HealthyGamerGG - The Truth About Visualization & Manifestation

Episode Date: December 19, 2023

Today we're going to talk about one of my least and most favorite topics manifestation and visualization. Today what we're going to do is help you understand how to actually effectively visualize. Check out HG coaching: https://bit.ly/47dF7rF Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Want to get started? Head to CarMax.com for details and get pre-qualified today. Want to drive? CarMax. Today we're going to talk about one of my least and most favorite topics, manifestation and visualization. So when I was practicing in Boston as a psychiatrist, I kind of developed this reputation for being into the new age stuff, right? I had studied for years in India to become a monk, studied Eastern medicine. And so a lot of my patients would, a lot of patients would come to me specifically because they'd be interested in like harnessing the energies of the universe. And they'd come to me to me to be like, Dr. Kay, Dr. Kay, do you like, do you believe in the power of manifest?

and the law of attraction. Can you help me like do that stuff? Like do you really believe in? Is this real? You've gone and studied in the Himalayas and stuff. I'd be like, sorry to disappoint y'all, but actually it's kind of a bunch of BS because I looked into the science of it and I sort of like was like this is actually kind of ridiculous and most of this is misunderstandings from the fields of like quantum mechanics. And then I looked into the research even more and I sort of discovered something really bizarre that visualization is actually capable of achieving things that scientifically kind of impossible. I mean, they're not scientifically impossible, but they sound scientifically impossible. So today, what we're going to do is help you understand both sides

of those coin, and then also help you understand how to actually, like, effectively visualize to transform your life into lots of success and bring all kinds of things that you want into your life, right? We're going to actually explain how that works. If you're ready to take the next step on your mental health journey, check out Dr. Kay's guide. It's an immersive resource that distills over 20 years of my experience laid out in a way that is tailored to your needs. So if you're ready to better understand your mind and take control of it, check out the link in the description below. So this starts with kind of the field of what I would call quantum mysticism or quantum BS. So what happened is in the field of quantum mechanics, they did some really interesting

experiments. Like there's this thought experiment of something called Schrodinger's cat. And there's also this experiment called the double slit experiment. And these are kind of these like quantum mechanics kind of experiments that changed the way that we looked at the universe. And some of the conclusions of these experiments basically suggested that the world does not exist the way that we think it does, that the world actually exists as some kind of weird probability waveform. And then the act of observing something causes that probabilities, this amorphous like maybe stuff to kind of collapse into a reality. So these famous thought experiments like Schotinger's cat sort of illustrate this. And this is kind of this idea that there's a box,

and inside there's a box that has a cat. And inside the box is a vial of poisonous gas. And there's a 50% chance that the gas will explode and the cat will die. And there's a 50% chance that the gas will not explode and the cat will live. And so when we sort of think about, okay, like either the cat is dead or alive, but we don't know until we look into the box. Whereas current theories on quantum mechanics kind of say that actually the cat is neither dead nor alive and it's in some sort of superimposed quantum state of like half life, half death, which doesn't make any sense kind of intuitively, but that's apparently what they figured out. And so then what happened is a bunch of people who didn't really understand quantum mechanics interpreted this in a slightly different

way. And they sort of interpreted it in a sort of intuitive way, which is that my consciousness or the act of observation causes reality to manifest. And I read this book called In Search of Schrodinger's Cat because I was like into this stuff, right? And at the very end, I really liked the analogy that the person used at the end of the book, which is that reality is kind of like a block of wood. And we can say that, hey, your face is inside the block of wood. And you can say, what are you talking about? That's BS.

And then I'm like, here, let me grab a chisel and a hammer. And I will show you. And if I chisel the block of wood in a particular way, it will reveal your face. And I will say, well, see, look, here's your face. It was in the block of wood the entire time. But the key thing is that it's because of the way that I observed reality that gave me the result that I found. And we sort of understand this in kind of the particle wave duality of light, which is that is light a particle or is light a wave? Well, it kind of depends on which way you look for light.

If I look for a wave, I will find a wave. And if I look for a particle, I will find a particle. And so this is kind of like, I'm not an expert in physics and there's tons of like YouTube videos and stuff about this. The key point here is that somewhere along the way, there were some revolutionary discoveries in quantum mechanics, and then there were some very common kind of like interpretations about what this means. But if we really look at the science of it, it's kind of BS. So I recently saw one study, for example, that the people who believe in this kind of like law of attraction or manifestation in the universe subjectively think of themselves as more successful. and they also think that the reason that they're more successful is because they're like really good at attracting and harnessing the energies of the universe.

