Academics Plus Tutoring Center

Here is your third installment of Jack Canfield’s article, Visualize and Affirm Your Desired Outcomes: A Step-by-Step Guide. Look back at the previous blogs for the introduction to, and the earlier installments of, this series. 

Visualize and Affirm Your Desired Outcomes: A Step-by-Step Guide 

Create Goal Pictures

Another powerful technique is to create a photograph or picture of yourself with your goal, as if it were already completed. If one of your goals is to own a new car, take your camera down to your local auto dealer and have a picture taken of yourself sitting behind the wheel of your dream car. If your goal is to visit Paris, find a picture or poster of the Eiffel Tower and cut out a picture of yourself and place it into the picture. With today’s technology, you could probably make an even more convincing image using your computer.  

Create a Visual Picture and an Affirmation for Each Goal

We recommend that you find or create a picture of every aspect of your dream life. Create a picture or a visual representation for every goal you have — financial, career, recreation, new skills and abilities, things you want to purchase, and so on.  

When we were writing the very first Chicken Soup for the Soul® book, we took a copy of the New York Times best seller list, scanned it into our computer, and using the same font as the newspaper, typed Chicken Soup for the Soul into the number one position in the “Paperback Advice, How-To and Miscellaneous” category. We printed several copies and hung them up around the office. Less than two years later, our book was the number one book in that category and stayed there for over a year!
© 2008 Jack Canfield 

Jack Canfield, America’s Success Coach, is the founder and co-creator of the billion-dollar book brand Chicken Soup for the Soul and a leading authority on Peak Performance. If you’re ready to jump-start your life, make more money, and have more fun and joy in all that you do, get your FREE success tips from Jack Canfield now at: www.FreeSuccessStrategies.com. 

Our goal is to make this blog the most helpful and informative blog on Academic Success and SAT preparation. To do this, we need your help, so please give us your feedback and make comments to our blog!!  

For more information, FREE articles, resources and audio files, visit: www.howtoacethesat.com and www.academics-plus.com.

Here is your second installment of Jack Canfield’s article, Visualize and Affirm Your Desired Outcomes: A Step-by-Step Guide: Look back at yesterday’s blog for the introduction to, and the first installment of, this series. 

Visualize and Affirm Your Desired Outcomes: A Step-by-Step Guide 

Mental Rehearsal

Athletes call this visualization process “mental rehearsal,” and they have been using it since the 1960s when we learned about it from the Russians. All you have to do is set aside a few minutes a day. The best times are when you first wake up, after meditation or prayer, and right before you go to bed. These are the times you are most relaxed. Go through the following three steps:  

1. Imagine sitting in a movie theater, the lights dim, and then the movie starts. It is a movie of you doing perfectly whatever it is that you want to do better. See as much detail as you can create, including your clothing, the expression on your face, small body movements, the environment and any other people that might be around. Add in any sounds you would be hearing — traffic, music, other people talking, cheering. And finally, recreate in your body any feelings you think you would be experiencing as you engage in this activity.
2. Get out of your chair, walk up to the screen, open a door in the screen and enter into the movie. Now experience the whole thing again from inside of yourself, looking out through your eyes. This is called an “embodied image” rather than a “distant image.” It will deepen the impact of the experience. Again, see everything in vivid detail, hear the sounds you would hear, and feel the feelings you would feel.
3. Finally, walk back out of the screen that is still showing the picture of you performing perfectly, return to your seat in the theater, reach out and grab the screen and shrink it down to the size of a cracker. Then, bring this miniature screen up to your mouth, chew it up and swallow it. Imagine that each tiny piece — just like a hologram — contains the full picture of you performing well. Imagine all these little screens traveling down into your stomach and out through the bloodstream into every cell of your body. Then imagine that every cell of your body is lit up with a movie of you performing perfectly. It’s like one of those appliance store windows where 50 televisions are all tuned to the same channel.

 When you have finished this process — it should take less than five minutes — you can open your eyes and go about your business. If you make this part of your daily routine, you will be amazed at how much improvement you will see in your life.
© 2008 Jack Canfield 

Jack Canfield, America’s Success Coach, is the founder and co-creator of the billion-dollar book brand Chicken Soup for the Soul and a leading authority on Peak Performance. If you’re ready to jump-start your life, make more money, and have more fun and joy in all that you do, get your FREE success tips from Jack Canfield now at: www.FreeSuccessStrategies.com. 

