I believe that visualizing the future causes the future to happen.
As a management consultant I have been taking business executives through the process of visualizing the future of their companies for twenty-five years now, and I have seen enough evidence to feel secure in concluding that visualizing future events causes those events to occur.
One day, however, I was taken by surprise when I heard one of my clients telling a group of people that while he owed the success of his company to the process of visualization, he nevertheless didn’t know why it works. “I don’t know why it works,” he said, “I just know that it works.”
With that in mind, I want to list three reasons why I think visualizing the future works, and then discuss the implications that can have for each of us personally.
Reason One: The Laws of The Universe Aren’t So Inalterable
Most of us were educated to believe that the laws of the universe are hardwired, meaning that they work under all conditions. The “Speed of Light” is an example of a hardwired law. The law says that light travels at a constant never changing 186,000 miles per second. Come to find out, however, that may not be true. According to physicist Paul Davies the speed of light has been slowing down. Hence, the speed of light which was considered inalterable becomes alterable.
Many scientists who study things like the speed of light have concluded that most everything, if not everything, in the universe, our lives included, are capable of being altered. Nothing is fixed and set ‘in stone’, not even the forces of the universe.
Visualization and a Changing Universe
It’s my belief that one who believes in the continuous alterability of the universe will, more than likely, possess an attitude that their life is also continuously changing. A person with this orientation will also be more likely to actively use visualization to personally direct this continuous change, and be successful at doing it, because they will be engaged in an activity that approximates the condition of how the universe and all things within it, including ourselves, works.
Reason Two: How Things Are Measured Determine What They Become
In one of the most interesting experiments ever devised, it was found that how you set up an experiment determines what your findings will be. For example, in physics when you set up an experiment to find sub-atomic particles that’s what you find, particles. But when you change the experiment to find waves, instead of finding particles, you find waves. What then is sub-atomic matter, particles or waves? Evidently, it depends on what you want matter to be or to become.
Hence, without any definite form, matter’s core characteristic becomes infinitely flexible. And, because you and I are made up of matter, we in turn are infinitely flexible. Thus, a reasonable conclusion suggests that you and I become what we want to become.
Visualization and A Flexible Universe
The question then becomes after everything is said and done, what do you believe the universe is made of at its very core? Is it something hard and fixed like stone or something flexible like elastic? If your answer is elastic, then you are going to have a great adventure with the process of visualizing the future. What makes visualization so fascinating is that at heart it is a creative process. In this instance you are able to create a different you or a new you. That’s what happened to me. I arrived at a certain point in my life where I wasn’t satisfied with what I was, so I visualized a different me. It came true. A flexible universe is a great universe. It’s creativity, all the way up and down, all of the time.
Reason Three: “Spooky” Things Happen
None other than the greatest mind of the 20th century, Albert Einstein, conducted an experiment, the results of which caused Einstein to entitle his findings, “Spooky Movement at a Distance.” Basically, what Einstein and his colleagues did was separate two particles, and by manipulating the movement of one particle, they automatically caused the other particle to move in unison. The spookiness came when it was revealed that there was absolutely no connection between the two particles, and there was no time lapse between the movement of the first particle and the simultaneous movement of the second particle.
Einstein concluded that it appears that events which occur in one place, can influence the behavior of independent events in another place. This happens without any influence on the part of the first event passing through space to influence the second event. Bizarrely, no time elapses between the events, and, even weirder, this occurs without regard to distance. Now that’s incredible, but, nevertheless, true.
The implications of these experiments for you and me are staggering. Einstein proved that without the benefit of space, time, or distance, someone somewhere can do something and it can seamlessly impact your and my behavior. Spooky!
Visualization and Spookiness
I’ll admit this “Einstein Experiment” has been the hardest of the three principles for me to get my head around. I’m a cause and effect kind of guy. The idea that someone can do something in China and it can have simultaneous effects on me seems counter intuitive to me. But, when it comes to visualizing my future, I feel very comfortable working in this kind of spooky world. For example, when I write my visualization on paper, and I am very specific with what I say, I have observed that my words seem to go out and shape the environment to conform to my visualization. It is as though I am walking into a future I have already seen in my mind and have committed to writing. This kind of experience has a spiritual quality to it for me. At those times, it feels like everything is one.
Criticism
The biggest problem with what I have just said is that I leave out too many steps in connecting the workings of the universe with the act of visualizing one’s future. For example, concluding that because the speed of light is changing and then suggesting this too is the reason why my life is subject to change is a bit of a stretch. One might argue, with reason, that I have left too many steps out.
My response to this criticism is, perhaps. Nevertheless, I think enough new research is starting to emerge, which speaks positively enough to the connection between what we do and how the universe works, that I think for now I will stick with what I deem worthy in this article. An example of this kind of research is found in an article written by physicist Vlatko Verdral. In it Verdral describes how the alterability, flexibility, and spookiness of the universe have a direct connection and impact on you and me. (Scientific American, “Living in A Quantum World”, June 11, 2011, pp. 38-43.)
Conclusion
My position is that if people believe they are part of a process that causes them to be alterable, flexible and just a little bit spooky, they become prime candidates to be extraordinarily successful in visualizing their future and thus causing that future to happen.
I am convinced that visualizing the future causes the future to happen. I have been using a visualization process for decades to help business leaders project the future of their companies. I have also used visualization to chart my own future. I would recommend that if you have not used this technique, that you learn more about it, and then experiment with it to create your own future.