The Real Secret of Mental Picturing

Successful men and women have, since the beginning of; time, used "mental pictures," and "rehearsal practice," to achieve success. Napoleon, for example, "practiced" sol­diering, in his imagination, for many years before he ever went on an actual battlefield. Webb and Morgan in their book Making the Most of Your Life, tell us that "the notes Napoleon made from his readings during these years of study filled, when printed, four hundred pages. He imagined himself as a commander, and drew maps of the island of Corsica showing where he would place various defenses, making all his calculations with mathe­matical precision."*
Conrad Hilton imagined himself operating a hotel long before he ever bought one. When a boy he used to "play" that he was a hotel operator.
Henry J. Kaiser has said that each of his business ac­complishments was realized in his imagination before it appeared in actuality.
It is no wonder that the art of "mental picturing" has in the past sometimes been associated with "magic."
However, the new science of Cybernetics gives us an insight into why mental picturing produces such amazing results, and shows that these results are not due to "magic," but the natural, normal functioning of our minds and brains.
Cybernetics regards the human brain, nervous system, and muscular system, as a highly complex "servo-mecha­nism." (An automatic goal-seeking machine which "steers"
* Making the Most of Your Life by John J. B. Morgan and Ewing T. Webb. Copyright, 1932 by John J. B. Morgan and Ewing T. Webb. Reprinted by permission of Doubleday and Company, Inc. its way to a target or goal by use of feedback data and stored information, automatically correcting course when necessary.)
As stated earlier, this new concept does not mean that "YOU" are a machine, but that your physical brain and body functions as a machine which "YOU" operate.
This automatic creative mechanism within you can operate in only one way. It must have a target to shoot at. As Alex Morrison says, you must first clearly see a thing in your mind before you can do it. When you do see a thing clearly in your mind, your creative "success mech­anism" within you takes over and does the job much bet­ter than you could do it by conscious effort, or "will power."
Instead of trying hard by conscious effort to do the thing by iron-jawed will power, and all the while worry­ing and picturing to yourself all the things that are likely to go wrong, you simply relax the strain, stop trying to "do it" by strain and effort, picture to yourself the tar­get you really want to hit, and "let" your creative success mechanism take over. Thus, mental-picturing the desired end result, literally forces you to use "positive thinking." You are not relieved thereafter from effort and work, but your efforts are used to carry you forward toward your goal, rather than in futile mental conflict which results when you "want" and "try" to do one thing, but picture to yourself something else.