But objectively, they are more likely to be bankrupt. They are more likely to be in financial hardship and they're more likely to be taken advantage of by other people. So at this point, I'm pretty convinced that the best way to make money using the law of attraction and manifestation is to sell courses to other people to teach them how to harness the energy. of the universe. I think that is the most consistent way that leads to financial success. So it's kind of BS, right? On the other hand, you have people like Arnold, Arnold Schwarzenegger. And Arnold is this guy who's a big believer in visualization. And if you listen to his talks about like bodybuilding, acting, or becoming governor of California, he's like, yeah, I really believe in visualization. When I visualize something, it like helps me achieve that thing or it happens.

And that kind of got me scratch in my head, right? Like, hold on a second. I mean, how is this person able to be like a top-tier bodybuilder, top-tier actor, and actually get elected to the governor, like being the governor of California. Like, that's crazy. Those are three different domains, and this dude swears by visualization. So I looked into the research even more. And what I sort of discovered is there's some crazy stuff out there about the science of visualization.

So one of my favorite studies on this, which is kind of unbelievable, is that if you have a group of older people, so we're talking about studying a geriatric population, and they visualize exercising. They don't actually physically exercise. They visualize exercising. It increases their muscle strength by up to 36%. So if I take a group of old people and I tell them, hey, visualize exercising, they physically get stronger by 36%.

This is insane. So if you actually look at the research on visualization, by the way, most of the research actually has to do with physical performance. So they're talking about like athletes and Olympic athletes and stuff like that. They'll do randomized trials where people are like working out physically and then working out physically plus visualization. And the people who use visualization will actually like be stronger. And the craziest thing, the reason I cite that study, it's kind of one of the weirdest ones,

is that this is like wild, but you can be sitting on your ass at home. And if you visualize working out, your body will get physically stronger. The effect size tends to be stronger in older populations. And that kind of gets complicated. But basically, I think that even in younger populations, it seems to work. work, okay? So now the question is, well, hold on a second, because here you are, you're saying that, like, visualization doesn't work, right? And there's evidence that shows that people who, like, believe in the law of attraction, they end up being more bankrupt. And on the other hand,

you have these people like Arnold and you have some studies which show that, like, thinking about working out or visualizing working out actually leads to improved grip strength. So which is it? Like, how do we understand this? And there's a really simple way to scientifically understand this. Visualization works for anything inside you, but does not work for anything about that happens outside of you. So if I visualize the world changing, nothing's going to happen. If I visualize myself being successful in the world, that will lead to change. And let's understand that scientifically, because if we think about the mind, the mind doesn't

have any capacity to change anything outside of me, right? Like, I can't use telepathy or telekinesis to, like, lift objects. Like, the mind can affect things within the body. And when we really look at the effect of the mind on the body, then we have tons of evidence that the mind does all kinds of weird things in the body. So we know that there's something called the placebo effect, which means that if I think a treatment will work, it will work. If I take a sugar pill, but I believe it is a treatment, I will see a clinical improvement.

We also see something called the nocebo effect, which is the opposite, which is that if I don't, If I believe that an actual medication won't help me, the effect size of the medication decreases. Like, everybody knows that placebo and nocebo are a real thing. And apparently even studies with visualization show that if I visualize myself working out, I will get physically stronger. So if we look at the domain in which visualization actually works, it can work within us. Right. So if I'm visualizing anything about this, it'll actually lead to scientific progress. Now, what about things that are not physical in nature, though, right?

So let's say I visualize like success. And this is where I think there's a really important technique here, which is you can shape the nature of that visualization to actually help you or not help you. So if I visualize myself as a successful person and I focus on myself as the target of visualization, I do actually believe that will help you be more successful. But if I visualize my success as an external thing, like lots of people are walking up, to me and giving me offers and giving me like lots of support and help and stuff like that, that I think is less likely to actually achieve something. And even if we look into the psychology

of it, like what changes if you visualize yourself as successful? So what changes is the way that you interact with the world, right? But if I visualize myself as successful and that kind of sinks in in some way, it changes the way that I interact with the world. So if I apply for a job and I visualize myself as successful and I get a rejection, that visualization will sort of buffer against the damage or the loss of hope that comes with negative things happening to me in life. Visualization almost acts as a way to foster or cultivate what I would call resilience. And this is why people who visualize themselves as successful are more likely to be objectively successful because everyone has setbacks. But what determines whether you succeed or fail in the end is the way

