Mental Imagery and Manifestation: Learn how to use their power for your benefit.

In this episode of Stand Up and Redo, Petra delves into the transformative power of mental imagery and manifestation. She breaks down how these techniques aren’t just abstract concepts but practical tools that can shape your daily life. Through real-life examples and actionable tips, Petra shows how consistently applying these methods can help you achieve personal growth and success. Tune in to discover how to harness the power of your mind to create the life you envision.

Transcript

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Welcome to Stand Up and Redo with Petra Demuse, the podcast where transformation isn't just possible, it's inevitable. If you've ever felt stuck, weighed down by past choices, or like life's chapters have been written in ink, think again. Here we believe every day is a fresh page and you hold the pen. We're diving deep into real stories, old insights, and life-shifting strategies to help you stand up, shake off the old, and rewrite your narrative with power and purpose. Ready to rise, let's get started. Are you struggling with starting something that you know you know you need to start, or something that you need to restart doing and you've been putting it off? Well, today I'm gonna help you with that. I've been thinking about it a lot, a lot all week. And just today I used it. I used these skills that I'm gonna share with you, and I'm excited to share them with you. So they're really manifestation and mental imagery. It's the quiet power of seeing your life before you live it. There's something that I need to share with you so urgently because this is so helpful for you. It's gonna be helpful for you if you're just trying to do a simple task, a really hard task, if you're trying to clear your mind, maybe reset your thought processes, where you're going back into a place and remembering something good in your life, replacing like thoughts that are not good with good thoughts. But overall, starting something up that you've been putting off. And that's what we're gonna talk about right now. I want to take you into two very specific moments in my life, one from when I was a teenager and one from just recently, because both taught me something powerful about the way we see our lives before we actually live them. And if you stay with me, we're gonna talk about the three things mental imagery and manifestation, how what they actually are, and how they're different. And something that matters even more than those two things. We're gonna talk about how we can gently support each other, people who might be hurting without overwhelming them. So, my first story, I'm gonna go back to a teenage runner. I always talk about running. I love running. Matter of fact, I just started running today. And it was hard for me to get started. I'm the kind of person that acts like a run is gonna kill me for like months. I think about it. And I just do these like walks in the woods, or I ride my bike, and I'm like, I kind of think, oh, I want to run, but I don't think I'm ready yet. Get in my head about it. Well, today I just bumped out three miles, just out of the blue, right through the woods. But it wasn't out of the blue. I had to think about it, and I'm gonna tell you how I figured out I was gonna do it. And it had a lot to do with mental imagery. So, but we won't talk about today first. We'll talk about when I was a teenage runner, and I'll take you back to when I used to run cross country. There's something about running long distances that just strips away everything. It's just you, it's just your breath, it's your body, and it's your mind. And it's just this like healing. For me, it's a very healing process, just like other things might be healing for someone else. Running heals my mind, it heals my body, damages my body sometimes, and it heals my soul. So I remember doing something very specific before those runs when I was actually racing. I would see the course in my head, not vaguely, not casually, I would see it vividly. I would picture the starting line, I would feel the nerves, I would even experience like how my body felt when it would relax just before the gun would go off. I could actually like in my mind feel what was happening to my body. It was such a vivid mental image for me that it was a physical process. And this wasn't happening while I was running. This was happening while I was laying in my bed the night before, or maybe sitting in a chair somewhere, or just contemplating the run. Um, instead of having fear about it, I would have this vivid, peaceful feeling of how I was gonna conquer this course. So I would take my, I would envision myself taking off strong and controlled. I would imagine the hills, the turns, the exact moment where my legs would start to burn, and I would see myself pushing through anyway. I wasn't hoping to win, I was rehearsing winning. Over and over again in my mind, I would see the final stretch, the moment where everything hurts. And instead of slowing down, I would imagine myself finding something deeper, something stronger, and crossing that finish line that wasn't called manifestation at all. Back then, it was called mental imagery. Matter of fact, I think it's still called mental imagery. It was powerful, it is powerful, because what I was doing without even understanding it was