You Are Probably Visualizing Wrong
What Most People Miss and How to Fix It in Five Minutes
I asked the universe for a sign recently.
Not a vague one. A specific one. While sitting on the couch in the evening catching up on The Real Housewives, I said in my mind, “Universe send me a sign that I was on the right path and if I am to show me a rabbit. However, it chose to send it. Real life, a video, a picture anything. Just show me a rabbit and I will know I am on the right path.”
Something I should tell you about myself — I naturally think in pictures. Always have. So, when I asked to see the rabbit, I didn’t just say the word. I held an image of a rabbit clearly in my mind. Saw it. Felt the quiet excitement of it. And then I let it go and got back to my show.
A couple of hours later my daughter heard rustling outside her window. She got up to check what it was and saw two rabbits right outside her window, but she startled them and they ran away. She came running to me to tell me with such excitement. After all the excitement, she went back to her room and I sat there and thought well, I did not see them myself. But thank you, universe, for sending them anyway.
Less than 20 minutes had gone by, and my daughter comes back out to tell me they came back. This time she was extra quiet to make sure they didn’t run away. I got to finally see them. Two young rabbits, still with a little baby fluff on them, just happily eating the grass. I was so stunned by how fast I was answered. Not only once but twice!
The next morning on my walk I was thinking about how quickly it all had happened. I was about to ask for another sign when I stopped and told myself: “The universe already answered me. I do not need another sign. But I would still love to see some rabbits because they are just so cute.”
Less than five minutes later one appeared right in front of me. Close enough that I stopped walking. I took a picture, took a couple of steps, and then a chipmunk appeared — something I could never usually photograph because they are always too fast. This one just sat there eating, completely unbothered, like it had all the time in the world. I continued my walk thinking how incredibly lucky I was. Then all of a sudden, another rabbit appeared out of nowhere.
My whole walk I could not stop thinking about how lucky I was. How things were moving. How the universe was listening.
Now I know what you’re thinking, it is the end of spring going into summer, so of course there are going to be rabbits out! Yes, I know. But it has also been a few weeks since I have seen any. Which is really unusual as I do see lot of them on a regular basis. That is why I chose a rabbit as my sign.
Now on my way back home I noticed something on a grassy hill I could not quite make out. I thought it was trash at first. As I got closer to it, I could see it was a dollar bill. When I unfolded it, it was actually two dollars.
I am not telling you this to convince you that the universe delivers rabbits and cash on request. I am telling you because of what was actually happening underneath all of it. I asked for something specific. I felt it genuinely. I let it go without gripping it. And when the first sign arrived in a way I could not fully claim yet, I said thank you anyway and stayed open.
That is visualization done right.
And it looks almost nothing like what most people are actually doing.
What Does Not Work
Most people visualize by closing their eyes, picturing something they want, and waiting to feel the shift that tells them it is on the way. Nothing happens. They try again. Nothing happens again. They decide visualization does not work and move on.
The problem is not visualization. The problem is how it is being done.
There are two versions that consistently fail and I have done both of them.
The first is passive daydreaming. You picture a beautiful life from the outside, almost like watching a movie of yourself from across the room, with no real emotional connection to what it actually feels like to be living it. It may look like visualization, but it produces nothing because your nervous system is not engaged. You are observing a fantasy, not inhabiting a reality.
The second is desperate visualization. You sit down to picture something you want so badly that the wanting is the loudest thing in the room. You are straining for it. Monitoring it. Checking whether it is working. That desperation broadcasts a very specific signal — I do not have this yet and I really need it — and your subconscious picks that up and reinforces the feeling of not having it. The visualization becomes evidence of lack rather than evidence of arrival.
Neither of those is visualization. Those are just two different flavors of spinning your wheels.
What Your Brain Is Actually Doing
Here is where the science comes in and where it changes everything.
Your brain does not fully distinguish between a vividly imagined experience and a real one.
Neuroscience research has shown that when you mentally rehearse something in genuine detail, your brain activates many of the same neural pathways it uses during the actual physical experience. The motor cortex fires. The emotional centers engage. The circuits involved in the imagined action start to strengthen, the same way they would if you were actually doing it.