that your mind manages those setbacks. So if you don't do things like visualization or don't believe in yourself and you get rejected, you are going to say, oh, wow, this is a, this is proof that I am not worth it. I am not a good human being. I'm doomed to fail in life. And what are you actually doing in that moment? You are visualizing yourself as a failure. And as you visualize yourself as a failure, it makes it less likely for you to apply again. It makes it less likely for you to think about what you did wrong and actually collect feedback about your rejection and do better next time, right? You're just like, ah, screw it. I guess I'm going to end up doom scrolling the rest of the day and being angry at myself in the world and be like full of resentment. Versus someone who visualizes

themselves as a success, when something doesn't go their way, they sort of have that resilient buffer within them and they're like, okay, like fundamentally, like I'm a decent human being and I will be successful. This is just a temporary setback. What can I learn from it and how can I move forward. And it's in that change that you actually will end up changing the way that you interact with the world, which will lead to objective changes in your life. Okay? So the key thing about visualization is that you should visualize stuff within you, but don't worry about anything outside of you because you can't control that stuff. And we know that there's all kinds of neat stuff. Like there's even some studies that show that there's one of my favorite studies on this is

actually from 1836. And there's a French doctor who went to a, a group of patients and told them, like 100-something patients and told them, hey, I'm so sorry, I gave you the wrong medicine. I gave you something that is going to cause nausea and vomiting. It's something that's supposed to, we administer to patients to get them to vomit when they've ingested poison. And 80% of those patients started feeling nauseous and started vomiting, right? So it's like super wild, but the mind absolutely has control over the way that your body works. Cortisol levels, stress levels, immune function, GI function, all this kind of stuff matters. even muscular growth and strength, right, which is super bizarre.

So start by focusing on your visualization on yourself and then it will work. Now, we've got to dive into something a little bit more nuanced, which is a lot of people may be thinking to themselves, but I imagine myself as successful all the time, or I daydream or fantasize about success. So what is the difference between like imagining stuff, like using my mind to picture positive things and visualization? The interesting thing is that these two things, imagination and visualization, are actually complete opposites. Now, this is where our, and that sounds kind of weird, but our understanding of the mind is not very nuanced with our language.

So I'll explain how this works. So if we look at visualization, what does this entail? It entails focusing of the mind, right? So I imagine that when Arnold or these other people, like when we train Olympic athletes and visualization, we are training them to focus their mind on a particular thing. So it is an extended period of focus. The second thing that tends to happen with visualization is that we tend to cultivate emotion. So the more that I visualize that like, I'm going to be a badass, the more that I'm kind of stoking the fire of positive emotion. So if we look at the actual psychological, mental EEG, neuroscientific and physiological effects of visualization,

we are focusing the mind and we are stoking emotion. On the flip side, we're, side, we have stuff like fantasy, daydreaming, and imagination. So in these things, we actually know that, for example, maladaptive daydreaming is likely a subtype of ADHD. If you talk to someone who daydreams a lot or fantasizes a lot or imagines a lot, their mind does not focus on one thing. In fact, their mind moves between lots of different things. When you have a daydream, it's not like you're watching your daydream and you hit pause and you're stuck on that frame for 15 minutes. When you daydream, you go through a whole story. for like an hour. And first you do this and then you do this and then you go on a yacht

and then you go scuba diving and then all these people are happy and then they throw you a party and then you win an award. You like play through this whole thing. So your mind's not focused on one thing. Your mind is actually bouncing around. The second thing that we know about daydreaming, fantasy, and imagination is that they reduce your internal emotional state. They're essentially psychological coping mechanisms. So I'll give you all a really simple example that runs true for me. So I got bullied a lot as a kid, right? And when I got bullied a lot, I would have fantasies about getting even with my bullies. And so I would feel so hurt and weak and resentful.

And then what would happen over the course of like this fantasy that I would have? I would start to feel triumphant. I would start to feel this. And more importantly, I would reduce that negative emotion in the mind. So we also know from lots of studies on neuroscience and fMRIs and stuff like that, that daydreaming and fantasy are essentially emotional coping mechanisms. Now, you may be thinking, but when I felt like that. triumphant, like, doesn't that count a stoking emotion? And not really, because that sense of triumph

is very temporary and is essentially used to cancel out that negative emotions. You're not building up emotion consistently over time. It's kind of this temporary thing that's an emotional coping mechanism. So this is what we've got to understand. Visualization and daydreaming are actually exact opposites. One happens kind of like, has lots of scattered thoughts which move around, whereas the other is a very, very focused mind for an extended period of time. And the second is one actually reduces our internal emotional state, and the other one cultivates a positive emotional state. And so when your mind is focused and you are cultivating a positive emotion that will help you get motivated, we can kind of see how that will lead to real world changes.