training my mind to believe something was possible before my body even had to prove it. And I have to just tell you this one little tidbit of information that I loved. I was talking with my cousin, we were both runners, and we were kind of strategizing over how we were going to win this race, and she said something to me that was so uh powerful, it sounds really silly, but she said, Petra, when you hit the corner, when you get around the corner and you're running and you see like um a curve and you can't see what's around the bend, run faster, run faster to get around the bend. So, in my mind's eye, when I would imagine myself in a course, especially that I didn't know, because sometimes you don't know the courses that you're gonna run, and you have to try to do the best you can to just get a description of it and then imagine it in your mind. Especially those courses, I would see like a turn. And then when I was actually running on the real run, when I would see a bend, it would it would like spark my me to run faster. It just would be like, okay, there's a bend, speed up, speed up. And when I was thinking that, I wasn't thinking about how tired my body was or how like my heart was pounding or how it was a little short of breath. I was just thinking, Petra, speed up, speed up, there's a corner. So it's weird, but those weird mind games you play with yourself, it's amazing how it can make things happen. So, what is mental imagery? It's intentional for one thing. It's specific. It's almost like you're rehearsing. You're not wishing for something, you're practicing it in your mind. Athletes did this for decades, in the 80s and 90s, especially. This was a big deal. Olympians, runners, performers, they were visualizing every step, every move, every moment, because your brain doesn't fully distinguish between something vividly imagined and something actually experienced. Whoa, that's wild. So when the real moment comes, you're not reaching, you're recognizing it. So today, I had this 3.2 mile run that I wanted to do, and I knew that I wanted to end at my Jesus statue. It's a statue at St. John Newman's Catholic Church that I sit at in a bench and I pray. And I remember thinking, I wonder how, where, what kind of like route I should take to end right at the statue. I was so good with doing the mental imagery in my mind that I actually created a course in my mind without ever stepping foot onto the usual like different runs that I do. And I ended right at the Jesus statue at 3.29. It didn't go to 3.3. I got to the Jesus statue by 3.29 miles. And it was because I was able to create a run in my mind before I ever did the run and figure out what I thought 3.2 miles would be. Now, I I'm used to running 3.2 miles because that's my usual run, but I just had to share that with you. I had a vision. I wanted to run in that specific place in the woods where I like to sit and pray, and I mapped it in my mind and the path, the turns, the feeling of being in the trees, the rhythm of the run, and I pictured myself finishing right there in that exact spot. I can't even believe the peaceful, rounded, connective feeling I had. And then I went and I sat at that Jesus statue after my pr after my run and I prayed. Oh my goodness. Everything was just so perfect. I had seen myself do it, I watched myself do it, and I did it. So, is this the same thing I used as a teenager? People would call this now maybe manifestation. Mental imagery versus manifestation. What's the difference? So let's talk about this because I think this is where things get interesting. Um, mental imagery and manifestation are related, but they are not identical. Mental imagery is about practice. Like I said before, it's structured, it's intentional, it's grounded in action. You are visualizing something that you're actively working toward. Manifestation is about today. Today, what it's about today is broader. Manifestation includes your belief, your energy, your alignment, your mindset. It's about becoming the person who experiences the outcome, not just rehearsing the outcome itself. But mental imagery says, I'm going to see myself do this and I can perform it. Manifestation says, I'm going to align my thoughts, emotions, and beliefs. So this becomes part of my reality. So one's tactical and one's holistic, right? But here's the truth: they do overlap. Both require one thing. You have to believe in something before you can fully step into it. The benefits of both are when you use mental imagery, you build confidence, you reduce fear, you prepare yourself for challenges before they even happen. So I really feel like if you're in a crisis in health, especially if you have maybe like some um challenges emotionally in your life, or maybe if you deal with um, you know, some kind of uh um mental um anguish or disorder or anxiety or fear, I just really feel like these two things are gonna help you. And I really challenge you to try to use them if you can. When you practice manifestation, you expand and you believe it's possible, you shift your mindset, you start noticing opportunities that you might have missed before. And when the two come together, that's where something really powerful happens. You don't just hope for something, you don't just visualize it, you start living like it's already unfolding in your life. So here's what I really wanted to tell you about because this really