment of precautions often exceeds the dangers to
be avoided." Which  doesn't mean that Napoleon ever marched into
a battle unprepared.

But if you spend all your time tinkering with your engine, 
someday you might find you're too old to take the darn car for a 
drive.

My advice? Prepare as well as possible, then seize every 
opportunity. Gain experience. Practice, learn, prepare some
more, and  advance yourself in the process of success, whatever
success might mean to  you.  Evaluate your progress by the day,
the week, the month, the year:  so improvements aren't just
short-term, so you see the big picture.

Revel in the process: in the adventure and the
exploration. Revel  in matching yourself and your talents against
the challenges.

By challenges, I mean challenges. The Pollyannas have co-
opted  that word and turned it into a euphemism for cataclysm,
impossibility and  duplicity. As in, "We do have a challenge for
you here, Marsha. We're  cutting your staff and doubling your
workload. And you're going to be  required to produce twice the
results in half the time. Oh, and this water,  make it wine."

I’d like to see if we can get the word back so it means 
challenges. As in "Life is a challenge. Revel in it."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Copyright 2006, Barry Maher. Used by Permission

Author, motivational keynote speaker and workshop leader,
Barry Maher speaks and writes on communication,
motivation, leadership, management and sales. His books
include “Filling the Glass,” honored as “[One of] The Seven
Essential Popular Business Books, ” “No Lie: Truth Is the
Ultimate Sales Tool” and the cult classic  fantasy novel,
Legend. Sign up for his newsletter at _www.barrymaher.com_
(http://www.barrymaher.com) 
or call him at 760-962-9872.

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