For my latest articles and special offers, subscribe to Jess Ang's Intuitive Updates here.

Power of Envisioning

October 2026

Envision

In a previous article about tea leaf readings and intention setting, I referred to a retreat that I’d been on, where participants were encouraged to set intentions for each day (more than 10 years later, those “Eyebody” retreats are still offered around the world by the creator of the Eyebody method, Peter Grunwald). This intention setting practice was said to be most effective if done the night before, while preparing to sleep. We were encouraged to first “see” the day we’d just had, moving backward scene by scene like we were watching a movie on rewind. Then, we were instructed to see ourselves moving forward, into the day that had not yet begun, to envision how we would like it to unfold.

This envisioning exercise can be powerful for smaller chunks of time too. It can be done before joining a meeting, answering a phone call, beginning physical exercise, or any other activity. Take a moment – even a few seconds – to “see” the upcoming experience, then notice how often things seem to unfold in a way that matches what’s been envisioned. This practice doesn’t necessarily require a long, dedicated quiet phase to focus (though it’s great when we have that luxury). It can be done on the fly, for as many parts of the day as we wish.

Monday Morning Blues

Here’s an interesting example of how effective it can be to direct our intentions towards one specific part of the day. Several times in my life, I’ve tried to tackle the “Monday morning blues”, as they’re often called. It does make sense to feel emotionally down at the beginning of the week if facing a job that’s not particularly pleasant, with a full five more days to get through before the weekend. But those blues have baffled me when I had the whole day off to do what I wanted, such as on Monday public holidays, or when waking up to a job that I loved. I wondered whether the combined angst and harried vibes of countless other people waking up around the same time had something to do with it. We are all energetically connected to some extent, so it’s plausible that a collective spike in depression or stress in other people might have an impact. Still, blaming my mood on others seemed like a copout.

I experimented with different things. I took some Mondays off to schedule only fun activities or made sure to be in a good state the night before, in the hope that it would continue upon waking. Nothing seemed to reliably stave off those blues. What eventually worked better than anything else was to envision myself waking up happy. I didn’t have to do anything fancy, or say affirmations, or visualise in detail what the perfect day might look like. I just saw myself in my mind’s eye, waking up from sleep and feeling super happy. The first time I did this, I wondered how such a simple technique could work so well. Surely it must have been a fluke? Yet the Monday morning blues have not really been an issue since – whether I’m working or holidaying, indoors or outdoors, alone or with others for the day.

Tidy Cupboards

A more recent example had nothing to do with mood, but procrastination. I’d been wanting to tidy up my kitchen cupboards for many months. It was on my to-do list. I scheduled it in my diary. I told myself how nice it would be when they were clean and organised. I figured that it would only take 5 or so minutes at a time to tidy up so that in the end it would get done. But this endeavour simply wasn’t urgent enough, and not enticing enough, to do anything about.

A few weeks ago, I was listening to a guided meditation on a live group call. It was not on the topic of tidying, but nonetheless an image popped up of my kitchen cupboards, with their contents all in order. I didn’t take any action, nor did I pressure myself to bring that image into reality. Then, just last weekend, I felt compelled to tidy the kitchen cupboards. I approached them, then changed my mind and backed off. There was too much to sort, too many expired packets of food no doubt that I didn’t want to find. I went off to do something else. Then in the afternoon, that vision arose again of the organised shelves and cupboards. I saw the finished result, rather than the process of tidying. I walked over to the cupboards again and this time held that vision in my mind as I worked through things shelf by shelf, and in just over a few hours the kitchen cupboards were finally organised the way I’d wanted for so long. It was a great reminder that envisioning a desired outcome can motivate us to work towards it, even more so than planning the best steps to get there.

Train

This envisioning business need not be limited to just one day at a time, one morning at a time, or one project at a time. It can be used to envision our life as a whole. We can see ourselves as the kind of person we wish to be, the type of habits we’d love to adopt, and our predominant emotional state.

