Is it OK (Catholic) to Visualize Goals?

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I’m not talking about new age/law of attraction/putting it to the universe nonsense. However, I learned years ago from the principal of my Catholic high school (he was also the football coach) to visualize a scenario ahead of time in preparation for an event - be it an exam, an athletic challenge, a performance, etc. He explained the technique to us in purely psychological terms - no new age mumbo jumbo whatsoever and I have found it helpful. However, after watching Sharon Lee Giganti & Johnette Benkovic and a few others, I wonder if I’ve been dabbling in something I shouldn’t.

Any opinions?
 
I know nothing of the women you mention…but why would visualising goals be a problem?

When I cook a meal, I begin by visualising the meal. The raw ingredients look nothing like the finished meal, it is only through visualising the finished product that I can plan out the ingredients and cooking processes.

When a painter paints, they might have a visualisation of what they intend to achieve, even though their canvas starts out blank.

And (to take on your example) when a football coach devises plays, they and the team visualise the outcomes.

Such visualisation are appropriate in just about any other endeavour you might undertake, and there’s nothing unCatholic about it.
 
I guess I should have explained a bit further. In my mind I differentiate between visualizing a goal and mentally running through the steps I need to take to attain it and the new age notion of the law of attraction, otherwise known as “the secret”

Folks who subsribe to this practice believe they can simply think about what they want and the universe manifests it. They claim it’s related to quantum physics, but the two women I mentioned above (both former new age people who have since reverted to Catholicism) claim it is more like good old fashioned sorcery.

So I guess my question is are the two practices - visualization and evoking the law of attraction entirely different things or are they all on a continuum?
 
For many people visualization as you (and not the folks from The Message) describe it is just naturally the way they think and plan. Nothing wrong with it at all.
 
Thanks Underacloud & Lily M. That was helpful. It think I got a little spooked by watching Sharon Giganti’s video last night. I got worried that I was on a slippery slope 😦
 
Catya said:
So I guess my question is are the two practices - visualization and evoking the law of attraction entirely different things or are they all on a continuum?
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They are not on a continuum.

There is nothing wrong with visualising a goal as a way to mentally prepare for the task ahead and create a positive mindset favourable to a good outcome (simply positive thinking).

To invoke (rather than evoke) some law of universal attraction is definitely anti-Catholic. It replaces God’s world with an imagined world in which other supernatural forces are at play. Yes, it’s wrong, but very different to the above.

Does that address your concern?
 
What you describe as visualizing a goal and going through the steps is suggested by St Feancis de Sales as a part of one’s mental prayer: we should consider a problem we foresee and think through, sort of practicing in our imagination, how to handle it. Also for areas in which we wish to improve.

What you are describing sounds like what God gave us our imaginations for 🙂
 
Catya said:
I’m not talking about new age/law of attraction/putting it to the universe nonsense. However, I learned years ago from the principal of my Catholic high school (he was also the football coach) to visualize a scenario ahead of time in preparation for an event - be it an exam, an athletic challenge, a performance, etc. He explained the technique to us in purely psychological terms - no new age mumbo jumbo whatsoever and I have found it helpful. However, after watching Sharon Lee Giganti & Johnette Benkovic and a few others, I wonder if I’ve been dabbling in something I shouldn’t.

Any opinions?
Click to expand...
I think what you’re talking about is just positive thinking - and there’s nothing wrong with that!
🙂

Personally, while she is correct about many things, I find Johnette Benkovic to be a little over the top (perhaps it’s because I’m Irish).

I think there is nothing wrong with visualizing your objectives to encourage you to complete a project.
 
Yes, I agree Johnette B. does seem to think there’s a demon hiding behind every bush, so to speak. S. Giganti did admit about herself in her video that “the woman holding the hammer sees nails everywhere” so at least she’s self-aware 😉

Thanks everyone for the reassurance & I will read up on St. Francis de Sales.
 
Catya said:
. . . after watching Sharon Lee Giganti & Johnette Benkovic and a few others, I wonder if I’ve been dabbling in something I shouldn’t.

Any opinions?
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I can’t imagine how the practice of setting and visualizing goals contradicts any teaching in the catechism? In fact** how is it different than prayer**, where I visualize both what I’m grateful for, as well as asking for God’s help in areas where I may need to grow? As I pray, I can’t help but visualize mysellf as a more loving brother to my family, when that is what I’m praying for.

