The Importance of Imagining Future Success

"Seeing is believing" and "you gotta see it to be it" are phrases commonly encountered in many aspects of life. These phrases hit on the idea that visualizing something is critical to achieving or becoming that something. Related practice of mental visualization imagery and physical skills, especially in the context of sport psychology, clearly shows benefits on performance. But does this kind of imagery affect self-efficacy, and does that provide confidence and stress resilience?

Believing Is Seeing

Effective mental imagery is truly multisensory and can be done in isolation or as part of physical practice to leverage the most of mind-body connectivity. Donatella Di Corrado, Patrizia Tortella, Marinella Coco, Maria Guarnera, Matej Tusak, and Maria Chiara Parisi from Kore and Catania Universities in Italy and the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia published a study in Frontiers in Psychology about their work examining an effect of mental imagery on stress resilience in martial artists.

Martial artists, along with dancers and practitioners of modalities that involve complex motor skills and interactions with others, have extensive imagery practice as part of ongoing training. This can be in the shape of considering movement patterning against an imaginary opponent in forms or kata performance and in the guise of an opponent's attacks and reactions specifically for sports fighting applications. Di Corrado and colleagues note that martial artists who visualize success also increase confidence and stress management during competition. Judo players who extensively apply mental imagery have increased self-efficacy and "feel more prepared for matches and more resilient." In karate, mental imagery can also enhance confidence and self-efficacy, while in tae kwon do, such practice boosts confidence and "feeling more capable and focused during competitions."

Belief in Self-Efficacy Reduces Stress

Di Corrado and colleagues were especially interested in relationships between imagery style, stress, and self-efficacy. They studied a group of 110 young (21 to 23 years of age) martial arts athletes (61 males and 49 females) competing in karate, tae kwon do, and judo. On average, the participants had roughly 15 years of experience in martial arts. Each participant completed multiple questionnaires assessing vividness of visual imagery, movement, mental image transformation, self-efficacy, and psychological stress.

While there are some differences between modalities, there were no differences between men and women. Most interestingly, Di Corrado and colleagues showed that "self-efficacy plays a mediating role between imagery and stress." This outcome is strong "evidence for its importance in improving performance and managing stress in athletes." Clearly, mental imaging can be an effective practice on many levels.

Self-Efficacy Primes Visualization

We are a species that functions with a very heavy weighting on the visual system. It may, therefore, not be surprising that effective visualization practices may leverage inherent network properties in the visuomotor and sensorimotor systems. In my own martial arts training history, the importance of imagery was constantly emphasized by my teacher. We were told repeatedly that we must always visualize and imagine the attacker in front (or behind, to the side, below, etc.) of us at all times and seek to perform all movements in forms or fighting practice against a vivid image. In my own teaching, I constantly emphasize this as well.

From my perspective as a practitioner and a guide in martial arts for over 40 years, I know how effective visualization can be in shaping performance and meaning. What I had not considered until reading this paper was how such visualization might powerfully affect confidence (and vice versa) and thereby stress resilience. Especially in the context of motor skills, such practices have widespread benefit. Yet, even more generally across all behaviors, visualizing and imagining the positive outcomes we seek can help prepare us to best achieve them. While visualization of future success does not guarantee it, at best, it will help enable us, so why not take a positive approach in the present and toward the future?

(c) E. Paul Zehr (2025)