Since childhood, I’ve wanted to be the type of person who likes to meditate and to do it daily. A couple of weeks ago I slept in a bit longer than usual and decided to skip my usual meditation just for one day, something I haven’t done for years. I had a train to catch, having planned to meet up with some family members who live a fair distance away. Even though I’d chosen to break my habit of meditating in the morning, I took a moment before getting out of bed to envision the day ahead. I pictured it going smoothly and being on time for everything – despite having slept in! – and somehow getting a chance to meditate later. I managed to catch the hourly train in time with just two minutes to spare, then opened a book to read on the journey. What happened next was unexpected.

At some point, a wave of sleepiness hit and it was hard to keep my eyes open. As this occurred, there was also a strong sense of light above my head. It felt like entering a space of meditation without meaning to. I checked the clock and realised I’d need to get off the train in about 45 minutes, not long enough for a full one hour of meditation. Plus, many spiritual teachers advise not to meditate in crowded or loud places such as on public transport. But I allowed my eyes to close, and bit by bit, I felt the ball of light move from one energy centre to the next, in the same order that I would normally focus on during a regular meditation session. It was as though I was being meditated on the train, rather than meditating for myself.

There were frequent announcements over the PA system, as well as a group of rowdy teenagers who joined the same carriage on the train where I was. Despite the noise around me, it felt like I was in my own peaceful little bubble.

After a while, the ball of light seemed to enlarge and envelop me until there was a sense of completion, so I opened my eyes. I saw that it had been just over an hour since I last checked the time. Had I missed my stop? No, it was a couple of minutes away. The train was running 15 minutes late – even though it was right on time before I shut my eyes. There had been a moment earlier when I heard one of the teenagers yell out, “This is the slowest f***ing train ever!”, but I thought nothing of it. There were no announcements (that I recall) to say the train was significantly delayed, and I hadn’t noticed it stop anywhere for an unusually long period of time.

The best part of the story is that when I checked my phone, I saw a message saying that my family member was running late to meet me, so she hadn’t been kept waiting. In fact, she arrived at the station just as I got there.

Was this odd experience a coincidence, or did the envisioning practice have something to do with it? I certainly hadn’t pictured myself meditating on the train, and I didn’t think it’d be possible to get an hour’s worth of practice done that morning. But the intention had already been set to squeeze in my normal meditation, and somehow, everything seemed to line up in a way that was consistent with that vision.

Fun

I’ve come to believe that the practice of envisioning is most powerful when done with a sense of light-heartedness and fun.

It’s a popular idea that we need to fight for what we want, to keep our eye on the specific goals and intentions we’ve set, and to not let go of them even when the going gets tough. From this standpoint, hardship is to be embraced as a valuable opportunity, while the lack of it suggests we’re just drifting along without truly living in any purposeful way.

I don’t think the presence of obstacles necessarily means we’re off track – many worthwhile goals are worth the struggle to reach them. In fact, dealing with difficulties can be satisfying, like solving a complex puzzle. But the absence of hardship doesn’t mean we’re on the wrong path either. Greater difficulty isn’t the criteria we need to decide whether to stick with something or not, it’s whether we can continue to have fun in the process of working towards it.

Can we have fun on the way to whatever outcome we’re aiming for, regardless of what barriers are to be overcome on the way there? If we feel mostly heavy rather than light about it, without any sense of fun, then forcing ourselves to continue envisioning and intending for that outcome might be misdirected, wasted energy. Not only is it hard to envision or set intentions in that sort of scenario, it’s also less likely to be effective.

Am I Being Tested, or Going the Wrong Way?

There are times when it’s unclear whether it’d be better to envision what we want in as much detail as possible, or to let go of what we’ve been intending altogether. When is it best to release an intention so we can stay open and go with the flow instead?

