Have you ever noticed that it is so much easier to visualize things going wrong rather than them going right, let alone something completely new that’s way beyond your current reality. (And that this is the case not just for your clients, but for you as well)
The other day I shared in one of my coach supervision groups that when I first became a mom, I would hit my pillow at night and the moment I closed my eyes the most horrific things of what could happen to my newborn son would appear on the invisible movie screen of my mind.
It just felt so real. I completely stepped into the movie as if it was happening right then and there, having imaginary conversations and taking imaginary action.
I was acting “as-if” so well that it deeply impacted my neurology.
What we visualize plays such a powerful role in how we feel and how we create our reality.
And yet, so few are actually able to take charge of the images they see. And even if they want to, they have no clue how.
Besides, a great many of the images that “plague” us, are hidden from our awareness.
Very often, when I work with my 1-on-1 clients, it isn’t until we’ve climbed up the hierarchy of beliefs that the state-defining visuals come out of hiding.
The fact that clients seem to have little control over their movies and the fact that so much of it is out of awareness is why guided visualizations and meditations often don’t do the trick.
At least, not for all of your clients.
Some may be successful and get the outcome they want, but a lot of them can visualize until the cows come home and never experience a lasting shift (even if they feel good in the moment).
Guided visualizations CAN be incredibly powerful, but often it is assumed that someone has the skill of visualization. And that is simply not the case.
If you want to help your clients take charge of what they end up visualizing (and therefore creating in their emotion as well as their lives), then there’s a couple of things that you can do.
Lack of control over visualizations
As I mentioned earlier, it is often far easier to visualize worst case scenarios than it is a desired outcome.
In part that has to do with the need to be in control. For some reason our brains think that putting up worst case scenarios and then trying to control them with our thoughts, is how we create a sense of safety.
It’s totally illogical to first create a sense of feeling unsafe only to then try to feel safe again through over-analyzing and incessant internal dialogue, and yet here we are.
One of my clients recently shared that she has been doing meditations for years, even spending thousands of dollars on “manifesting wealth and abundance” trainings.
She’d do her morning routine and visualize what she wants her day to look like as well as her ideal life, and as soon as she’d stand up from her meditation she’d get triggered by something that swooped her right back into her old way of being.
I’ve heard a lot of coaches and meditation/manifestation professionals state: Well, they’re just too addicted to their old way of feeling.
The big problem with this is that using the word addiction makes someone even less empowered to change.
What the client really needs, is a sense of OWNERSHIP.
Because ownership brings CHOICE back into the equation.
If you don’t feel like you are the owner and creator of your thoughts, feelings, imaginations, etc, then your thoughts, feelings and imaginations rule you.
A lot of people will understand this on an intellectual level, but they have not embodied this understanding.
Without FELT ownership, it is very hard to change.
Clearing “limiting” visualizations
Once a client feels ownership you can start teaching them how to take charge of what they keep showing on their internal theater.
Whenever my 5yo imagines something he is scared of (monsters, zombies, etc), I ask him where he sees the picture. And then I’ll ask him if seeing that picture makes him feel good or empowered.
Then, I’ll ask him to grab hold of the image, crumble it up and throw it away.
He’ll physically do so, and it makes for much calmer, nightmare-free nights.
Sounds easy, right? For your clients it might be a little bit more challenging, though.
If I am the owner of the pictures that are playing on the invisible screen in my mind and the space around me, and I have fully connected with the FEEL of that, then they can start to see that they’re just pictures and images.
They’re nothing more than that.
Sure, those pictures create a somatic response, but even those are just chemical flushes through our bodies.
They’re not commands. And they’re not reality.
They either serve me, make me happy and joy-filled, help me get to my goal…or they put me in less than resourceful states.
It’s all about quality control so your client can get to choice point, by inquiring whether the feel that flows from those images helps them or hurts them.
That way your client can decide what they want to do with the image.
It is important to note here that they don’t need to fight off the visuals. They are in charge and can simply dismiss them.
I can say “simply” here, only as a result of the ownership and the quality control. It puts your client in charge.
Location of visualizations
The location of a visualization is very important. And your client might be trying to visualize their dream in the wrong place…
For the longest time I wanted to visualize something I wanted to experience and I just couldn’t. Until I finally realized that I was trying to visualize it in the space where I usually visualize my memories.
