do you really want out of a creative visualization (cv) technique that you had just gotten out of a "Guided Imagery" book (maybe by Shakti Gawain) you borrowed from the library or a "Creative Visualization" e-book you just purchased and downloaded online or a manifesting article you read by Abraham Hicks? Results. Like anything else , you want results. You need results. Without results, you'd lose faith in the power of creative visualization to manifest what you truly desire in your life. And faith, belief, conviction is what you need to make any if not all creative visualization techniques to work, no matter what they are. It is not simply a matter of faith in the technique or belief in the person who taught you the technique. It requires belief in the process of creative visualization itself. How do you make sure you believe in the power of creative visualization to work for you? How do you install such a belief in your mind, in your heart and in your very soul, so that it would drive you to make anything you do work and get results? You need to arm yourself with the right mindset about creative visualization. And the right mindset can only come through right information. And hopefully the rest of this article serves to help you achieve that objective. As it was said, "The Truth shall set you free". Hopefully, with these truths in mind, you'll be armed with a more powerful mindset and gain a more resourceful perspective from which you can go about your creative visualization work more effectively. Truth # 1: Creative visualization is simple, but not easy. A propounder of a creative visualization technique may say that hers is a "Simple 3-Step (5-Step, or 7-Step) Process", but once you read her book or e-book, and actually get down into it , you'll find that there are many steps, many factors, many events, processes and things at work, much more than you initially imagined. This truth encompasses all the other truths below. Truth # 2: Creative visualization involves more steps than you imagine. There may be 3, 5, 7 or even more simple steps in a creative visualization technique, but eventually you will find there are many other sub-steps for each of these 3, 5 or 7 major steps that you have to do. More of this is explained in truth number 3. Truth # 3: Creative visualization involves more factors (internal & external) than you know. For one, like I said above, effective creative visualization work that actually manifests what you want, requires belief. That is an inner factor. It also requires you to clear away all your subconscious mental blocks that may prevent you from attaining what you desire. External factors? creative visualization can only work within the confines of what is possible in your 'reality'. That is, when you use cv to ask for something, you must ask for something realistic. Don't ask for a billion dollars when you can't even scratch a cent right now (okay , exaggeration). Start slow. Move progressively. And it also helps if you do your visualization work in an area where you are not easily disturbed or distracted. Common sense, isn't it? If the ones around you (family, friends) are known to be a cynical, skeptical, pessimistic lot, stay away from them for some time before - and after - your visualization sessions. You don't want their negative vibes to poison your belief in the process. What I meant was that you don't want their skeptical remarks, their cynical comments that stem from your willingness to do cv whatsoever to replay in your subconscious mind while you're doing your sessions. Leave some 'buffer time'. Truth # 4: Creative visualization requires the right amount of belief to work. Not too much (as in obsession, blind faith), nor too little. Though some claim that their technique requires no belief at all, what they are actually meaning is that their creative visualization technique requires just the right amount of belief for it to work. Or they can actually mean to give you a placebo. Since you believe them that it requires no belief for their technique to work, you go about it thinking that there is no belief involved in it, then it actually works! Then you start believing in it, only to find that (for many cases, not all) its effectiveness wanes. It's like dropping a ball to the ground. You just know if you let go of the ball from the grasp of your fingers , the ball will fall to the ground. You know that gravity is always there. You don't need to believe in gravity (what, all this while people and things have been floating around the earth before Newton's time?). Also, an over-obsessive belief in it is actually an illusion that stems from your lack of faith in it. Huh? "Too much" belief = lack of belief? It's like this - all this while, you've been skeptical about creative visualization. Then you're told that you need some belief for it to work. Since you're so enthusiastic about making it work, you overcompensate your previous lack of faith and you actually believe - too much - until it kills its effectiveness. Believing in something is like holding on to an egg (or think of something else fragile, like glass). Hold on to it too lightly, the egg or glass will fall from your clutch and smash into pieces. Hold on to it too tightly, the egg or glass will break in your hands. So, you need just the right amount of belief for creative visualization to work. Truth # 5: Creative visualization is an art as well as an exact science. All these internal and external factors, sub-steps, and concepts are making the creative visualization seem like an art as well as an exact science. In fact it is. As you learn more and more techniques you will find that many of its teachers will present to you concepts and philosophies that will make you see more of it as an art. The methodology of some creative visualization techniques will seem like it comes from some scientific procedu.