Avoid failure by visualizing it

I'm good at visualizing success.

It just comes naturally.

I see it, me standing on a stage, ending my last sentence of a 50 minute talk with the perfect closing thought. The crowd has a moment of stunned silence, then erupts in to applause. Afterwards people are lined up waiting for their turn to get my opinion on something.

It's such an easy fantasy to imagine. It takes no real creativity; no real effort. I just imagine it, and I'm successful.

All of us want to succeed. It's a perfectly rational goal. Our bodies and brains don't always want to take the effort needed for it though. That's when the fantasies play in.

They tempt us away from the work. We dream up already having committed the hours; the effort. We get lazy listening to the Siren call.

And that's the problem.

When you visualizing success, you let your brain get ahead of itself. You give it that hit of achievement before the work is actually done.

So next time you're tempted by the thought of success, visualize failure instead.

Don't fear failure. Don't say you're going to fail. But accept that if you don't do the work, you will fail.

Visualize what it would feel like to fail. What actions did you not take that led to it? What work did you not do? Where were you lazy?

That goal you're going after right now: in it's current state, it's a failure. Your job is to do the work to make it a success.

The default state of any effort is defeat. Your mission is to turn it into a success.

Visualize failure and you'll learn what it takes to succeed.