—–Forwarded Message—–
From: The Universe
Sent: Sep 20, 2006 3:21 AM
Subject: TUT… A Note from the Universe
If it were fun and easy, would you do it?
If the pay was out of this world; more than you could ever spend?
If signing your autograph and being adored by fans never got old, and you truly relished retelling your story again and again?
Brilliant, Karen, because all of the above can be imagined whenever you visualize.
You are just ace –
The Universe

Mike Dooley is the creative genius behind these weekday e-mails signed from The Universe. Many times, I receive a message that is uncannily on target with things that are occurring in my life. I especially wanted to talk about the importance of yesterday’s message because I think many people don’t understand the importance of visualizing their success prior to its appearance.

Athletes who win the big championship game will tell you that they have scored the winning points a thousand times in their minds before ever playing the game. Musicians know that to play beautifully on stage, they must first consistently create strong mental pictures of themselves walking confidently before an adoring crowd. The value of visualization is true for voice-over artists or anything else that you want to achieve in your life.

If you don’t know what you want, how do you expect to attain it?

Visualization works for all sorts of scenarios, large and small. I use visualization techniques for everything, but particularly for guiding my voice-over career. In voice-over, you always want to have a picture of your audience in your mind. You want to see that one person’s face and respond to their emotion. If I feel nervous about an audition, I concentrate on the positive outcome that I want to achieve. Before attending a networking event, I picture all of the friendly people I will meet who are working on exciting documentaries, training modules and audiobooks that might be enhanced with my voice.

On a larger scale, Wayne Dyer states that

The state of your life
is nothing more than a reflection of your state of mind.

I have written my goals for my voice-over business. I spend time each day reviewing those goals and sometimes even rewriting them. I learned long ago that it’s not enough to say that I want to be a working voice-over actor. That sentence could mean I have one low-paying job a year, but I’d be working. It’s like when you’re in a hotel and calling room service. You don’t call them and say “please bring some food” or, worse, “I have no idea why I picked up the phone and called you. I want something, but I have no idea what I want, what you provide or what I’m doing here.” If they didn’t hang up on you (which they might in scenario number two), they could bring you a cracker when you were salivating for a steak.

My daily routine now includes imagining what it will be like when my stellar voice-over goals have been met. I actually see myself doing specific things, being in certain places and owning certain things, having a precise amount of money in the bank, interacting with particular people, etc.

I don’t question how all of these things will happen. My job is to figure out what I want in my life, and it’s up to the Universe to figure out how to serve it up to me. Because I have so frequently visualized where I want to go in my voice-over career, I find that I am constantly thinking of creative ways to analyze a company’s problem or potential opportunities, approach them and cast myself into projects that I desire rather than passively waiting for casting through traditional audition processes.

Visualization is key to creating reality as you want it. The best thing about it, though, is that your new reality is always better than anything you could have dreamed possible!

If you think you don’t know how to visualize and harvest the fertile ground of your imagination, I heartily recommend the following resources to help jump-start your creative engine: