I have incorporated many of the commonly recommended high-performance habits into my life, such as seeking clarity and increasing productivity. For the most part, I have a relatively healthy lifestyle. I exercise several times a week, eat well, get enough sleep, and drink water. However, what I do not do is meditate, even though I have long been curious about meditation.

Meditation has many benefits. Emma Seppälä, a Co-Director of the Yale College Emotional Intelligence Project, contends that meditation sharpens memory skills and improves attention and emotional intelligence. Meditation also decreases anxiety while building resilience. Not surprisingly, mediation helps people focus and boost creativity. As we know, individual creativity is closely tied to organizational innovation.

Indisputably, these benefits are intriguing. However, I was also interested in another mental exercise that is often discussed along with meditation – visualization. By using their imagination, people can create whatever they want to happen in their life. Athletes are known to use the power of visualization during competitions all the time.

Many years ago, an immensely successful individual introduced me to a book, The Silva Mind Control Method. I purchased it. While I might have skimmed through it back then, I did not go into any depth of learning how to control my mind. Because I still have the book, I recently reread it and started to implement some of its techniques.

The Silva Method, as it is called today, was developed by Jose Silva. He was born in 1914 in Laredo, Texas. Although he was a radio technician, he had a deep interest in psychology, hypnosis, and intuition. He spent decades studying Freud, Adler, and Jung, and conducting mind experiments on himself and his children.

Silva identified four levels of consciousness in which the human brain operates: Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Theta, and he discovered that individuals could access extraordinary abilities and levels of awareness when they were in the Alpha state. We experience the Alpha level during relaxation and light sleep. The Beta level is our default level of consciousness during the day. The state of dreamless sleep is the Delta level, the deepest point of unconsciousness. Finally, the Theta level is a state of meditation and deep sleep. When we are at the Theta level, we can enhance our introspection and self-hypnosis.

By applying the techniques described in the book, Silva claimed that people could remember what they thought they had forgotten, they could control pain, speed up healing, become more creative, learn better, and solve everyday problems. As a result, individuals could develop inner peace, optimism, and a sense of control over their life.

The first step is learning how to meditate. It always amazes me how simple meditation is in terms of actions you have to take, but how incredibly difficult it is to practice meditation consistently and effectively. Knowing that meditation can help us use more of our mind and even expand our mind is a good reason to persevere. The following paragraph captures the essence of meditation:

“Something beautiful happens in meditation, and the beauty you find is calming. The more you meditate, the deeper you go within yourself, the firmer the grasp you will have of a kind of inner peace so strong that nothing in life will be able to shatter it.”

Visualization is crucial to the Silva Mind Control Method. During visualization, you do not just imagine an event, but you first desire the event, believe that the event can take place, and then expect it to occur. The Silva Method has a couple of techniques, such as creating a mental screen or the Three Fingers Technique, to help individuals recall information better.

The chapter that resonated with me the most was Your Words Have Power. “Words do not just reflect reality, they create reality.” It reminded me what Robert Kiyosaki said in his book Rich Dad Poor Dad. When Kiyosaki was explaining one of his financial principles, he highlighted the difference in triggers we create in our brain when we say, “I cannot afford this” versus “How can I afford this?”

While “mind control” can sound extreme, using the Silva Method techniques can be life-changing both for the individuals and for the organizations. That is why creating a vision of a company several years out can result in tremendous company growth. The focus and visualization techniques, similar to the Silva Method, give us a higher chance of achieving our desired goals.