Midcoast — While I have read enjoyed the book by Jon Ronson upon which the film is based, I’ve never seen the George Clooney movie, “The Men Who Stare at Goats”. Released a couple of years back, it’s apparently the stirring and off-beat tale of a secret unit of psychic soldiers who use mental powers to complete their missions. I’m only hesitating to rent it on the off chance I might have similar powers and therefore would be able to just stare at the DVD case and get the full story rather than paying for the movie.

Kidding aside, I have been giving a lot of thought to the subject of creative visualization lately. For those unfamiliar with the term, creative visualization involves picturing oneself achieving a goal- imagining the sights, sounds, smells, and other sensations one might experience should one reach the goal and then internalizing those emotions and sensations to use as drivers of success. Derived from a mixture of motivational speaker tools and old Soviet Bloc athletics programs, this approach is popular with many different folks, from business executives, to pro-golfers, to business executives who secretly believe they could have made it as pro-golfers (or at least drive that handicap down).

While athletes who employ the technique often cite improved results, research indicates that for regular people creative visualization often has the opposite effect. Researchers have identified a couple of key differences between the athletic and lay-person approach: namely that athletes possess an enhanced skill level in relation to their goal to begin with (the purer golf swing and the faster 100 meters are more reachable if you already swing well and run fast) and that in addition to visualizing the end result the athlete trains like mad to get there.

Taking a cue from these athletes, researchers suggest that for creative visualization to be effective, its practitioners need to not only imagine the goal but also imagine the steps needed to reach the goal. Don’t just imagine yourself with the big raise check, but also imagine yourself putting in the extra hours, completing the training course, or developing the product that makes your company more successful.

This has been front of mind for me because I spend a lot of time in meetings, with committees, and at events dedicated to moving our towns, our counties, our region, and even the entire state of Maine to an end-goal of success and prosperity for all. What we need to remember in these meetings as we collectively visualize wealth and joy for all is that we should probably pay as much, if not more, attention to the means and tools we are going to use to get there. As boring and as quotidian as they can be, details make the difference.

Bearing all this in mind, as we dig into an presidental election year while trying to shake off the effects of a brutal recession, we should ask those we task with moving Maine and the mid-coast forward to not just show us a beautiful postcard of their proposed final destination but also the map they intend to follow to get us there. As Robert Kennedy beautifully noted, we should certainly answer the question “Why?” with “Why not?”: I’d only ask that we add “How?” to the equation too.