Our goal is to make this blog the most helpful and informative blog on Academic Success and SAT preparation. To do this, we need your help, so please give us your feedback and make comments to our blog!!

For more information, FREE articles, resources and audio files, visit: www.howtoacethesat.com and www.academics-plus.com.

At Academics Plus, we are big proponents of the use of visualization. My sister and co-founder, Michele and I use it all the time and we encourage our students, friends, and family to use it too.  We try our best to pass on to others the reasons we like to use it and the benefits it provides, partly because we benefited from others passing on this information to us. 

We have gained much valuable information from Jack Canfield, who has been promoting this practice for some time now.  Today, and over the next few days, we will post information from his article, Visualize and Affirm Your Desired Outcomes: A Step-by-Step Guide.  Because his article is chock full of information, we decided to break it up into bite-sized chunks so you can make the most out of each piece of information. Here is your first “installment”:  

Visualize and Affirm Your Desired Outcomes: A Step-by-Step Guide

You have an awesome power within you that most of us have never been taught to use. Elite athletes use it. The super rich use it. And peak performers in all fields are now starting to use it. That power is called visualization.

The daily practice of visualizing your dreams as already complete can rapidly accelerate your achievement of those dreams. Visualization of your goals and desires accomplishes four very important things.

1. It activates your creative subconscious which will start generating creative ideas to achieve your goal.
2. It programs your brain to more readily perceive and recognize the resources you will need to achieve your dreams.
3. It activates the law of attraction, thereby drawing into your life the people, resources, and circumstances you will need to achieve your goals.
4. It builds your internal motivation to take the necessary actions to achieve your dreams.

Visualization is really quite simple. You sit in a comfortable position, close your eyes and imagine — in as vivid detail as you can — what you would be looking at if the dream you have were already realized. Imagine being inside of yourself, looking out through your eyes at the ideal result.
© 2008 Jack Canfield

Jack Canfield, America’s Success Coach, is the founder and co-creator of the billion-dollar book brand Chicken Soup for the Soul and a leading authority on Peak Performance. If you’re ready to jump-start your life, make more money, and have more fun and joy in all that you do, get your FREE success tips from Jack Canfield now at: www.FreeSuccessStrategies.com.

Our goal is to make this blog the most helpful and informative blog on Academic Success and SAT preparation. To do this, we need your help, so please give us your feedback and make comments to our blog!!

For more information, FREE articles, resources and audio files, visit: www.howtoacethesat.com and www.academics-plus.com.

Here is the continuation of the interview with Jim Taylor Ph.D. 

Dr. Taylor answers a multitude of questions on a variety of topics including teen stress, academic success and successful parenting techniques. We’ve broken the interview up into sections and will be posting a few of the questions and answers every day. So, stay tuned… 

Our goal is to make this blog the most helpful and informative blog on Academic Success and SAT preparation. In addition to articles and postings on test preparation, the college application process, study tips and hints, we will also post articles on parenting tips, teen issues and personal development.

Please give us your feedback and make comments to our blog!!  For more information, FREE articles, resources and audio files, visit: www.howtoacethesat.com and www.academics-plus.com 

Talk a little bit about things that parents do and if these things are good or bad, like paying your children for grades.  

Dr. Taylor: Paying your children for grades is generally not a great idea. Using bribes can be an initial way to create some impetus for kids to work hard. But if kids connect their efforts and motivation with being paid, then that becomes an extrinsic motivation. In a way they may become hooked on it, and they will only work hard if they’re being rewarded monetarily or, in fact, even with love. Ultimately, we want kids to be motivated for the love of the learning to pursue their own goals that they have in their life. 

What about gifted programs or labels we give kids?  

