To condition the brain for success, psychologists, coaches, athletes, gurus, and many successful people recommend visualisation, planning, and affirmations. Despite that, visualisation techniques are uncommon. According to the logical and rational mind, visualisation, affirmations, vision boards are just words. It’s about wishing, hoping, and fantasising about the future. Unbeknownst to the average person, visualisation is a neuroscience technique used to improve your performance and achieve a goal. Knowing the science behind these techniques and concepts will replace skepticism with logic. Business owners and entrepreneurs must approach this concept by seeking to understand the neuroscience behind this technique. Let’s get started.
As an entrepreneur, you must train your brain for success and not get discouraged or distracted by challenging situations. Moving through the challenges is what an entrepreneurial mindset is all about. Certainly, some days or tasks feel more complex and challenging than others, but an entrepreneurial mind requires training to move through the necessary steps to accomplish big dreams. An individual can get distracted very easily with social media, browsing the Internet, watching Netflix, and the list goes on. While this behaviour is inefficient and can lead you to believe it is rewarding. We need to understand why this happens. Why do millions of people get hooked onto their phones for hours and cannot perform on a level that matches their actual ability?
Entrepreneurs must have gratitude, a vision, written goals, affirmations, and high emotional intelligence, but a rational mind might ask, does this work? And the answer is simple, we know these traits make a difference—it’s science! Rational thinkers need logic to support any statement, so to understand this let’s first understand this process; how does it work?
To understand the science behind how to condition your brain to achieve your dreams or goals, you must first understand how your brain functions. The process of imagining future outcomes creates new neural networks in your brain. Visualisation stimulates an area of the brain called the Reticular Activating System (RAS), one of the brain’s essential parts, which subconsciously works as a filter for roughly eight million pieces of information that flows through the brain. Its purpose is to eliminate the noise and the message that gets past the RAS filter enters the cerebrum and is then converted into conscious thoughts or emotions. The message that passes through depends on what’s currently considered important to you.
Just as social platforms learn your behaviour and show you related posts or the Internet pulls up information based on your queries; the RAS presents the most relevant content. Keeping your goals top of your mind aids your subconscious mind reach them. And techniques like— visualisation, affirmations, writing down your goals play an important role. Doing so helps the RAS filter what’s important to you and not what it thinks is important to you.
These techniques help you visualise your success. When you see yourself succeeding, your brain also releases a chemical called dopamine. This neurotransmitter is commonly known to relate to a chemical best known for its role in addiction and drug usage. Despite its negative connotation, an individual with a growth mindset knows how to make the best out of every situation and is resourceful.
While RAS helps you maintain focus, the dopamine release is what makes success feel great. Even though the impact of dopamine is short-term, our brains remember that incredible feeling so it strives to seek it out over and over again, which gives us the motivation to repeat the behaviour.
An individual with optimal dopamine levels can exhibit self-confidence and self-discipline and can easily focus on the task in which an individual is not interested in or finds challenging, anticipating a greater reward in the future. Dopamine influences how we navigate, interact, and respond to the world around us. The driving force behind every entrepreneur stem from their ability to see past immediate risk for a future reward as well as their vision and ability to persevere. Elevated dopamine levels keep entrepreneurs going even when others tend to give up. You can make these neurotransmitters work before you even perform or complete a task by using envisioning techniques. Using these techniques, sends a signal to your brain that a reward is on its way. This expectation of a reward motivates you to do the task that looks mundane but necessary to achieve your goal.
And as entrepreneurs possess the mental and emotional strength to see past challenges, dopamine supports critical thinking and causes people to strive towards a solution. There is a direct correlation between high dopamine levels and heightened creativity. As dopamine elicits a feeling of reward and accomplishment, people with higher dopamine levels exhibit more energy, supporting them in accomplishing their desired goal. These traits collectively define the entrepreneurial spirit. The most successful entrepreneurs become aware of the facts, then accept or embrace the concept fully and finally take the necessary actions.
With this knowledge, you can learn to train your mind by intentionally showing it what is most important to you rather than randomly letting it choose for you. You can now hack your system and have it work in your favour. And don’t forget to create a goal accomplishment system and reward yourself after finishing a task.
Now the choice is yours. What do you want to type in your search bar or the browser? Activate dopamine in your brain to create and achieve success today.
