nasrulekram @ flickr

One of the benefits of being curious is being open to learning from people more curious (and far smarter) than me.  Read on for a stunning turn on an almost universally accepted bit of self-help.

I, like most, have been fully indoctrinated in the idea of using visualization to achieve your goals and ultimate success.  Well, it turns out that visualizing your success might not be just useless … it might be actually counterproductive to reaching that which you most want!

Some recent studies about motivation by researches indicates that visualizing success saps the energy needed to actually create it.  In fact, the more urgent a desire is coupled and the more realistically you visualize it … the more negative the effect.  The energy and clarity of the “vision” can actually trick the brain into believing the “itch” has been “scratched” and you can lose energy towards the goal.

Instead, the study suggest trying critical visualization such as seeing obstacles and difficulties you might face while going for what you want.  It might even be helpful to clearly visualize what failure would look like … now that’s some motivation!