Dr. Taylor: Clearly there are some children who are gifted who are naturally more athletically gifted or have very high IQs. But the problem is our culture has defined giftedness in a way that actually hurts kids because it tells kids who are gifted that you have a free pass, you’re guaranteed to succeed. The reality is the world is full of gifted failures. Yes, giftedness is a wonderful gift, but it’s not enough to truly succeed. I mean, sooner or later kids are going to reach a level where everybody is gifted. It might be Harvard. It might be a Division 1 athletic program. And all of a sudden everybody’s gifted, so they’re not special. What makes kids ultimately able to perform their best is have they developed the life skills necessary to use whatever gifts they have, whether very high or moderate. 

How can parents help kids develop those life skills?  

Dr. Taylor: They need to identify what some of those life skills are, such as hard work, discipline, perseverance, patience, and then work on rewarding those things. Often parents praise their kids when they come home with a good test or a good paper. You know, nice job, way to go. For me that’s lazy parenting and lazy rewarding, because it doesn’t really say what they’re rewarding. So parents need to reinforce hard work and good decision making in terms of, for example, choosing to stay home and work on a project rather than going out with their friends. 

This article was reported by Ivanhoe.com who offers Medical Alerts by e-mail every day of the week. To subscribe, go to http://www.ivanhoe.com/newsalert/. Dr. Jim Taylor is internationally recognized for his work in the psychology of performance in business, parenting, and sport. Jim is an author of ten books, including Positive Pushing: How to Raise a Successful and Happy Child and Your Children are Under Attack: How Popular Culture is Destroying Your Kids’ Values, and How You Can Protect Them. For more information on Dr. Taylor, visit: http://www.drjimtaylor.com/ 

Here is the continuation of the interview with Jim Taylor Ph.D. 

Dr. Taylor answers a multitude of questions on a variety of topics including teen stress, academic successs and successful parenting techniques. We’ve broken the interview up into sections and will be posting a few of the questions and answers every day. So, stay tuned… 

Our goal is to make this blog the most helpful and informative blog on Academic Success and SAT preparation. In addition to articles and postings on test preparation, the college application process, study tips and hints, we will also post articles on parenting tips, teen issues and personal development. Please give us your feedback and make comments to our blog!! 

For more information, FREE articles, resources and audio files, visit: www.howtoacethesat.com and www.academics-plus.com

To what extent is it (fear of failure, the pressure students feel, desire to be perfect) the parents’ fault, and to what extent can parents remedy the situation?  

Dr. Taylor: Ultimately with raising kids, responsibility is on parents. If kids are struggling because of these issues, they are, have to be held responsible. At the same time, the great thing about responsibility is they also have the power to do good with them. I’ve worked with many families where the kids are struggling because the parents are just pushing way too hard in a lot of bad ways. And when parents make the necessary changes, this incredible weight is lifted off kids’ shoulders. And what’s amazing is that by taking this weight of “success” off their shoulders, they actually feel liberated to pursue their goals and achieve as much as they can. 

Now for parents who are unsure if they fall into this overboard category, what kind of things could they ask themselves?  

Dr. Taylor: There are, in fact, a lot of red flags that parents can look for. Are they perfectionists themselves and are they placing expectations that are simply unrealistic on children? Another one is when parents talk about what I call the “we syndrome.” The kid comes home with their grade report and they go “we got really good grades” or “we didn’t do very well this semester.” Well, I didn’t see the parents taking the tests and doing the schoolwork. Also emotionally … Do parents get more excited for their kids achievements when they succeed and are they more depressed and frustrated and angry when they do poorly? Also, one of the most dangerous words in parenting is a simple three-letter word, T-O-O, too. Parents wanna care about their kids’ achievements but they don’t want to care too much. They want them to be important to them, but not too much. And so parents can look for how invested they are in their kids’ performances and their school efforts and see whether it’s helping or hurting their kids. And, of course, you can see a lot of these symptoms of these red flags in kids themselves. Fear of success, excessive criticism, loss of motivation. 

Are there things that parents can ask their children that might indicate this?

