Visualization

Visualization: the formation of a mental image of something.

This is a tactic that I have used throughout my baseball career whether I was conscious of it or not, and it is something that I currently do in order to prepare myself for games. Story: over five years ago my father and I drove down to the University of Miami to watch the baseball team play against a formidable opponent (Florida Atlantic University). After watching this game, my dream became to play college baseball in South Florida. Fast forward a couple years, we drove down to FAU and watched them play against Miami once more, and this time I turned to my dad while we were sitting in the stands and I told him, "I could easily see myself play for either of these two teams one day". Today, I proudly get to say that i'll be leaving to attend and play for FAU within a couple weeks although the road was not easy, and things didn't turn out exactly how I expected them. I ended up having to play two years at a junior college and work my way up the ranks but the fact of the matter is that at a young age, I began to visualize myself achieving my goals without even realizing it, and now I get to see my vision come to life.

Nowadays I use these methods consciously and purposefully in order to prepare myself for games, or even for tackling any sort of challenge that I see in my way. Visualization without physical preparation is useless, however I find that when you pair the two methods of preparation, your returns on the preparation become multiplied simply by the fact that when you visualize something taking place, your brain can't distinguish real life from imagination. In other words, when you imagine certain situations taking place, your neurons fire in the exact same way that they would if you were experiencing the situation in real time.

The night before I play a game I like to sit down in my room, while being relaxed, and visualize my at bats. I like to envision the outcomes that I would like to occur, as well as getting a feel for what it would be like in the batters box while facing the pitcher I am going to face the next day. When I was playing in junior college and we had home games, the night before the game I would sneak onto the field and stand in the batters box with my bat while imagining the pitcher that Im going to face the next day on the mound. Then I would imagine myself smacking balls that he threw me or hitting homers. Come game time, everything already felt familiar, and my chances of success became much greater because I had already lived the game the night before.

One can visualize things taking place over a large period of time such as what I mentioned earlier, or things can be visualized on a smaller scale such as something taking place the next day. These are tactics used by the majority of pro athletes in different sports, and Im sure that they can be used to achieve anything in life.