The brain is capable of creating other types of mental imagery, in addition to visual images, simulating or recreating perceptual experience across all sensory modalities, including auditory imagery of sounds, gustatory imagery of tastes,[20] olfactory imagery of smells, motor imagery of movements, and haptic imagery of touch, incorporating texture, temperature, and pressure. Notwithstanding the ability to generate mental images across sensory modalities, the term "creative visualization" signifies the process by which a person generates and processes visual mental imagery specifically. However, creative visualization is closely related to, and is often considered as one part of, guided imagery. In guided imagery, a trained practitioner or teacher helps a participant or patient to evoke and generate mental images that simulate or re-create the sensory perception[28] of sights,[sounds, tastes, smells, movements, and touch, as well as imaginative or mental content that the participating subject experiences as defying conventional sensory categories. Nonetheless, visual and auditory mental images are reported as being the most frequently experienced by people ordinarily, in controlled experiments, and when participating in guided imagery, with visual images remaining the most extensively researched and documented in scientific literature. All mental imagery, including the visual images generated through creative visualization, can precipitate or be associated with strong emotions or feelings

Creative visualization is the cognitive process of purposefully generating visual mental imagery, with eyes open or closed, simulating or recreating visual perception, in order to maintain, inspect, and transform those images, consequently modifying their associated emotions or feelings, with intent to experience a subsequent beneficial physiological, psychological, or social effect, such as expediting the healing of wounds to the body, minimizing physical pain, alleviating psychological pain including anxiety, sadness, and low mood improving self-esteem or self-confidence, and enhancing the capacity to cope when interacting with others

As a Midwesterner, Wattles traveled to Chicago, where several leading New Thought leaders were located, among them Emma Curtis Hopkins and William Walker Atkinson, and he gave "Sunday night lectures" in Indiana; however, his primary publisher was Massachusetts-based Elizabeth Towne. He studied the writings of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and recommended the study of their books to his readers who wished to understand what he characterized as "the monistic theory of the cosmos." Through his personal study and experimentation Wattles claimed to have discovered the truth of New Thought principles and put them into practice in his own life. He also advocated the then-popular health theories of "The Great Masticator" Horace Fletcher as well as the "No-Breakfast Plan" of Edward Hooker Dewey, which he claimed to have applied to his own life. He wrote books outlining these principles and practices, giving them titles that described their content, such as Health Through New Thought and Fasting and The Science of Being Great. His daughter Florence recalled that "he lived every page" of his books. A practical author, Wattles encouraged his readers to test his theories on themselves rather than take his word as an authority, and he claimed to have tested his methods on himself and others before publishing them. Wattles practiced the technique of creative visualization. In his daughter Florence's words, he "formed a mental picture" or visual image, and then "worked toward the realization of this vision": He wrote almost constantly. It was then that he formed his mental picture. He saw himself as a successful writer, a personality of power, an advancing man, and he began to work toward the realization of this vision. He lived every page... His life was truly the powerful life. Rhonda Byrne told a Newsweek interviewer that her inspiration for creating the 2006 hit film The Secret, and the subsequent book by the same name, was her exposure to Wattles's The Science of Getting Rich. Byrne's daughter, Hayley, had given her mother a copy of the Wattles book to help her recover from her breakdown. The film itself also references, by re-popularizing the term The Law of Attraction a 1908 book by another New Thought author, William Walker Atkinson, titled Thought Vibration or the Law of Attraction in the Thought World.

While Phineas Parkhurst Quimby is sometimes described as the founder of New Thought, he died in 1866, and New Thought did not formally organize until Hopkins brought together and focused the national movement in 1886-88 with the base in Chicago. Her first work, Class Lessons 1888, ignited flash points for organized New Thought. She later authored Drops of Gold and Scientific Christian Mental Practice (1888) as well as a prolific body of written work. She was acclaimed for the giftedness of her personal lectures. Those that heard her speak noted her charismatic oratory. Her magnum opus, High Mysticism, is perhaps best read after familiarity with the groundwork of her other writings. She authored the International Bible Lessons in the Chicago Inter-Ocean newspaper (1887–94, an apparent echo of the Bible Lessons central to Christian Science). Hopkins is often referred to as the "Teacher of teachers" or "The mother of New Thought." Those who studied with Hopkins included the Fillmores, founders of Unity; Ernest Holmes, founder of Religious Science; Malinda Cramer and Nona L. Brooks, founders of Divine Science; and Harriet Emilie Cady, author of Unity's cornerstone text Lessons in Truth.