Many believe that when things seem easy and flow smoothly, it’s a sign that we’re on track in life. Last month, I read a book by spirit medium James van Praagh called Unfinished Business: What the Dead Can Teach Us About Life. In it, van Praagh adds a quote from a woman named Dolores North, one of the first psychics he ever met, about how things tend to fall into place when we’re on the right path:

“If you are on the path you are meant to be on, everything falls into place; the Universe is telling you that. If you are not on your right path, you will experience roadblocks all along the way, and this is also the Universe telling you to stop, look, and ask if this is where you are supposed to be.”

Although the presence of obstacles, difficulties, and challenges don’t always mean that we’re off track, I do suspect that if they continue indefinitely, then something may indeed be out of whack. Yes, a complex puzzle can be fun to try and figure out, but if we stay stuck on it for hours or days, while feeling nothing but irritation and struggle, then it’s probably better to let it go.

Once while trying to apply for a job, I came up against obstacle after obstacle. Some were technology related while others were challenges in the form of tricky questions that were difficult to answer. When sharing this with someone, she responded, “That’s the universe testing you. It’s saying, ‘How bad do you want this?’” She encouraged me to try push through such situations.

However, I’ve wondered in such cases, “Is the Universe really testing me right now and wanting me to embrace challenge, or is it hinting that I am simply going the wrong way?”

For instance, within a few months of completing my professional intuitive training, I spent a big chunk of savings on a program to learn how to dropship and sell on eBay, and it didn’t take long for me to start questioning whether this was a good move. I had just quit a steady job, and although I’d put aside enough money to pay my rent and bills for a while, it seemed practical to bring in another source of income while I got the intuitive business up and running (a few family members were also eager to clear clutter and give me some of their unwanted items to put up for sale).

Still, for someone with no interest in selling items on eBay, this was probably a weird thing to do. My intuition didn’t say yes to it either. In hindsight, it’s very clear that it wasn’t wise to invest thousands of dollars into something I didn’t enjoy. Nothing about it was fun for me, whether it was uploading ad listings, putting up photos, packaging and posting items, or managing queries from customers.

It may come as no surprise that everything that could go wrong did go wrong with this eBay selling business. A customer would buy something, and I’d find out it was no longer available to ship. I’d reach out to a coach who’d been assigned to me for the program, who would normally respond within minutes, but he’d be away offline for days when help was really needed. I copied and pasted images for certain stock the way I’d been taught in the program, then got in trouble for breaching copyright laws. My coach later told me that he’d been in the business a long time, and all those incidents which happened to me were possible in theory, but he’d never known them to happen to anyone else doing the exact same thing on eBay.

It’s as though the universe was holding up a stop sign at every step of the way, saying, “Hey! Let this go! There’s an easier way!” Eventually I listened. When I quit selling on eBay, it felt very right. I found another source of income to support myself and felt much happier doing activities that were more fulfilling. If I’d forced myself to envision a thriving eBay business, maybe it would have worked, but maybe not, and I am sure that it wouldn’t have made me happy.

If we are hating the blocks along our path to a particular goal, we can check if there might be some hidden doorways or side paths we can take, so things start to go smoothly again. If there are none, maybe we can find it within ourselves to change our attitude about it, to face those obstacles head on and enjoy the challenge. Otherwise, it’s possible we need to take a break and come back to it later when we feel more energised and refreshed. If that doesn’t work either, and if the whole thing feels like the opposite of fun, then perhaps it is time to release what we’ve been intending and find a more effortless path.

Powerfully Fun

For almost anything we can think of, envisioning can be a powerful process.

How do we want to feel when we wake up tomorrow morning?

What project can we see as already having been completed?

Who are we going to meet today, and can we envision those interactions as being harmonious, playful, or otherwise enjoyable?

Can we envision ourselves doing what we love, surrounded by who we love, and what we love?

Some people even visualise their own funeral, imagining what they’d like others to say and remember them by, while being content about the achievements in their lifetime (I haven’t done this exercise many times myself, as I end up feeling more sombre than joyful, but many do find it helpful!).

Above all, whatever we may choose to envision, let the process be fun :)

Click here to receive new articles by email

<-- Previous article