matters. Not everyone is in a place where they want to hear about manifestation, and not everyone wants strategy. Not everyone needs a technique. Some people, I really have to stress this because I don't want you to feel like, oh, she's telling me this, and this is what I have to do, and I don't even know how to imagine. Stop, don't feel like that. It's very um easy to start pouring this into you and telling you what you need to do. Just visualize it, just manifest it, just think positive. But sometimes that's not what someone needs, and you might not need that right now. So I'm not a professional, and I'm sharing all this great information with you, and I'm hoping that some of you can retain it and use it, but I'm not a professional person. So my disclaimer is take this with a word of salt, with a word of not of salt, with a four with a grain of salt. I don't know. I can't think of the thing I want to say. Take this with caution. Think about this carefully. Don't think that this is gonna be the cure all for you, but I really do challenge you to try it. I really do. So um, you might not need this right now, though. You might just need to be heard, you might just need to talk, you might need to be in pain, you might need to feel hurt, but this might be something that can help you. If you can't shift your mindset overnight, don't beat yourself up. But we can pause and we can listen and we can ask those people who do need help to how we can help them instead of assuming that we can just tell them to do mental imagery. But if you can do this, please try it. So for one person, mental imagery may not feel empowering. For another, it might feel exhausting. For one person, manifesting might feel hopeful, for another, it might feel like pressure. So instead of giving answers, let's give you presence on what matters more than any technique ever could. So I want to get into the science of this. This is really fun for me to talk about um science. So I want you to, of course, think about everything I just talked about, mental imagery, and the fact that yes, you use your mind with it, yes, you visualize your life, and yes, you do believe in something bigger for yourself. But I also want to share with you the the um science part of it, which is coming down to right now. I can't wait to share this part with you. So I'm gonna go through here, and I'm just getting to it. So I'm probably gonna erase this part of the video, I think. What is happening to your body and to your brain when you are doing mental imagery? What's really the physiological process? What's the scientific part of what's going on inside of you? It's not mystical, it's not magical, it's pretty remarkable. So your brain runs the program without moving your body. When you vividly imagine an action like running a course, your brain activates many of the same regions it would use if you were physically doing it. So, motor cortex, it plans the movement, premotor cortex, it sequences the movement, and the cerebellum fine-tunes coordination and timing. The basal ganglia supports habit and movement patterns. So the differences are your brain sends inhibitory signals down your spinal cord, so your muscles don't actually fire. So you're essentially doing a dry run of the movements. It's a neural rehearsal. The neural pathways get strengthened, neuroplasticity. Every time you mentally rehearse something, neurons that fire together wire together, synoptic connections become stronger, called long-term um potentiation. This means the pathway for that action becomes faster and more efficient. When you actually perform it, your brain says, Oh, we've done this before. This is why athletes feel more prepared after visualization. It's not imagery practice, it's real neural training. So your body responds emotionally and physiologically. Mental imagery doesn't just stay in your head, it affects your body too. Heart rate can increase or calm down, depending on the imagery. Breathing pattern shift, stress hormones like cortisol. Oh, I hate, well, cortisol is like my enemy right now because I have this big belly. It may decrease with positive visualization. Dopamine motivation reward can be released when you imagine success. When you imagine success. So that's why I say if you're hurting right now and you're reliving something that happened to you is sad or horrible, go back in your mind and just pause and take breaths and just think about a time when something was rewarding you, something was making you feel good, something was giving you success. Go relive that. Your body partially believes the experience. That's why visualizing success can reduce anxiety. Visualizing challenges can prepare you to handle stress better. Your brain improves prediction and decision making. Your brain is fundamentally a prediction machine. Like I predicted the 3.2 miles. I couldn't believe it. It was like, I didn't know how it happened. And I have to give a little um talk about. I do a two-minute plank, like probably five times a week. And when I do that two-minute plank, I do these weird little like um other exercises for two minutes. Like I'm like, and I do like this thing where I'm like, okay, I'm gonna do five of these, five of these, ten of these, six of these, like a leg lift or like an arm uh fist pump, or I do like weird stuff in that two-minute plank because I'm trying to just like first off get it