Why Not Imagine Yourself Successful?

Realizing that our actions, feelings and behavior are the result of our own images and beliefs gives us the lever that psychology has always needed for changing person­ality.
It opens a new psychologic door to gaining skill, success, and happiness.
Mental pictures offer us an opportunity to "practice" new traits and attitudes, which otherwise we could not do. This is possible because again—your nervous system can­not tell the difference between an actual experience and one that is vividly imagined.
If we picture ourselves performing in a certain manner, it is nearly the same as the actual performance. Mental practice helps to make perfect.
In a controlled experiment, psychologist R. A. Vandell proved that mental practice in throwing darts at a target, wherein the person sits for a period each day in front of the target, and imagines throwing darts at it, improves aim as much as actually throwing darts.
Research Quarterly reports an experiment on the effects of mental practice on improving skill in sinking basketball free throws. One group of students actually practiced throwing the ball every day for 20 days, and were scored on the first and last days.
A second group was scored on the first and last days, and engaged in no sort of practice in between.
A third group was scored on the first day, then spent 20 minutes a day, imagining that they were throwing the ball at the goal. When they missed they would imagine that they corrected their aim accordingly.
The first group, which actually practiced 20 minutes every day, improved in scoring 24 per cent.
The second group, which had no sort of practice, showed no improvement.
The third group, which practiced in their imagination, improved in scoring 23 per cent!