Scientists believe that we may experience real-world and imaginary actions in similar ways, explains Aymeric Guillot, Ph.D., a professor at the Center of Research and Innovation in Sport at University Claude Bernard Lyon, in France. Whether we walk on a mountain trail or only picture it, we activate many of the same neural networks—paths of interconnected nerve cells that link what your body does to the brain impulses that control it. You can use this to your advantage in different ways. For example, imagining yourself doing movements can help you get better at them: Legendary golfer Jack Nicklaus practiced each shot in his mind before taking it.
Mental workouts also stimulate the sympathetic nervous system, which governs our fight-or-flight response and causes increases in heart rate, breathing, and blood pressure. So simply envisioning a movement elicits nervous-system responses comparable to those recorded during physical execution of the same action, says Guillot.
Although it may sound like hocus-pocus, some research suggests that imagining could help you get results even when you don’t move a muscle. In one notable study that appeared in the North American Journal of Psychology in 2007, athletes who mentally practiced a hip-flexor exercise had strength gains that were almost as significant as those in people who actually did the exercise (five times a week for 15 minutes) on a weight machine.
If your challenge is more mental than physical—for instance, handling a difficult conversation—imagery can keep you calm and focused. “Mentally rehearsing maintaining a steady assertiveness while the other person is ignoring or distracting you can help you attain your goal,” says Kadish. Envisioning this calmness may also decrease physical symptoms of stress, like an increase in heart rate or stress hormones.
When you repeatedly imagine performing a task, you may also condition your neural pathways so that the action feels familiar when you go to perform it; it’s as if you’re carving a groove in your nervous system. Finally, on a purely psychological level, envisioning success can enhance motivation and confidence. Source:(Real Simple)
I’m saying to visualize positive images in your mind. NEVER LET ANY PERSON SAY IT’S OKAY NOT TO TAKE MEDICATION WHEN YOU’RE BIPOLAR.
“There is a particular kind of pain, elation, loneliness, and terror involved in this kind of madness. When you’re high it’s tremendous. The ideas and feelings are fast and frequent like shooting stars, and you follow them until you find better and brighter ones. Shyness goes, the right words and gestures are suddenly there, the power to captivate others a felt certainty. There are interests found in uninteresting people. Sensuality is pervasive and the desire to seduce and be seduced irresistible. Feelings of ease, intensity, power, well-being, financial omnipotence, and euphoria pervade one’s marrow. But, somewhere, this changes. The fast ideas are far too fast, and there are far too many; overwhelming confusion replaces clarity. Memory goes. Humor and absorption on friends’ faces are replaced by fear and concern. Everything previously moving with the grain is now against– you are irritable, angry, frightened, uncontrollable, and enmeshed totally in the blackest caves of the mind. You never knew those caves were there. It will never end, for madness carves its own reality.”
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