How to Improve Your Mental Visualization

You have to work on it. It will take hard work to see improvement. It may be frustrating, time consuming and trying. Do you want to give up yet? 

The simplest way to make it easier is by choosing exercises that are fun and engaging. 

These exercises are best completed in a place that encourages focus. Some people like quiet, some people like noise. Do what works for you.
 

Exercises to Improve your Ability to Mentally Visualize  

Draw Common Objects

Drawing from your memory is an active task that needs you to visualize to accomplish it. The better you get at visualizing, the easier it becomes.

Steps

1. Close eyes, open mind.
2. With eyes closed, choose one object ( ex. apple, tree, bird, a dog). Whatever comes to mind.
3. Take a pen and pad (with your eyes open). Draw as many variations of the object as you can. Think of the object (eating apples, buying them at the supermarket).
4. When you run out of ideas, stop drawing. Put the pad away.
5. Look up pictures of the object. Study them.
6. A day or two later, draw the object again. Try to remember the pictures you studied.

Accuracy and artistic skill do not count. The point is not what's going on the page but inside your mind.

Try to remember the images you study. Pick elements of the pictures. (Do you see a pictures of a really cool tree? What makes it so cool? Remember that element to put it in the drawing.)

Variation: Close your eyes while you draw (after all, this isn't about the drawing, this is about the remembering).

Play a Movie in Your Mind

You have watched a movies, it's time to watch it again.

1. Close your eyes. 
2. Think of a movie (preferably one you've seen many times). 
3. Pick a scene. 
4. Think about what the characters are doing in the scene.
5. Play the scene inside your mind.

For instance, I have seen the movie Evolution a few times. While hunting an alien bird of prey in a mall, one of the heroes gets the idea to stand at a microphone and make noises to attract the bird. That scene always sticks in my head because when my dad watches it, he always starts imitating Sean William Scott. So I can see the movie playing on the television and my dad.

The goal is to see the scene playing. It can be easier to visualize a memory in motion.

I have found success with both exercises. But these are just two ways and there are so many more.