Picture the speech going perfectly. See the ball going into the net. Visualisation shows up in nearly every NLP technique, and in sport, music and hypnosis too. Does it do anything?
What the research says
Mental practice works, a little. In a 1994 meta-analysis, Driskell, Copper and Moran combined 62 comparisons from 35 studies. They found that mental practice has a positive and significant effect on performance. The size of the benefit depended on the type of task, how long it was since the practice, and how long the practice lasted.
A later update found the same direction, with a modest size. A 2020 follow-up meta-analysis found that mental practice has a small but significant positive effect overall.
So imagining a performance helps, but it is not a miracle. It works best as an addition to real practice, not a replacement for it.
What kind of visualising helps
The research and the sport-psychology tradition point to a few features:
- Process, not just outcome. Rehearse the steps (breathing, posture, first sentence), not only the applause.
- Use several senses. What you see, hear, feel and do.
- First-person view. Seeing it through your own eyes, as if it is happening, is the usual advice, though people differ.
- Realistic speed. Roughly the pace you’d perform at.
- Include a wobble. Rehearsing a small mistake and recovering from it prepares you better than rehearsing perfection.
What doesn’t help
Studies of positive fantasies have found that picturing only the dream outcome can reduce effort in some people, because the mind treats the wish as partly achieved. A better approach is to imagine the outcome and the obstacles, then plan how you’ll deal with them. (This is often called mental contrasting; the specific research wasn’t checked for this article.)
How NLP uses it
NLP builds visualisation into many techniques:
- The swish pattern replaces a cue image with a desired one (NLP part 9).
- “Future pacing” means imagining yourself using a new skill in a real future situation.
- Outcome work asks what you will see, hear and feel when you’ve reached your goal (NLP part 13).
Future pacing is the most useful of these, because it is essentially mental rehearsal.
A five-minute routine
- Sit comfortably and breathe slowly for a minute.
- Pick one specific situation, such as the first two minutes of a presentation.
- Run through it in your mind: where you are, what you do, what you say.
- Add one small difficulty, such as losing your place, and see yourself handling it calmly.
- Finish by noticing how it feels to have done it well.
- Repeat on most days, and also do the real thing.
In hypnosis
Hypnosis uses vivid imagery in this same way, and mental rehearsal is the core of hypnosis for sport and public speaking (see hypnosis series, parts 18 and 36).
The bottom line
Visualising helps a bit, especially when it’s detailed, realistic and paired with real practice. Don’t expect results from imagining success alone.
Next in the series: Self-Talk and State Management: Steering Your Own Mind
This article is for general information and is not medical advice.