the power of visualization and picturing yourself achieving your goals is something that i believe is quite remarkable at keeping you motivated to continuing on the path to reaching your dreams when things get tough or tedious. this is something i've not only heard plenty of successful individuals preach about but have experienced first hand as well. growing up i was always one with an active imagination (yes i had an imaginary friend 'hockey' who must have been quite a klutz being that he broke so many things!) and at a point when my daydreams turned from purely fantasy to perhaps things i envisioned myself achieving i continued on picturing me in the 'future' accomplishing what i set out to do or drawing encouragement from what i envisioned others having done and wanting to follow suit.

when i started competing in track and other running races i found this is something very common and in fact an integral part of training is in mental; you do have to come to the line with a certain degree of confidence in your own training and abilities or you take yourself out of the race before you even start. another aspect is that racing hurts...there is no two ways about it and when that burn does set in one of the best ways to keep pushing onward is to think about how great you will feel at the end should you achieve what you set out to do. this is true in nearly any other parallel; when things start to pile up and you are at the point of breaking what separates those who keep going from those who give up or at least give in and settle? yes, a part of it comes down to natural ability and even luck but a major factor is how much you believe in yourself and that will bring with it a certain amount of fortitude to keep working, keep digging deeper to bring that dream, that vision, to reality.

yes, it doesn't always happen; plenty of people line up in the same race and they all want to win, they all believe they have a shot but of course only one person will cross the line first. yet even though plenty more people may fail at winning that particular race if they continue to have faith in their cause, to still feel the hunger, the desire to pursue their own victories they will put their nose back to the grinding stone and have the courage to come back next time with an equal, or even greater, amount of belief and try again. and even if they didn't win perhaps that wasn't their goal; maybe it was a certain time they had set out to beat and they very well could have done that.

we all have races in our lives and some of them we can choose to enter in, the ones that mean the most to us, or instead dissuade ourselves from doing so because we don't believe it could ever happen. yet people who imagine themselves conquering those goals and picturing what 'could be,' have in my opinion a far greater shot in at least making it to the starting line of the race instead of passing up on it for the fact that it may seem too daunting and the chance of failure too great. and to keep on running and outlast the competition you must have an equal amount of imagination because continuing on in pursuit is even harder than just beginning. there will be obstacles and daily training and tasks will no doubt become tiring and tedious, sometimes even mundane; set backs will tempt you to give up but if you hold tight to the picture of the future you envision you will find the strength, the courage to look forward and put one foot in front of the other.

failure is also something that you will no doubt be met with, no one achieves their goals without having first failed at something; so do not think of it as a deterrent to continue on but perhaps just another barrier to cross or a veer in the course that you will overcome, adapt if necessary, and continue the race to the finish line.