The Well: a Visualization

Visualizations have shown to increase motivation, confidence, and self-efficacy. This is a transcript of a guided visualization exercise originally presented on Artists for Joy podcast. If you’d like to hear the recorded version, click here.

Notice your breath. Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth in whatever speed feels natural right now. Try to make the exhale longer than the inhale, which is what slows down your heart rate. Close your eyes, ground yourself wherever you are, notice different sensations in your body...maybe your shoulders are tight, maybe you have a little bit of a headache or your arm itches, maybe you can’t get comfortable… notice all this. Be present to yourself in this moment and keep breathing. 

In this visualization we are going to go on a journey, but, before we go, like any prepared traveler, we need to check out what we are carrying with us. So check in with yourself now. Sometimes after a long day, my husband quotes John Wesley to me and asks “How is it with your soul?” So let me ask you now: How is it with your soul? Do you feel tired, burnout, scared, anxious? Expectant? Hopeful? Cautious? Peaceful? Take a few moments to notice what is present for you right now, and if you feel any of these particular feelings in your body, notice where they are. For me, my anxiety is sitting right on top of my traps, weighing down my shoulders. Breathe in and out and notice what is with you right now, and where it sits. 

Now collect all that, and begin to prepare for a journey. You are heading out now to somewhere you love going, somewhere you always look forward to setting out to. Somewhere you find to be healing and restorative, somewhere you feel most like yourself. This place can be in the past or the future: it can be a memory or dream. Pick that place and consider how you would like to travel there in your mind today. Would you like to lift off your feet and fly? Will you take a car, train, plane? Will you walk? As you prepare for the journey, choose a mode of transportation and pack all the things you need for the trip.

Now set out. With each step or city block or mountain top going by, as we go, we get one step closer to the place. As you get closer you can feel yourself becoming lighter, just the thought of being in the same time zone as this place is helping you feel happier, more joyful. Notice the things around you: is the sun shining through the trees, can roll down the window and smell salty sea, do you see the house in the distance now? What is it like to be close to this place that you’ve longed to return to or visit for the first time? 

As you arrive, find the place that encapsulates your joyful feelings and go to that very specific spot. Are you sitting on a beach at sunrise? Is it on top of a mountain in Nepal? Is it your studio with a fresh pallet of paint and a blank canvas? Be there now. This is where you have wanted to be, this is where the journey has led. This is where you feel the most like yourself. The most joyful and hopeful version of you, the best you. What is it like there? What do you feel in your body? What has this journey to this place inside your mind been like? Stop a minute here and take a few deep breaths inside this moment. 

Now turn and notice the well. It looks ancient, weathered stone, like something for an old story, complete with a long rope with bucket attached. You walk over to the edge of the well and look down. You see that this well reaches all the way to the bottom of that feeling of belonging and joy and your best self. You realize that the feelings that embody this place you’ve journeyed to, their basis, their source, is deep within that well.

You lean over more and notice for the first time, there are words written along the inside of the circular structure of stone. As you look closer and start to read those words you recognize them immediately. Written there inside that well, covering every inch of space inside the structure are all the genuine and true compliments you have ever received. Read some of those words to yourself now. Whose words are there? Think of these instances when someone praised you in a way that was heartfelt and real, that it was more than a “good job,” but words that made you feel seen and loved by others. Maybe they are words of a close friend or loved one, maybe it was a teacher who believed in you. These are the words that were given to you as gifts, to help you see who you truly are. These are things you will never forget. All of them are written here within this well, in this place, where you are your best self.

As you lean further into the well, you see these precious words go all the way down in tiny illegible font into the base of the well, as far as your eye can see, words you can barely read from where you stand. Their presence takes you in your memory back to those moments of connection with people you love or have loved. This well is a monument to all the unique and meaningful things that only you are. You realize as you read those compliments along the walls that this well and these words were there before anyone had even uttered them to out loud to you. Their truth and existence was not made when someone said those words. They weren’t contingent upon anything you did or didn’t do, they were always true, and they are permanently carved into the walls of that well for all time and eternity, no storm or flood could ever wash them away. 

The well itself is a gift to you. You are almost so moved by all that you are experiencing just by seeing the well that you forget about the bucket. But your eyes travel to it now, and so you grab the rope and bucket and let go. What does the rope feel like in your hands? How long do you have to thread the bucket down before you feel it reaching water? When it does, you notice the weight change of the bucket and start pulling. How heavy is it? How much effort and time does it take for you to lift it? 

As it comes closer, as you catch sight of the bucket more clearly as you pull, you see the contents coming towards you. That water has given a whole new kind of shimmer to the inside of the bucket. As you bring the water up, you see that written within that bucket is the truth about who you are. It’s only visible when the water from that well hits it, when you send it down to the bottom of that deep well, the water reveals to you the answer to all of your questions about your identity. It sounds like one of the compliments, but you see that this statement, shimmering now with this water catalyst, is the basis of all the other truths written on the well’s walls. It is undeniable. It is your value, your goodness, your joy, your essence...filtered to its purest form. At the bottom of that bucket is a message from something outside yourself about what and who you are. 

Maybe this message is from God-- God of your understanding or beyond your understanding-- or just some distant cosmic benevolence or maybe it's from Love itself, maybe you are not sure of the messenger, and that makes the message all the more precious. Read what is written there at the bottom of the bucket now.  Repeat it to yourself a few times. What would it be like to believe these truths about yourself? What would it feel like to let it soothe any wounds you may have? Does it show you that you can put down your heavy load? Maybe there’s a person who’s attention or confirmation or validation you’ve been longing for? Does this message from from the bottom of the well, show you that you don’t need that anymore? That you’ve already received that love, that you are currently holding a bucket of it? That you have been seen for exactly who you truly are by a source that is deeper and more satisfying than you ever believed possible. 

And so you take a sip, maybe from your cupped hands or some sort of vessel nearby, maybe you pour the whole darn bucket over your head and send it down for more and more until you are soaked. But when you taste it, you experience a truly quenched thirst for the first time ever, like ice cold gatorade after working out, like jumping in the swimming pool fully clothed on a hot day. You realize as you drink or play in the water that it is living water, that it's alive with freedom and forgiveness and authenticity. The compliments on the inside of the well spoke to some truth about you, but this water in this bucket, it embodied the truth about you. It is nonnegotiable, real, tangible, it can never change or dry up, it tells you you are completely ok, completely loved, unique, a miracle. It is not something you created so it is not something you can ever lose, this flow was and is and is to come. Repeat the phrase you read at the bottom of the bucket again to yourself now. As you breathe in and out a few more times, take a mental snapshot of this moment. Look around and memorize every detail about what it is you see, what you feel, where you feel it.

As you open your eyes, grab your pen and paper and write down as much as you can remember about what you experienced during this visualization.

• What stood out most to you?

• What did you notice about the journey?

• What did it feel like at the well?

• What were some of the compliments you read there inside the well?

• What did it say at the bottom of the bucket?

• What would it be like if the things you read there were true?

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