Womens Health

Give yourself a visual aid

Olympic athletes who visualise themselves outperforming the competition win more medals. What’s their secret? Science shows that imagining an activity fires up the same parts of your brain that work when you’re actually doing it. Consider this study published in the Journal of Neurophysiology: one group of participants exercised a finger for a month, while another group just imagined exercising it. Without even lifting a finger, the visualising group improved the digit’s strength by 22 percent, while the group that exercised got a 30 percent boost. When you hit a slump, visualise yourself as full of energy: delivering a strong presentation in your next important meeting, knocking out an hour of power yoga, or flying through a huge pile of paperwork.