The brain does not cleanly distinguish between a vivid imagined experience and a real one. This is not a bug — it is a feature. It is the mechanism that makes planning possible, that allows you to rehearse responses to situations before they arise, that lets you anticipate consequences and prepare for them.
Used deliberately, this feature is extraordinarily powerful. A vision of where you are going, constructed in specific and vivid detail, functions for the brain similarly to a memory of where you have been. It provides a reference point, an orientation, a sense of direction that is concrete rather than abstract.
I have used deliberate visualisation to navigate the hardest periods of my life. Not as escape — not to pretend the current situation was other than it was — but as navigation. I needed to be able to see, in specific detail, what I was building toward. The vision gave my brain something to orient toward when the current circumstances gave it nothing to work with.
The practice is simple but requires honesty. You construct the most specific, detailed vision you can of the state you are trying to reach. Not vague aspirations — specific outcomes. What are you doing? Where are you? Who are you working with? What has been built? The specificity is what gives the brain something concrete to orient toward.
Then you ask: given where I am now and where I am trying to go, what is the most direct path? The vision gives you a fixed point in the future. Your current position is the other fixed point. Between those two points, a direction becomes visible that is not visible when you are only looking at where you are.
The profound insight is that imagination is not a luxury or an escape. It is a cognitive tool — the tool that makes intentional navigation through uncertainty possible. The person who cannot see where they are going cannot steer toward it. Construct the vision. Use it to navigate.