Does visualising success actually help?

Visualisation has a slightly mystical reputation. Picture the outcome clearly enough, the story goes, and the world rearranges itself to deliver it. That version is lovely on a fridge magnet and not much use on a Tuesday morning.

There is a more practical version, and it has better evidence behind it.

Outcome imagery versus process imagery

The useful distinction is between imagining the result and imagining the route.

• Outcome imagery: crossing the finish line, opening the exam result, applause after the speech, the perfect lasagne coming out of the oven.
• Process imagery: the alarm going off and getting up anyway, the stretch of the race where it gets hard, walking to the front of the room and saying the first sentence, assembling the layers one by one.

A frequently cited study by Pham and Taylor, published in 1999, compared these two approaches with university students preparing for exams. As a 2025 paper in Applied Cognitive Psychology summarises it, students who imagined the process needed to succeed got better end-of-semester grades than those who imagined an idealised outcome, and part of the difference ran through better planning. The same paper notes that later work broadly supports focusing on obstacles, steps and implementation rather than on the desired result alone.

That makes intuitive sense. Picturing the outcome tells you what you want. Picturing the process tells you what to do.

What visualisation can do

Used well, rehearsing in your head is a kind of preparation:

• It surfaces practical problems. Imagining the morning of a race, you suddenly realise you don't know where to leave your bag.
• It makes the first step familiar. If you've already walked into the room in your head, walking in for real feels less like stepping off a cliff.
• It lets you plan for the bad patch. Imagine the moment the run gets hard, and decide now what you'll do: slow down, count lamp posts, think about lunch.

What it can't do

It can't stand in for doing the thing. It can't promise an outcome. And if all you picture is the glorious ending, it can even feel like a small reward in advance, a pleasant daydream that asks nothing of you.

How athletes use it

Mental imagery is a standard part of sport psychology. A resource written by a sport psychologist for the NSW Office of Sport in Australia describes it as a tool athletes use to rehearse in their minds before training or competition, or to refine a skill. It suggests using as many senses as possible, imagining in detail, and treating imagery as a learned skill that gets better with practice. It also points out that people differ a lot in how vividly they can picture things, which is worth knowing if your own mental images are faint.

A simple way to try it

Before something you care about, take five quiet minutes:

1. Picture the start in detail: where you are, what you're wearing, what you can hear.
2. Walk through the main steps in order, at roughly real speed.
3. Choose the hardest moment and imagine handling it, calmly and a bit imperfectly.
4. Finish with the very next physical action you'll take, not the triumphant end.

Then put the daydream away and go and do step one.