Too Much Vision, Not Enough Feeling
If you followed the Olympics, you know that the U.S. won the four-man bobsleigh competition, bringing home gold in that event for the first time in 62 years. The bobsleigh’s driver was Steve Holcomb.
Two years ago, Holcomb was on the verge of retiring from the sport because of severe vision problems. He was losing his sight, and nothing was helping.
Then he found out about an experimental surgery, and he decided to go for it. The surgery worked. He ended up with 20/20 vision.
Great, right?
Sure.
But Holcomb had just one problem. He’d been driving his bobsleigh for a very long time with poor vision. Because of this, he’d learned to drive by feel more than by sight.
So when his vision returned to 20/20, it messed up his driving. Being able to see impeded his bobsleigh performances.
Go figure.
So Holcomb scratched up his goggles so his vision wouldn’t be so clear. This allowed him to go back to feeling his way down the track more than seeing it.
This story inspires me for two reasons. First, it’s a great example of how the universe will bring you what you need (in Holcomb’s case, a new surgery that did what nothing else had been able to do).
Second, and more important, it suggests that visualizing what we want isn’t nearly as important as feeling it.
Law of attraction teachers, especially those in The Secret, make a big deal out of visualizing. We’re taught to see what we want, and we’re taught to put pictures of what we want on a bulletin board.
And this works … IF you also feel the way you want to feel when you look at the pictures or see the images in your mind.
I’ve been visualizing for years and years. Some of what I’ve visualized has happened. Most hasn’t.
Why hasn’t visualization worked as well as I’d have liked it to?
The answer lies in feeling more than seeing.
Abraham-Hicks says:
“Do you have to change your vibration on a particular subject in order to let it in? No, you don’t. You could pet your pet and let it in. You could sit with your feet dangling in the bay, and let it in. If it is a subject that you often think of in an attitude of resistance, it is really worthwhile reaching for some thoughts that feel better. You could launch an intention and never think about it again, and the Universe would yield it to you. You don’t have to clean up your vibration relative to anything, if you can just not think about it any more. That’s why we teach meditation. It’s easier to teach you to have no thought than to have pure positive thought. When you quiet your mind you stop thought; when you stop thought you stop resistance; when you stop resistance–then you are in a state of allowing.”
In other words, visualizing can be counterproductive if what you’re visualizing brings up resistant thoughts and feelings.
I think this explains my lack of results with regard to selling my recent manuscripts and winning lotteries. Although I visualize these events many times throughout the day, I have resistance about these things. The resistance is my fear that they won’t happen and my longing for them happening.
Holcomb’s experience has confirmed my belief that I need to be more concerned with how I feel than I am with what I’m visualizing.
And the experiment continues …..
Tags: Abraham-Hicks, bobsleigh, Feeling good, holcomb, Law of Attraction, Lottery, Money, olympics, The Secret, Visualization
March 2nd, 2010 at 6:14 pm
Awesome post. Awesome example. Holcomb’s story is very interesting. I missed that race and so didn’t hear or read about his story.