Comment by MarkoM on Visual Mental Imagery Training · 2015-10-11T07:31:53.719Z · LW · GW

Is it a wise idea to take any chemicals to acquire a skill?

You can not visualize if you've never actively exercised your mental muscle. As you all know, it's the same with everything else: there's no shortcut when learning anything - you have to invest serious time in learning.

We're just among the people who somehow "unlearned" using this wonderful ability (I'm convinced that all of us were able to visualize easily in our childhood).

I'm now 37 and I had to relearn it myself - by practicing everyday for at least 30 minutes staring at candles, geometric shapes, flickr-images, etc. - now after a couple of months I proved to myself: "This is something you CAN learn!"

And, it's worth every minute of time invested.

So, please guys, don't take any chemicals that in the end might just harm you. At least go through a month of disciplined mind-workout to prove to yourself that you have a weakened visualization-muscle that urgently needs your dedicated attention.

Practice at least for 10-15 minutes a day. You can find a selection of exercises on the Learn How To Visualize post.

I'd like the satisfaction of getting some of you to prove this to yourself, too. Just too many people believe that something is wrong with them.