over. But I've learned so it's this is the weirdest thing. When I create like an exercise routine in my head while I'm doing the two-minute plank to make the two minutes go fast, like I'll say, okay, I'm gonna uh stretch my fingers five times on the right hand, five times on the left hand. I'm gonna twist my ankle six times around on the right, six times around on the left. And I do this whole thing where I think about what I'm gonna do in that two minutes. The very end of the last exercise, my two-minute alarm goes off because somehow my mind and body have worked so cohesively that I can figure out exactly how long it's gonna take to do these exercises. I don't know how it happens. It's like, you know, when you wake up at 5:30 without an alarm clock every morning and you're just like, how did I do that? There's just things that you don't understand, the mind-body connection are so powerful. So basically, when you use mental imagery, you assimilate future scenarios. Your brain tests responses. What will I do when this gets hard? Yeah, what's what am I gonna do? Am I gonna run faster? Am I gonna work harder? Am I gonna like take a deep breath? You preload decisions so you don't hesitate in real time. I missed a flight to Morocco last week. And I started to panic and I started to cry and I started to be scared and I started to panic and I did mental imagery. I actually stopped and I imagined myself just standing up tall and walking to agency and not looking afraid. I imagined myself doing it because in my head I thought, okay, if you look foolish, you look afraid, you're terrified, you cry, people are gonna worry about you, people are gonna hone in on you, you're gonna look more like a victim. I was like, all right, girl, you need to get it together. And I did like a little mental imagery of myself walking to agency. I even imagined myself, that's right, but tickle. I even imagined myself walking into the agency and sitting calmly down and talking to the person about what I needed from them and hoping that they could give it to me. It all worked out. I won't get into it, but it worked out, maybe not exactly how I wanted it to, but it worked out. And I'm gonna cough again. I'm so sorry. Oh my goodness. Okay. The prefrontal core flat is involved with planning, decision making. The hippocampus is in memory and spinal mapping. So my 3.2 mile run felt aligned because I had already mapped it internally before doing it externally. Why it works best when paired with action? Here's where I'll gently ground this. Mental imagery does not replace physical action. Whoa. So you can't sit here and imagine a 3.2 mile run and go, oh, thank God, I just imagined that. I just burned like 400 calories. Thank God, I don't have to go run really. No, it doesn't replace it. But it does improve skill acquisition. It increases your confidence, it reduces performance anxiety, it enhances focus and execution. And the strongest results come when you combine imagery, repetition, real-world practice. So as a teenager, here I was strengthening my motor pathways and emotional resilience. In my recent run, I was engaging spatial mapping and predictive processing. Different moments, some underlying biology, but the simple truth, mental imagery works because your brain activates real movement circuits. Your nervous, your neurons are physically strengthened, strengthening connections, but your body responds as if it's partially real. Your brain becomes better at predicting and executing. I used to uh teach um a course and I used to have to do the th um section on liver failure in the hospital that I worked at. It was a critical care course. And I loved doing the teaching about liver failure. It was really uh liver is just this complex organ. It's amazing. And I used to actually do mental imagery of myself standing there and explaining each thing that the liver does, and you know, how we have to um how we would take care of a person in liver failure. So it was really a neat course, and imagining it helped me stand tall and be um very confident in my um presentation because it's nerve-wracking talking about something like that. And um, even some, I think, higher level nurses were in the course, so I was really nervous about that. But I've always felt like they asked me really good questions and I was able to answer them confidently. And I think it was because I had done this mental imagery in my head of standing there and speaking to them. I even just imagined how it would feel to. There. I even ran through the course in my mind. I ran through the outline in my mind and kind of it wasn't like I stood in front of the mirror and talked and did it, but that actually helps too. I did it more of a mental imagery process where I outlined myself doing it. So basically, you're not just thinking positively, you're training your nervous system in advance. And I'm gonna jump down here because I want to tell you more about the science, too. Um it's just it's unbelievable. Um, the fascinating is your brain is sending signals to your body to hold back the movement so you don't physically start running in your living room. But you're rehearsing your life before you step into it. And every time you do that, your brain strengthens those pathways. So I am going to jump down here and tell you I'm gonna have to erase this part, I think, because it's a little slow. When you feel calm, when