Stephen Hawking’s Power of Visualization

Occasionally, I find someone who says, “I can’t visualize.”
While this may be true in rare instances, it is not most of the
time.

When someone says, “I can’t visualize,” they usually mean, “I’m
not very good at this.”

That’s fine. As Yoda might say, “Practice we can.”

Whether you are practiced or not at the essential success skill
of visualization, consider this interesting example of what one
mind can do when absolutely necessary.

Professor Stephen Hawking possesses one the world’s more
formidable minds locked in one of the world’s most useless
bodies.

A victim of Lou Gehrig’s disease, Hawking has lived for decades
with an almost total loss of motor skills.

He is also one of the world’s most brilliant cosmologists and
mathematicians, holding the chair at Cambridge once occupied by
Isaac Newton.

Since he cannot hold a pen or turn a page, he has to work out
all the mind-numbing subtleties of his art between his ears.

So, after much practice, he can visualize complex geometric
forms and study them much as a normal person might use a
diagram.

On top of this amazing feat of concentration, Professor Hawking
can think through arcane complexities about these forms that
bring the acronym “MEGO” to mind.

(My eyes gloss over.)

You might say, with some justification, that Nature has taken
away one resource (the hands) and replaced it with another (the
mind).

While this is true, that is still some serious visualization.

Fortunately, Dr. Hawking is blessed with a mind as powerful as
God makes them.

Also as fortunate, we mere mortals don’t need such grey matter
to master the art of visualization.

So, if visualization doesn’t seem to come naturally, look up,
and practice.

Use this skill and reach for the stars.