Professional Perspective: Visualization Exercise To Keep Calm Under Pressure

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Do you wish you could relax in stressful situations? Do you wish you could stay calm even though an experience is full of things that make you feel anxious? Today’s guest has not one but TWO fabulous ways to help you make the shift from panic to peace. Make sure you read to the end for a special audio treat!

Visualization Exercise To Keep Calm Under Pressure 

Remaining calm under pressure is a very valuable skill.  It can help you achieve success and happiness in almost every area of life.  Being honest with yourself, how often does fear prevent you from going after what you want in life?  How many times have you backed down from asking a person you like on a date; or decided not to apply for a job; or even the more simple things in life such as visiting places you have never been to before?

If you can remain calmer under these pressure situations, you will be more likely to feel good whilst doing them, and not avoid them in the future.  And each time you push yourself and do something challenging, you will grow stronger and stronger.

I will show you a simple visualization technique that you can use in any stressful moment, which combines hypnotic and meditation techniques for a really powerful result.  It is a calming and soothing visualization that sets you up with a trigger word so that you can quickly relax in any given situation, by simply saying to yourself this trigger word.  Before you begin, make sure you won’t be disturbed for at least half an hour, and get yourself comfortable.  It might be worth you reading these 5 steps a few times in order to memorize them.

1) Close your eyes and take 10 slow deep breaths and say to yourself the word ‘relax’ on each out breath.

2) Imagine yourself strolling past a nice peaceful lake.

3) Use as many senses as you can. Listen to the trickling of the water. Smell the flowers and trees. Feel the breeze gently caressing your face.

4) When you are feeling nice and relaxed tell yourself that in any situation, at any time, when you say to yourself the word ‘relax’ your mind will return to this tranquil lake, feeling the same deeply calm state of relaxation as you do now.

5) Spend some more time around your lake if you wish, and open your eyes at a time of your choosing.

Although this is a fairly simple visualization, it is incredibly powerful.  It literally installs the trigger word ‘relax’ into your subconscious mind, and associates it with your imagined relaxing experience around the lake.  After doing this visualization, when you say to yourself the word ‘relax’, your mind will be transported back to how relaxed you felt when imagining the lake.  It doesn’t matter where you are, or what you are doing, when you say to yourself the word ‘relax’, your mind will associate it with the relaxing experience of the lake, and will transport your mind back there.

A great thing about this technique is that it gets stronger and more effective the more you use it.  The more you say to yourself the word ‘relax’ in every day situations to calm yourself down, the more ingrained this becomes in your mind.

So once you have completed the above exercise, practice using your keyword ‘relax’ in every day situations, and allow it to grow strong and become more ingrained in your mind.  Very soon you will be able to feel so very calm and comfortable in situations that used to cause you stress and panic.  This will enable you to be one of those calm and cool individuals who never seem to get ruffled by pressures, and that raise their game when the heat is on.  You will no longer avoid situations you deep down know you should face, because fear will no longer prevent you from doing so.  You can now stride confidently forward and meet all the challenges that lay ahead for you in the pursuit of your goals.

As a special gift to you I have made a lake visualizatoin audio to accompany this exercise. Click here to listen. Enjoy!

Jon Rhodes is a former musician and mental health professional.  Several years ago he decided to use his unique experiences and train to become a clinical hypnotherapist in order to provide his own unique brand of hypnotherapy.  Jon literally treats hundreds of people every day with his distinct and powerful therapeutic audio sessions, combining his skills as a musician and a therapist.  Please click here for more information on his powerful hypnosis audio sessions, and lots of free articles and videos. 

The opinions in this post are solely those of the author. To contribute to ‘Professional Perspective’ contact Michele.

Tags: Hynosis, Jon Rhodes, meditation, ptsd, Visualization