Dr. Taylor: I don’t think asking questions of kids is the best way to find out. I think more often than not parents need to ask themselves questions, ask themselves why they’re pushing their kids, and in who’s best interest. Because I find so often parents who engage in what I call old-style pushing. They’re pushing their kids to satisfy their own needs, not what’s in the best interest of their kids. And in, kids have a tremendous capability to communicate with their parents. Unfortunately parents don’t speak their language. If there’s a child who is angry or acting very frustrated or losing motivation and giving up easily, parents will say oh they’re so angry or they, they’re just lazy or ungrateful. When, in fact, these are cries for help, and they’re indications that they need to look somewhere else. They need to look deeper for what’s really going on. 

Do you have some specific examples you’ve seen in your practice of things that really exemplify this kind of behavior?

Dr. Taylor: I see parents, for example, when kids bring home their grades and they’re not up to snuff, they yell at them. Or the parents cry. I see that a lot, a ton at sporting events when their kids lose. I see it where parents said very clear expectations, where you must get As when the child might not simply be capable of getting As, even if they work very hard. 

This article was reported by Ivanhoe.com who offers Medical Alerts by e-mail every day of the week. To subscribe, go to http://www.ivanhoe.com/newsalert/. Dr. Jim Taylor is internationally recognized for his work in the psychology of performance in business, parenting, and sport. Jim is an author of ten books, including Positive Pushing: How to Raise a Successful and Happy Child and Your Children are Under Attack: How Popular Culture is Destroying Your Kids’ Values, and How You Can Protect Them. For more information on Dr. Taylor, visit: http://www.drjimtaylor.com/

At Academics Plus, we encourage students to use visualization as a tool to help them achieve their goals.  

You might ask, well what is visualization? 

Visualization is a simple but effective process in which you use your imagination to create—in your mind’s eye—what you would like to be, do or have. Many athletes use visualization, including Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan, who have both spoken about its effectiveness in helping them achieve great success. In the following article, Shakti Gawain (who by the way, is a pioneer in the field and a strong advocate of the process of visualization) talks about the process of creative visualizing and offers some helpful hints.  

Our goal is to make this blog the most helpful and informative blog on Academic Success and SAT preparation. In addition to articles and postings on test preparation, the college application process, study tips and hints, we will also post articles on parenting tips, teen issues and personal development.

Please give us your feedback and make comments to our blog!! For more information, FREE articles, resources and audio files, visit: www.howtoacethesat.com and www.academics-plus.com 

Creative Visualization: How to Make It Part of Your Life: By Shakti Gawain 

The most important thing to remember is to use creative visualization often, to make it a regular part of your life. Most people seem to find that it works best to practice it at least a little every day, especially when they are first learning. I suggest that you have a regular creative visualization meditation period for fifteen minutes or so each morning when you wake up, and each evening before sleeping (these are the times when it is most effective), as well as the middle of the day if you can manage that.

Always start your meditation periods with deep relaxation, then follow with any visualizations or affirmations you wish. There are many different ways that creative visualization can be used, and it’s up to you to remember to try them at appropriate times. Conscious creative visualization may mean a new way of thinking and a new way of living. As such, it will take some practice. Try it out in different situations and under different circumstances, and use it as often as you can for any type of problem-solving.

If you find yourself worried or puzzled about anything, or feeling discouraged or frustrated about a problem, ask yourself if there is a way you could use creative visualization to help you. Form a creative habit of using it at every appropriate moment. Don’t feel discouraged if you don’t immediately feel totally successful with your creative visualization. Remember that most of us have years of negative thought patterns to overcome. It takes time to change some of these lifelong habits. And many of us have some underlying feelings and attitudes that can slow us down in our efforts to live more consciously. 

Fortunately, creative visualization is such an innately powerful process that even five minutes of conscious, positive meditation can balance out hours, days, even years of negative patterns. So be patient. It has taken a lifetime to create your world the way it is now. It may not necessarily change instantly (although it often does). With perseverance and a proper understanding of the process, you will succeed in creating what seem like many miracles in your life. 

Two things I have found most important in my growth process with creative visualization are: 

1. Regular reading of inspiring and supportive books that help to keep me in touch with my highest ideals and aspirations and/or that can give me encouragement through difficult times. I usually keep a book by my bed and read a page or two each day. 

2. Having a friend or (ideally) a community of friends who are also tuned into learning to live more consciously and who will support you and help you in your efforts. Attending regular or occasional consciousness classes or workshops, support groups or therapy, can be an important way of getting this type of support, and giving it to others as well. 