This is why Olympic athletes spend hours in mental rehearsal before competition. Michael Phelps famously visualized every detail of his races before he ever touched the water. Not just the perfect swim. He visualized things going wrong and how he would handle them. His brain was training alongside his body.
In a study by psychologist Alan Richardson, basketball players who practiced free throws only through visualization improved their accuracy by 23 percent over thirty days. The group that physically practiced improved by 24 percent. One percent difference. Without touching a ball.
This is not woo. This is applied neuroscience. When you visualize with real feeling and real detail you are literally strengthening the neural pathways associated with becoming the version of you who already has what you are working toward. You are making it familiar to your nervous system before it arrives in your physical reality.
And familiarity is everything. Your subconscious moves toward what it recognizes as normal. Toward what feels like home.
The Part That Actually Matters
The key is not what you see. It is what you feel.
There is a critical difference between watching yourself in a mental movie and actually being inside the experience. External imagery, watching yourself from the outside, activates visual processing. Internal imagery, feeling yourself inside the moment, engages the motor cortex and the systems tied to physical experience. One is observation. The other is rehearsal.
You want to be inside the scene. Not watching yourself receive good news. Feeling the warmth spreading through your chest in that moment. Not seeing yourself in the dream home from across the street. Feeling the floor under your feet, the light coming through the windows, the specific quiet of a morning in a space that is yours.
Neville Goddard, whose work is the foundation of so much of what we now call manifestation, called this “living in the end.” Not hoping for your desire from a distance. Not watching it like a movie. Inhabiting it. Feeling it as already done. He believed the subconscious is not impressed by the images you create but by the state you occupy while creating them.
The feeling is the whole thing. The image is just the doorway in.
And Then You Let It Go
This is the step most people skip and it is the one that makes the whole thing work.
After you have dropped into the scene and felt it fully, you let it go. You do not hold on. You do not monitor whether it is coming. You do not check for proof every five minutes. You set the intention, you feel it as real, and then you trust it and move forward with your day.
Think about the rabbit story. I asked. I felt the lightness of it. And when the first sign showed up in a way I could not fully claim — my daughter saw them, not me — I said thank you anyway and stayed open. I did not dismiss it because it did not arrive exactly as I expected. And I did not immediately ask for another sign the next morning when I caught myself wanting to. I stopped and reminded myself that the universe had already answered. That restraint, that trust, is what kept the energy open. And the rabbits kept coming.
That openness, the absence of gripping, is what makes space for things to arrive. Holding on too tightly creates interference. It keeps your nervous system in the energy of waiting rather than the energy of receiving. And there is a very different frequency between those two states.
Plant the seed. Feel it fully. Trust it. Move.
Try This Right Now
This takes less than five minutes and you can do it anywhere.
Pick one thing you are working toward. Something specific. Not “I want more money” but “I just received an unexpected financial gift and I feel so relieved and grateful.”
Close your eyes. Take three slow breaths and let your body settle.
Now put yourself inside the moment of having it. Not watching it happen. Being inside it. Where are you? What do you see around you? What does the air feel like? What is the first emotion that rises in your body when you realize this is real?
Stay there for sixty to ninety seconds. Just breathe and feel it. Let it be as specific and sensory as you can make it without forcing anything.
And then take one more slow breath, open your eyes, and let it go completely. Say thank you out loud if that feels right. And then go about your day.
That is it. That is the whole practice.
It sounds simple because it is. But simple is not the same as easy. The discipline is in actually dropping into the feeling instead of just going through the motions. And the trust is in letting it go afterward without immediately reaching back for it.
Do that consistently and something starts to shift. Not always dramatically. Not always quickly. But consistently and undeniably over time.
Your nervous system is listening to everything you show it. Show it the version of your life you are building toward. Show it often. Show it with feeling.
And then stay open to the rabbits.
-Joleen
If this reframed something for you, share it with someone who has been trying to visualize and wondering why nothing is moving. And if you are not yet subscribed, come join us.
What I found most interesting here is that the rabbit almost becomes secondary to the psychological process itself. The real distinction is between gripping and receiving.
Whether someone interprets that through neuroscience, spirituality, or coincidence, there is something powerful about the idea that openness works differently from striving...
Loved this but I NEED to know…which real housewives? 👀🤣 I have a top 4:
Salt Lake City
Beverley Hills
Rhode Island
Potomac