So now let's talk about visualization basics. Based on the science, here are a couple of things that you should do. So whatever you want to visualize, we want to do it for about 10. 10 to 15 minutes at a time, and we'll talk a little bit more at the end. We'll teach you all some techniques and stuff or give you all resources there. But you basically want to visualize for about, I would say, 15 minutes at a time. And the goal is to focus your mind on one particular thing. Okay. The second thing that we really want to do is focus on the internal part as opposed to the external part. So if you are visualizing success, don't visualize winning the

lottery. Visualize yourself studying really hard. Or visualize yourself. working really hard for like 15 minutes. You were just watching and forcing your mind to focus on you accomplishing something. So have the target of your visualization be yourself. In the case of exercise, literally what these protocols are is people will imagine, I'm using that word imagine, but they will focus on themselves working out. They will also focus on things like the mechanism within their body. So they will visualize their muscles growing. So what I want you to kind of do is like visualize whatever the mechanism of change is within you. So you can imagine that your brain is becoming more plastic. You can imagine that your muscles are like, you know, being stressed and

are growing, and they're sort of activating all kinds of stuff. Your mitochondria are working hard. There's like kind of genes that are activating. Whatever, whatever you want to do is totally fine. Just focus on yourself. So pick a particular target. Use that visualization like I would say five days a week if you can, three days a week if you can, for 15 minutes and pick something in yourself. So you don't want to visualize different stuff every day. You want to pick one particular target, right? So if you're visualizing physical success, visualize yourself working out and your muscles kind of growing.

If you're visualizing, like, let's say like something like romantic success or social success, visualize yourself looking attractive, visualize yourself with your hair done nicely, you're like clean and stuff like that, and you're walking into a social situation and visualize yourself talking to people. And the really cool thing about that is if we kind of think about it, right, when my mind visualizes something and sends a command to the rest of my body, my body gets in line. So if I say to my mind, pick up this pen, like, think about all of the nerves and muscles and blood vessels and everything else in my body that has to like activate to do something as simple as pick up a pen. So a abstract command from the top of your mind will actually get all.

all of your different body parts in order to execute that command. This is how a French physician can tell people, bra, I gave you something that's going to make you puke. And our GI system, our mind is like, okay, this thing is going to make us puke. And our GI system is like, oh, my God, we feel like puking. That's literally how it works. Okay?

So pick one thing and visualize it kind of from the top down. So if you all are interested in learning more about this stuff, definitely check out our videos on things like Yoga Nidra or other meditation practices. And if you all are really interested in the more like weird spiritual consciousness manifests the universe kind of thing, check out Dr. K's guide because we go into a ton of detail about the nature of consciousness and how it interacts with the universe. And what is the theoretical basis of like mantras and how they affect things outside of you?

Now the last thing that I'm going to talk about is going to be kind of weird because now that I've explained to you what the science of visualization is, where it's BS is, where it's legitimate, and kind of like how it works, I'm going to torpedo everything I just said and share with you all what my personal opinion is, which is that I believe that consciousness can manifest in some way in reality. Now, this is not a scientific belief by any means. This is just based on my experience of my own sort of meditative practice. So, for example, like 20 years ago, now, wow, it's been 20. 20 years ago, I was given a mantra by a tantric in India. And this was a guy who, like, gave me a mantra, and I was like, I want a monther that will channel the energies of the universe to like make me

spiritually successful in life and materialistically successful in life. And he was like, okay, I will give you. And he just like gave me this mantra. And he's like, just chant this mantra every day and you'll harness the energies of the universe and you'll be more successful than you realize. And at the time, I was like a college dropout with like a less than a 2.0 GPA. And I was like, okay, like maybe I'll just do this thing and I'll give it a shot. And what I sort of found is that it's kind of bizarre. But the more that I do the month through, the more that I saw, it absolutely helped me spiritually.

And then also, like, helped me materialistically in some weird way. And I've had some sort of experiences in meditation where I sort of feel connected with other things. And then, like, kind of the last thing that I don't know this is going to make any sense. But my wife has the ability to bend the universe to her will. And sometimes I'll even talk to, like, my patience about this. And I'll ask them, like, I'll just ask them straight up, like, do you ever bend the universe to your will? And if you know what I'm talking about, you know what I'm talking about. If you don't know what I'm talking about, it's going to sound like absolute BS.

But this is where, like, I'm a skeptic by nature. And even when science tells us that something is complete BS, the tricky thing about science is that science is the best system to learn about the world. I think it's objectively superior than basically every other system. But it is also wrong way more than it's right. Right? Like, for 50 years ago, people in scientists thought that meditation had no mental health benefits, let alone physical benefits, right?