In my book, Creative Visualization, I give you many different techniques, ideas, exercises, and meditations. Choose the ones that feel right to you and seem to work for you. There are many different levels and approaches to the creative visualization process, and I have tried to include a wide variety of possible practices. In any given situation, one may be appropriate and another may not. Follow the flow of your own energy, and use the ones that you feel drawn to. For example, in a certain situation you may try to do affirmations and find that you simply can’t repeat them, or you don’t feel they are accomplishing anything. In that case you might want to try a clearing process, or get in touch with your inner guidance and ask for clarification, or just let go for a while and focus on other things. What works at one time may not at another; what works for one person may not for another.

Always trust yourself and your own deepest intuitive feelings. If it feels like you are forcing, pushing, exerting effort, or straining, don’t do it. If it feels helpful, releasing, opening, strengthening, enlivening, inspiring, do it.  

Adapted from Creative Visualization by Shakti Gawain. Copyright © 2001 by New World Library. 

About the Author: Shakti Gawain is a bestselling author and a pioneer in the field of personal growth and consciousness. Her many books, which include Creative Visualization, The Creative Visualization Workbook, Creating True Prosperity, Developing Intuition, and Living in the Light, have sold more than six million copies in thirty languages worldwide. 

Copyright © Shakti Gawain. All rights reserved worldwide.

Perhaps we can all learn a little something from elementary school children.  Students in the classroom in upstate NY are learning to tell their teachers that they need a time out when they are experiencing classroom stress (check out the article: Elementary Students Learn How To Cope With Classroom Stress).  They go to “The Power Control Center” where there are instructions for breathing excercises and relaxation, as well as a mood card to check their progress. 

A young 9 year-old student says that this is a good thing: “if something’s bothering you you don’t lash out at somebody. You don’t have to call somebody a name and hit them.”  

Perhaps we should all practice taking a time out when the going gets tough. It sure is better than lashing out!

Our goal is to make this blog the most helpful and informative blog on Academic Success and SAT preparation. In addition to articles and postings on test preparation, the college application process, study tips and hints, we will also post articles on parenting tips, teen issues and personal development. Please give us your feedback and make comments to our blog!!

For more information, FREE articles, resources and audio files, visit: howtoacethesat.com and www.academics-plus.com.

It is well known that many teens struggle with stress. It is also known that much of the stress teens experience is school related. In fact research indicates that 61% of the nation’s high school students are affected by test anxiety, with 26% experiencing high levels of test anxiety often or most of the time. 

We can across a list of suggestions shared by American Academy of Family Physicians for students experiencing stress and thought they might benefit our readers. Here they are: 

• Write down all of the things that cause anxiety or stress. Making a list may help you organize your thoughts and come up with a plan to help resolve problems.
• Reduce stress where you can. If work, sports or extracurricular activities cause too much stress, cut back on how much time you devote to them.
• Accept that you can’t eliminate all the stress in your life, that it’s OK to make mistakes, and that you can’t control everything.
• Don’t push yourself too hard. If you feel too tired or too overwhelmed, say “no” to additional commitments.
• Talk to family members, friends or a counselor about what’s bothering you and causing stress.

 Our goal is to make this blog the most helpful and informative blog on Academic Success and SAT preparation. In addition to articles and postings on test preparation, the college application process, study tips and hints, we will also post articles on parenting tips, teen issues and personal development. Please give us your feedback and make comments to our blog!! 

For more information, FREE articles, resources and audio files, visit: www.howtoacethesat.com and www.academics-plus.com

Here is the continuation of the interview with Jim Taylor Ph.D. 

Dr. Taylor answers a multitude of questions on a variety of topics including teen stress, academic successs and successful parenting techniques. We’ve broken the interview up into sections and will be posting a few of the questions and answers every day. So stay tuned… 

Our goal is to make this blog the most helpful and informative blog on Academic Success and SAT preparation. In addition to articles and postings on test preparation, the college application process, study tips and hints, we will also post articles on parenting tips, teen issues and personal development. Please give us your feedback and make comments to our blog!! 

