How to Experience Future Success Now

Focus Your Imagination the Way the Pros Do

In our last post, we shared three storytelling techniques that can make the hero’s or heroine’s journey of our lives more fulfilling and successful:

1. Start at the end (have a vision of what we want),

2. Edit (rehearse with simulations before we act),

3. Course correct when we go live in daily life.

We also promised that in this next article we would reveal the “secret sauce” — a key that makes it all work.

We did give you a clue: successful stories always carry an emotional impact. Quoting ourselves: “When we can truly feel the story we’re creating, it’s much more likely that we’ll be able to successfully create the results we want.”

It’s easy to feel trapped by circumstance.

We can’t wave a magic wand and change our job, our relationships, our health, our finances, etc. When we feel powerless, it can be tempting to escape into distracting entertainment or unhealthy habits leaving us as mere spectators in our own lives.

That story may be real for many of us, but it can change.

If “emotion” truly is the secret sauce to creating enjoyment and success (now, there’s a different story!), how does it work exactly?

Think about GPS. We plug in a destination and reference our starting point, then that familiar voice guides us from A to B. GPS simply wouldn’t help us without those moment-by-moment directions.

Emotion is the core component of our inner GPS system, helping us navigate our daily lives. This system is easy to activate . . . and it’s free. In fact, all that’s required is to engage our imagination with our hearts.

Here’s how to do that.

Having employed those first two storytelling techniques (knowing the results we want and rehearsing before we act), we now visualize the success we’re imagining as if it’s already happened, and we ask a simple question: “How does it feel?”

Notice that it’s not “How will it feel?” We use our imagination to pretend that we’ve already reached our goal. We time travel in our minds into the near future (using our imagination) and connect with how success feels (engaging with our hearts).

This is what top athletes, musical artists, and other high performers do.

When we can feel the future we intend to create, we’ve activated our personal, inner GPS “voice.” Now, we just keep tuning in, listening, and following that guidance (rather than external messaging or negative self-talk).

For instance, let’s say you want your upcoming presentation to go brilliantly. You think about what you’d like your audience to experience or learn. Then, you imagine yourself presenting your ideas powerfully to a highly engaged group, paying particular attention to the feeling that goes with it. Next, you experience their joy, enthusiasm, and gratitude as participants congratulate you on your excellent presentation.

This creates the emotional guidance (joy, enthusiasm, and gratitude) to help you navigate both efficient preparation and successful delivery.

The Preparation

Guided by that compass, you create, edit, and/or rewrite your presentation, while feeling the energy of a successful completion. As you rehearse your presentation, you continue to imagine that future moment of completion to let it build your confidence.

The Presentation

Relive your preferred emotional experience immediately before you go to the podium. This is a fundamentally different approach.

You’re stepping into the moment to experience the future you’ve already created. You’re confident and enthused and your audience will feel the difference.

This is the attitude of someone who has become the star of their life story and it’s immediately rewarding. You’re not waiting to get kudos for a job well done. You’re being guided to create an outcome totally in synch with the powerful feeling state you’ve generated.

And guess what? You might discover that you no longer depend on outside recognition for a reward. The process of creating your presentation becomes richly fulfilling on its own. Scores of our clients have used this process and rave about how well it works.

Make Your Next Presentation Soar

We’ve learned that carefully designed, short audio prompts can help presenters prepare and deliver brilliantly by optimizing their brain state. This immediately upgrades their physiology and mindset, enabling them to be at their best on stage.

Here's one example from our Thriving GPS for Life app. It’s deceptively simple, but clients tell us that when played regularly throughout their week, it begins to shift the way they see their day and their part in creating it.

You can check out the app’s other mindset tools when you download it at either the Google or Apple app store.

We’d love to hear how your experimentation goes, so drop us your thoughts in the comment section.

~ Will Wilkinson and Christopher Harding