How to do Proper Visualization?

The mind is an incredibly powerful tool for turning stress on and off. To turn stress off, you want to create a safe place in your head where you can always retreat when the going gets tough. The best way to do that is through visualization. With your eyes still comfortably closed, take another deep breath in through your nose, out through your mouth, and then do the following:

1. Think of a place you’ve been that makes you feel happy and comfortable. You may think of the seashore, a forest, or your childhood bedroom —wherever you remember feeling totally content. “See” that place in your mind’s eye. Smell the smells. See the colors. Hear the sounds. Be there. See yourself in that blissful environment.
2. Think about a special person in your life: someone you love unconditionally, someone who cherishes you. See the person slowly walk toward you as you stand in your joyous place. Feel suffused with comfort and well-being and happiness. Feel delighted to see this person and feel how delighted the person is to see you. Let the person’s love wash over you as he gets closer and closer. Finally, when the person is right next to you, look in the person’s eyes. Don’t say anything, just look in their eyes. Everything you need to know and say to one another is said in your eyes.
3. See a pinpoint of pure, bright, warm light. Watch it expand until it fills the entire space. Feel its warmth. You and your special person are bathed in the glow of that special light. You have no cares, no worries. You feel comfortable and warm and loved and accepted. Experience what it feels like to be surrounded by that light.
4. It’s time for your special person to go, but you don’t feel any sadness. Feel the love remain as the person leaves.
5. It’s time for the light to recede, but you feel no loss or sadness. Instead, you still feel the warmth and well-being the light gave you.
6. It’s time to leave your wonderful place. But you’re really not leaving for good; you’re taking it with you. Now and forever, this spot, this feeling, will be available to you whenever you want to go there. It’s you. In you. Always.
7. With your eyes still closed, slowly become aware of your surroundings. Feel the chair, hear your heart beating. Feel happy, warm, accepted, content.
8. Slowly open your eyes. Sit for a moment. Know that the calm you feel now can be the calm you feel throughout your entire date . . . if you let it happen.