When we are in a rut, it can be easier to get in the habit of playing the negative images in our minds since we most likely have experienced some less than positive events to get their in the first place.
It is also a time when this type of visualization can be the most harmful as our ability to be uplifted is already compromised.
When someone sits and watches a horror movie, they may be affected by this. It could cause someone to experience fear or anxiety, even though they know the movie is completely fiction and made up.
The affects could be ongoing and dictate areas of someone’s life, for example, whether they can sleep with the light off or go outside at night.
Movies draw a person and their emotions in and gives them visual concepts that they can imagine and feel emotionally long after it is over.
They may feel traumatized by it even years later. They may never reverse the affects without work.
If someone puts together their own movie inside their mind about losing their job and house while everyone plots evil against them, and where they never find a way out to greener pastures, and they play that movie over and over every day, it is likely to affect them negatively, as well.
Breaking certain habits is very important to move from or avoid a rut. Visualization can be either a great or awful habit. It all depends on what one chooses to see in their mind.
The direction a person takes with their visualization, optimism/pessimism, hopefulness/hopelessness, will begin to form ‘visualization habits’.
We need to be careful not to pave the negative road, become familiar with and normalize that path in our minds so that it becomes the easiest for us to travel on.
People often find themselves speeding down this negative highway searching for an exit but are unable to slow it down long enough to turn off the ramp because they have become so accustomed to doing exactly what they have been doing (putting the peddle to the floor on negativity).
Visualization is a great tool to better imagine something that may happen in the future that could need action or a decision today but we do need to be careful about using visualization for extended periods of time to repeat negative pictures with no action in mind.
Give it long enough to begin considering a solution. We should not sit and just play over a bad situation (repeatedly) that has a possibility of happening just to keep watching it happen.
It should be played in order to work through a decision or prepare with next steps in the case that it does occur.
Often people get stuck playing an awful situation in their mind with no purpose at all. They just imagine the worst case scenarios and never take them to the point of creating options for action or resolution.
If someone gets locked out of their apartment complex with no keys or phone in the middle of the night and they have to walk to a friends house alone in the dark, of course, a bad thing could happen but creating a movie in their mind about someone jumping from the bushes and allowing their mind to see it over and over is not going to be helpful in any way.
If they imagine they are strong and capable, it is going to prepare them much better if that did happen to occur (and would feel much better too).
Also, they will have eliminated the practice of creating a scary scene in their impressionable mind.
We should never render ourselves helpless in any of the movie scenes we create in our mind. This is the one place we and our lives can always be just how we wish they would be so we shouldn’t spoil that!
You may also be interested in these posts about Avoiding Daily Stress, Taking Back Your Power, Letting Go to Make Room For Joy, Clutter Problems and Becoming Productive Again.