As hard as I tried to imagine something new there, it just wouldn’t work.
What I found is that I needed to use the space for my imagination (this has a lot to do with your eye movements and accessing that part of the brain that creates new images rather than the part of the brain that accesses your memories) and then map it over to my memory.
In all studies and literature about law of attraction, in order to co-create the reality you want…you need to imagine it as if it is already here. So mapping it over to your memory actually helps you do that.
This process will also allow you to tease out any objections to having what you want, which you can then address and clear as well.
Speaking of location of your client’s images. It isn’t just memory and imagination that are separated in space.
Your client maps out their relationships with others, time, concepts, etc, all around them. They have a 360 degree cinema and where they place things create a relationship with these things.
Sometimes those are memories. Other times it is specific people. They can place the past in front of them or in the same place as their future, which I’m sure you can imagine is quite troublesome. (No wonder they are stuck).
Knowing all of this and helping your client become aware is what makes it so much easier for them to start building the kind of relationships (with self, others, their goals, the Universe) that help them do, be, and have what they want.
Clearing objections to new visualizations
Often, when you start to create something new with your client, they’ll (subconsciously) throw up objections.
One of my clients today had been struggling to truly imagine her dream scenario of having at least 50 clients on her program. She wanted to imagine sitting behind her computer, looking at her Zoom class and seeing tons of faces there. But the images were blurry and
I asked her: Does the blurriness of the visual make it feel realistic and believable for you?
She said: “No, it feels disconnected and it’s very frustrating, because there is something in between.”
Me: “What is getting in between?”
Her: “Well, there is a grey cloud in front of it”
This is something she wasn’t aware of before, completely out of her awareness. She could only feel that something was off and even though she kept trying harder and harder, it still wouldn’t work.
Me: “What is the grey cloud telling you?”
Her: “I’m not allowed to see.”
Me: “Because…”
Her: “Because it may upset me and it may hurt me. And I know where it comes from.”
She then proceeds to share with me the story of how her older siblings would scare her with stories about Dracula and showed her pictures. She would have terrible nightmares as a result, to the point that her mother went to a psychiatrist for advice. The doctor gave her a pill to take every night, to take away the brightness of the visualization.
The result is that she believes she cannot visualize. There is always something in front, because it is dangerous to visualize.
As she relayed the story, and the fact that she is using that story as a reference in relation to her ability to visualize, she was able to shift things and see the visualization clearly.
Now, you simply never know what comes up for someone that holds them back from visualizing what they want.
You need to be able to uncover this and bring their subconscious thinking, imaging, and somatizing back into awareness so you can clear it.
Small steps vs the big desired outcome?
Now, initially, when you help your client visualize and co-create what they want, it may be a good idea to help them imagine the smaller, in between steps first. This as a way of building their level of trust in the process, which strengthens their skills even more.
These smaller steps are also less likely to throw up old objections.
Visualizations are just one aspect of helping someone go through a transformation and create the life they want. It play an important role in coaching, but it is not the only role.
Images play together with language (including internal dialogue), somatic responses and the sounds we hear / make up in our mind. All of those come together when creating an experience and setting yourself up for having access to resourceful behavior and higher vibrational states or not.
When you put all of these together and you know how to clear obstacles and put in place new and life-enhancing , you can not only CONSISTENTLY guide your clients through deep, life-changing experiences, you also get to go through a deeply life-changing experience yourself.
That’s exactly what you learn in the Quantum Leap Your Transformation Into Flow program.
Over the course of 10 weeks we focus on the change processes that allow you and your clientsto become a true meaning maker in your lives and co-create your ideal life with the Universe (or God, source energy, however you prefer to call it). It focuses on 95% of where people get and stay stuck AND teaches you how to utilize all the skills you learn in the change processes to customize for your client’s experience.
Not only that, it also helps you align with your own desired outcome (whether wealth, health or otherwise related) and access a flow of being and co-creating as you experience all the change processes yourself.
The QLTIF runs 4x a year.
If you are interested in my program, then simply pm me and we’ll chat to see if it is a good fit.
If so, I will let you know how you can get started right away with the online materials and guided visualizations, and join the next live training when we start again.
Love, Femke