I listened to a youtube video by Sharon and noticed,
  • she criticized the new-age explanation that the benefits are caused “by the vibrations of our thoughts and feelings” I’ve read of people giving a similar explanation to the power of prayer.
  • She mentioned the “Sin of Simon” to remind us that all gifts come from God.
Visualizing goals is as much sorcery as praying for the same goal. The good and bad of it is wrapped up in the goal you are seeking.
 
Catya said:
I’m not talking about new age/law of attraction/putting it to the universe nonsense. However, I learned years ago from the principal of my Catholic high school (he was also the football coach) to visualize a scenario ahead of time in preparation for an event - be it an exam, an athletic challenge, a performance, etc. He explained the technique to us in purely psychological terms - no new age mumbo jumbo whatsoever and I have found it helpful. However, after watching Sharon Lee Giganti & Johnette Benkovic and a few others, I wonder if I’ve been dabbling in something I shouldn’t.

Any opinions?
Click to expand...
Any good trainer or coach will tell you that mental preparation is just as important as physical preparation. In a sport you visialize yourself going through the motions ahead of time to prepare yourself. You end up performing better.

I think I remember reading some Pacheco studies that affirmed that those who used visualization before a performance did better. It has nothing to do with the secret. It is simply the fact that everything you do is an exercise of your brain and by visualizing it you learn to perform better.
 
St_Francis said:
What you describe as visualizing a goal and going through the steps is suggested by St Feancis de Sales as a part of one’s mental prayer: we should consider a problem we foresee and think through, sort of practicing in our imagination, how to handle it. Also for areas in which we wish to improve.

What you are describing sounds like what God gave us our imaginations for 🙂
Click to expand...
You are correct when you call it practice because that is exactly what it is.
 
It would be impossible to accomplish anything without imagining the goal.

Could you bake a cake without imagining what it will be like? No. You wouldn’t start out baking it in the first place.

Infinitely more could you not make the long road to becoming a doctor without imagining what being a doctor means.

These New Age crazies will write any nonsense to sell books. How could your thoughts interfere with the quantum mechanics of the universe’s natural laws of cause and effect and all that, as if the universe knew what you were doing?
This is hogwash.
 
Could you not, in visualising the goal see God’s power working to make it manifest? Then you know that if it happens it is only through God’s Will that it has manifested (although you through your visualising have in a way prayed to God for it to happen?)
God can see into our hearts and our minds and images, as well as hear the words we say in prayer.
 
MirandaRiver said:
Could you not, in visualising the goal see God’s power working to make it manifest? Then you know that if it happens it is only through God’s Will that it has manifested (although you through your visualising have in a way prayed to God for it to happen?)
God can see into our hearts and our minds and images, as well as hear the words we say in prayer.
Click to expand...
No - because not everything we want, not all our goals, are His will, nor will He work with His power to make those which are contrary to His will manifest.

Even His own Son, who prayed for relief from His suffering, did not presume to ‘see God’s power working to make it manifest’ - because on a fundamental level He knew that it was the Father’s will that He suffer. So instead He humbly asked ‘not my will, but Yours be done.’

We are God’s servants. We pray to learn what He wants us to do for Him, not to tell Him what to do for us.
 
I am a new age crazy.

Perhaps I will return to a more Catholic understanding of this in the future, but right now Law of Attraction is changing my life for the better in ways I could never have imagined.

The Law of Attraction implies, that we as individuals and collective consiousness are the primary creators of reality, and not God.

However, as I read these posts here, I believe Law of Attraction could be applied in a Catholic way.

One of the pre-requisites to using the Law of Attraction is to decide what you want to manifest. It is highly personal, with no reference to God’s will.

But what if you took God’s will into account? The actual practice of Law of Attraction involves feeling Gratitude for what you want to achieve, feeling as though you have already achieved it, and letting go, and letting the goal manifest.

This seems awfully similar to the Christian notion of Gratitude for what God wants to give us. Christ says he wants to give us peace, life to the full, etc. And the LOA concept of “letting go” is in a way very similar to the Christian notion of ‘detachment’.

So I think for Catholics, law of attraction is fine, but you don’t get to choose what you want to create based on your own desires, but based on God’s specific will for your life.
 
I don’t think the " law of attraction " is real and I know it is against Catholic and biblical teaching. Visualizing ones self giving a successful speech or winning a race, getting that promotion is what I still have confusion about. Is it consistent with Catholic teaching or not?
 
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