NIKOLA TESLA, ELON MUSK and VISUALIZATION

Some Background

Visualization / Guided Imagery.

The power of mental imagery is unparalleled. Our inner images reflect our beliefs which in turn spark the birth of our outer reality. The images that we conceive and perceive internally affect our external world.

Imagery is a unique mental process that is naturally integrated with our physical functioning as a biological-mental unity. It can show us new ways to know ourselves and build our life and also provide a vehicle for self-healing.

Note: A coach will typically use the term "guided imagery" as he/she is guiding the client through the process. However, once a client has learnt how to use the technique themselves it is usually labeled "mental imagery" or ‘visualization”. Guided by a professionally, qualified neuro-behavioral coach, a client quickly becomes proficient in their ability to create spontaneous, powerful imagery.

NIKOLA TESLA

Tesla openly acknowledged that it was his ability to use visualization to accomplish what he did in the field of mechanical invention.

In an interview with M. K. Wisehart, published in the American Magazine of April 1921, and in O’Neill’s book, Nikola Tesla describes his faculty as follows:

“During my boyhood...I began to take mental excursions beyond the small world of my actual knowledge. Day and night, in imagination, I went on journeys — saw new places, cities, countries, and all the time I tried hard to make these imaginary things very sharp and clear in my mind. I imagined myself living in countries I had never seen, and I made imaginary friends, who were very dear to me and really seemed alive.

“This I did constantly until I was seventeen, when my thoughts turned seriously to invention. Then to my delight, I found I could visualize with the greatest facility. I needed no models, drawings, or experiments. I could picture them all in my mind . . .

“By that faculty of visualizing, I have evolved what is, I believe, a new method of materializing inventive ideas and conceptions. It is a method which may be of great usefulness to any imaginative man, whether he is an inventor, businessman or artist.

“Here in brief, is my own method: after experiencing a desire to invent a particular thing. Whenever I feel like it, I roam around in my imagination and think about the problem without any deliberate concentration. This is a period of incubation.

“Then follows a period of direct effort. I choose carefully the possible solutions of the problem I am considering, and gradually center my mind on a narrowed field of investigation. Now, when I am deliberately thinking of the problem in its specific features, I may begin to feel that I am going to get the solution. And the wonderful thing is, that if I do feel this way, then I know I have really solved the problem and shall get what I am after.

“The feeling is as convincing to me as though I already had solved it. I have come to the conclusion that at this stage the actual solution is in my mind subconsciously though it may be a long time before I am aware of it consciously.

The second stage of the visualization process aided Tesla to work out the details of an invention.

“Before I put a sketch on paper, the whole idea is worked out mentally. In my mind I change the construction, make improvements, and even operate the device. Without ever having drawn a sketch I can give the measurements of all parts to workmen, and when completed all these parts will fit, just as certainly as though I had made the actual drawings. It is immaterial to me whether I run my machine in my mind or test it in my shop.

“The inventions I have conceived in this way have always worked. In thirty years there has not been a single exception. My first electric motor, the vacuum tube wireless light, my turbine engine and many other devices have all been developed in exactly this way.”

Visualization -a tool to help design a future.
Other great innovators in their field -such as Albert Einstein and Elon Musk have also used the power of visualization / their ‘mind’s eye’, images of what they choose to see and work on.

ELON MUSK

Today, many people want to know just how Elon Musk managed to amass so much change, innovation and success in such a short amount of time. In particular, what mental tools does he use and how does he motivate himself to create such a work ethic he is now known for.

In the book; Elon Musk & the Quest For a Fantastic Future -the author (Ashlee Vance) provides us a number of informative comments by Musk.

At five and six, Musk was already able to block out the outside world and concentrate on a single task.. “It seems as though the part of the brain that’s usually reserved for visual processing – the part that is used to process images coming in from my eyes – gets taking over by internal thought processes...I can’t do this as much now because there are so many things demanding my attention."

Elon's parents brought a young Musk to the doctors to test if he was deaf because he would go into such a deep thinking process that he would block out all external distractions. In fact Elon was just daydreaming.

The visual way in which Musk’s mind works.
Musk can see images in his mind’s eye with a clarity and detail that we would associate with an engineering drawing.

“For images and numbers, I can process their interrelationships and algorithmic relationships. Acceleration, momentum, kinetic energy – how these sorts of things will be affected by objects comes through very vividly.“

"That is essentially how I experience my reality. I focus on whatever I want, and I imagine it as vividly as I can, as often as I can...If you know anything about my history, you know it is filled with unlikely events that somehow conspired to get me everything I want. My experience violates everything that humans typically assume about reality. And that’s just the stuff you know about."

Walt Disney is another example of someone who used visualization to create his entertainment empire. He called the process "imagineering." Disneyland is built on "the dream that you wish will come true."

After Disneyland and Disney World were completed, someone remarked to Mike Vance, the Creative Director of Walt Disney Studios, "Isn't it a shame that Walt Disney didn't live long enough to see this?" Mike Vance replied, "But he did see it. That's why it's here." Walt Disney may well have been the world's greatest creative visualizer.

They are many examples of great innovators / creative people who successfully developed the art of advanced visualization. Steve Jobs is another one.

Note: Simplistic positive thinking and affirmations will fail a person in trying to reach their goals. It’s a twisted logic that belongs in fairy tales and has no empirical support.

As shown by the above examples, visualization needs to be performed in 2 Stages.

First stage is painting a detailed picture of your Self, establishing the required Mind-Set and a specific destination in the Future.

The second, more lengthy stage is all about using the visualization tool to create the nuts-and-bolts and blueprint necessary to create the Future. The first part in this process is the necessary knowledge gathering in the subject matter / future desired location, followed by the design process using imagery.

The key to success in any intervention using visualization is the selection of the appropriate brain-mind Change Model. The Behavioral Coaching Institute’s internationally recognized Coach training courses meets the critical needs for practitioners to be trained in the use of a range of validated, reliable, neuro-behavioral change models, tools and techniques with a user-friendly, coaching delivery model.

The Institute’s invitational, courses include; easy-to-follow, accelerated, step-by-step, intervention protocols and an extensive, proprietary ToolKit. Measured, sustainable positive results are generated by clients of our graduate coaches within just three, short coaching sessions.

The proven, easy to learn, evidence-based techniques taught in the Course are based on the principles of cognitive neuroplasticity therapy, which resets a person's mindset and their brain's limbic system to strengthen the required neural pathways to build the desired Future. 

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