Because how on earth is meditating? You're not even thinking about anything. just like sitting there with an empty mind, how can that affect GI symptoms or rheumatoid arthritis or even things like cancer? Like that doesn't make any, there's no biological plausibility. So one thing to kind of keep in mind, and this is what I've learned the hard way, is that science is like really good at telling us what's right and wrong, but it's usually wrong. And as we learn more about science, we will learn more about like things that we used to believe were completely false. And meditation is kind of at the top of the list.

So I personally do believe that like, I know it sounds kind of weird, but when you enter into these deeper states of consciousness, you are more connected to the universe and that you can harness those kinds of energies and create manifestation in the world. Which is crazy, right? Because you're saying, but Dr. Kay, didn't you say at the beginning that you didn't believe any of that crap? And it's like, yeah, I didn't use to believe that crap. But the more that I kind of look into it and the more that I wind up in these situations where I get into a fight with my wife. And I'm like, we're going to miss our plane. We're going to miss our plane. We need to go. We need to go. We need to go. And we leave too late. And I'm looking at what the GPS says. The airport's an hour away. And there's like,

no way we're going to miss our plane. And I get some text halfway through. I'm pissed at her, trying really hard not to yell. She's like kind of like apologizing. And then she like gets some text and she's like, yeah, the flight's delayed by an hour. We'll be fine. And I'm like, damn it. Damn it. I was right. And you're bending the universe to win an argument with your husband. And like, I'm like, can't you bend the universe like fix climate change or world hunger? Why do you have to bend the universe to your will to win an argument with me? And I don't know how to make sense of this crap, but y'all may know that like on some level, sometimes you feel like you can shape the universe.

And there's weird crap that we're understanding from like psychedelics and stuff about like, there's some sort of cosmic connection that human beings will experience, that things are connected in ways that are not physical. We're not really sure. We haven't really figured it out. But I'm telling you, like, there's something to it. And I think that hopefully over the next 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years, you know, like, we'll sort of figure this out. And the last thing that's really crazy is that I'm not the only crazy person who is very well qualified who believes this crap.

Right. So even people like Roger Penrose who won the Nobel Prize in physics, along with Stephen Hawking, has papers about like consciousness and its connection to the universe, right? So he kind of believed this stuff in a slightly different way. Right. He's kind of a slightly different way. But, and there's like, there's consistently really, really smart people who've won Nobel Prizes who believe that there's something to this. And for some reason, human beings keep on revisiting this despite a lack of scientific evidence. And why is that?

It's because in our experience, we can kind of feel it sometimes, right? Now, if you all don't get what I'm saying, that's totally fine. And that's why I like started with the science stuff. But to be honest, I think this is one of those things where we need to be scientifically humble and recognize that we've just. started research into like this field of consciousness. We don't really know what it is. We don't know where in the brain it comes from. We've got some ideas about this. We don't really know how it interacts with things like energy and matter. We don't really know yet. So this is just a fancy way of saying like a roundabout way of saying, you know, if you believe in this crap and Dr. K

tells you based on the science that, hey, this stuff is a bunch of BS, take that with a grain of salt too. So our goal here is to share what we understand about stuff, right? And I'm happy to tell you all that scientifically the way that you should visualize is don't try to manifest crap in the universe. Visualize on yourself for 15 minutes. Imagine yourself doing things. Imagine your muscles growing. Imagine you being more successful. Imagine all that crap. And it will cascade down into your physiology and into your cellular infrastructure. And at the same time, if you believe this crap, don't give up on it just because some random guy who trained at Harvard is telling you that it doesn't work, right? Continue to explore for yourself about what works and what doesn't. And by all means,

let us know. So report back and tell us like, hey, Dr. Kay, like, I visualize crap all the time and I manifest things in the universe. I don't know how it works, but I really believe it. So let us know. Do you think it's BS? Do you think it works? Do you think it not? It doesn't work? Because the way that we're really going to figure this out is by making some observations and then developing hypotheses and then to test those hypotheses. So if y'all are concerned about visualization, I totally get it. And the of attraction and manifestation. I think most of that crap, honestly, is crap. But I have seen enough stuff to where it's a question mark in my mind. Right. So I sort of use this stuff in my personal life and it seems to be working pretty well. At the same time, I don't know that I can

reliably recommend that to y'all. What I can reliably recommend to you is the science of how visualization actually creates positive change in your life. And that's something that you all should absolutely do.