For more information, FREE articles, resources and audio files, visit: www.howtoacethesat.com and www.academics-plus.com

Talk a little more about the psychological risks that pressure poses for kids.  

Dr. Taylor: One of the problems that I see in trial in the country, there’s an epidemic of fear of failure. Kids are afraid to fail. And what happens is their self-esteem becomes connected to how well they perform. And if they don’t get those As, if they don’t win in sports, if they’re not stars in their schools, then they simply feel bad about themselves. They lose motivation. They give up. Often these kinds of issues can lead to tremendous anxiety, depression and drug use and suicide and you go down the line. 

Have there been any studies linked to this or any documented cases?  

Dr. Taylor: Absolutely. There’s been a lot of work on fear of failure, on perfectionism, on the pressures that kids are under these days. And we’re seeing more and more incidence of kids who are struggling in many ways. At the same time we do see a lot of kids who are very successful. But what I see so much as I travel around the country speaking to kids is what I call unhappy successes. Kids who might be getting straight As and doing extremely well and heading down the right path, but they’re just really unhappy because they’re following a path that’s not of their choosing. And they’re following the path of popular culture or the path that their parents want them to go down. 

This article was reported by Ivanhoe.com who offers Medical Alerts by e-mail every day of the week. To subscribe, go to http://www.ivanhoe.com/newsalert/. Dr. Jim Taylor is internationally recognized for his work in the psychology of performance in business, parenting, and sport. Jim is an author of ten books, including Positive Pushing: How to Raise a Successful and Happy Child and Your Children are Under Attack: How Popular Culture is Destroying Your Kids’ Values, and How You Can Protect Them. For more information on Dr. Taylor, visit: http://www.drjimtaylor.com/ 

Here is the continuation of the interview with Jim Taylor Ph.D. 

Dr. Taylor answers a multitude of questions on a variety of topics including teen stress, academic successs and successful parenting techniques. We’ve broken the interview up into sections and will be posting a few of the questions and answers every day. So stay tuned… 

Our goal is to make this blog the most helpful and informative blog on academic success and SAT preparation. In addition to articles and postings on test preparation, the college application process, study tips and hints, we will also post articles on parenting tips, teen issues and personal development. Please give us your feedback and make comments to our blog!! 

For more information, FREE articles, resources and audio files, visit: www.howtoacethesat.com and www.academics-plus.com

What kind of pressures do parents feel to pressure their children?  

Dr. Taylor: There are several levels. First of all, there is the economic pressure that they feel because there’s so much more uncertainty in our economy than there was 20 or 30 years ago. And in, you know, previous generations, kids could be pretty much assured of getting into a decent college, going and then going out into the workforce and finding a stable job. But now there simply aren’t as many of those opportunities. Plus everything costs so much more. Housing alone has skyrocketed all over the country. There are challenges there, so parents have a fundamental fear and concern for their kids’ futures. Plus in our culture now there’s pressure to be great. Kids can’t just be average and be successful. Kids feel that pressure as well. 

Is this necessarily a bad thing, that kids are striving for excellence and want to do these great things and are trying so hard academically? Is it a bad thing?  

Dr. Taylor: It’s not a bad thing that we want our children to work hard to get good grades to do their best. But unfortunately with pressure now from our culture and from parents is often, for many of the kids, setting expectations that are simply impossible to achieve because they simply don’t have the intelligence or the wherewithal to achieve that level. And so a lot of kids are being left behind. Plus there’s a lot of pressure in terms of simply getting results. The focus now is so much about results and getting As and SATs and in sports winning, that so many kids simply aren’t capable of reaching that level. And if they don’t, well then they’re failures, or they view themselves as being failures. 

This article was reported by Ivanhoe.com who offers Medical Alerts by e-mail every day of the week. To subscribe, go to http://www.ivanhoe.com/newsalert/. Dr. Jim Taylor is internationally recognized for his work in the psychology of performance in business, parenting, and sport. Jim is an author of ten books, including Positive Pushing: How to Raise a Successful and Happy Child and Your Children are Under Attack: How Popular Culture is Destroying Your Kids’ Values, and How You Can Protect Them. For more information on Dr. Taylor, visit: http://www.drjimtaylor.com/