you feel grounded and safe, your body opts from a parasympathetic state that we call rest and regulate. And in that state, you think more clearly, you connect better, and you perform better. So if manifestation includes emotional alignment, what you're really doing is helping your body get into a state where it can actually function at its best. So when you put all this together, mental imagery is the rehearsal, manifestation is the alignment, mental imagery says, I've seen myself do this before. Manifestation says, I'm becoming the person who lives this. And both of them meet right here in your brain, your body and your nervous system. Suddenly, me, that teenage girl running my race, and me sitting at the end of that 3.2 mile run in the woods, they weren't separate stories. They're the same process, just understood at a deeper level. And maybe, maybe you've been I've been you've been doing this your whole life. I've been doing this my whole life. Like I said, when I was in Morocco, I did it in like like that. I just stopped myself and I imagined myself fixing the the nightmare situation I was in. And I didn't even realize it. I just was doing it. Um, so there you go. I want to tell you what my stand-up and redo is. Really good stand-up and redo. I am imagining myself um learning Italian and speaking it fluently. Actually, I'm imagining myself not just learning Italian, but speaking it fluently. I'm not imagining myself speaking it just to get by. I'm imagining having a full-on conversation with another person who speaks Italian. I'm imagining myself being a Christian woman, going to church, developing relationships with people, and just sharing what I know about Jesus Christ with them. I'm imagining and I'm manifesting that in my life right now. I'm imagining myself doing cold plunges. Because I'm gonna start doing them. I've been doing cold showers, which actually do it is amazing what it does. I don't know if it's doing anything to my mind, but it's amazing what it's doing to my body right now. I do feel like when I get out of that cold shower, man, it feels really good. When I get out of the hot shower, I'd be like, oh, I gotta go lay down. My body would be so hot, but the cold shower, it's like boom, I'm like, all right, I'm ready to go. So I'm kind of excited about finding a cold plunge community somewhere. I'm imagining myself in the month of July either completely quitting my YouTube videos and podcasts and just pulling away from it and giving myself a break because I haven't like taken off and become successful. Or I'm imagining myself having like millions of people watch my YouTube channel and it being successful and I stick with it. And both ways that I'm imagining it, I'm okay. Because if I have to stop doing this, I'm really excited about getting into learning Italian, traveling a little more, spending more time with friends. But if I keep it up and it becomes successful, I'm really excited too because I would love to develop this into a totally different platform, uh, more where I'm interviewing people who are downtrodden or struggling, who have turned their life around. And I'm doing that not just sitting at a computer, but traveling around, meeting people. I would love to do that. So I imagine myself in all these different scenarios right now. This is my these are my short-term mental imagery goals. And then day to day, I'm imagining myself doing that run in the woods, waking up and doing yoga, even if I have to imagine it before I do it, just to get myself motivated. I'm doing that. So take it and use it. There's so many ways you can use it. Stand up and redo. How are you gonna stand up and redo with mental imagery and manifestation? And if it's not for you, I understand. That's okay. But if you are gonna do it, would you share in the comments with me? Would you like my YouTube channel, please? Would you subscribe to it and would you share it? Like, subscribe, share. I don't think it's too much to ask. I ask you to do that, but I also ask you to throw some things in the comments about what you're gonna do or how you're gonna do it, or if this helped you, because I truly believe mental imagery and manifestation have been around a long time, I know, but I think people forget about them, and they are so crucial for you to stand up and redo. Thank you. Hi, I'd like to give credit to Sarah Gephardt for the cover page of this podcast. This podcast is a work based on the personal experiences, reflections, and memories of the speaker. The events described are true to the best of the speaker's knowledge and recollection. Some names, locations, identifying characteristics, and timelines have been changed or altered to protect the privacy of the individuals involved. In some cases, composite characters have been created or dialogue has been reconstructed based on memory. The intention of this podcast is not to defame, malign, or harm any individual or entity. Rather, it is to share the speaker's journey with honesty, vulnerability, and integrity. Any opinions expressed are solely those of the speaker and are not intended as statements of fact regarding any person, group, or organization. Listeners should keep in mind that human memory is inherently subjective and selective, and while every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, this podcast reflects the speaker's perspective and truth. Thank you.