Imagination - Without It, Life Would be Unimaginable
By admin | July 12, 2008
To imagine the unimaginable is the highest use of the imagination. - Cynthia Ozick
We all have it, it’s just that we seldom use it.
We go about our day following the usual routine and rarely fire-up our imaginations to plan or develop something well out of our usual schedule.
Steve Joordens, a cognitive psychologist and professor at the University of Toronto, puts it this way - “It’s only a small percentage of our lives that we spend consciously considering things. We may go through 80 percent of our life without much conscious thought of what we are thinking and doing.”
Professor Joordens, points out that when you’re involved with your usual daily tasks, any effort to awaken your imagination for some creative purpose is “effortful and easily disruptable. In order to get to the creative thing you have to expend an effort. A lot of people don’t tend to make those efforts.”
For those however, who take the time and make the effort to ignite the power of imagination, find the experience energizing and often leads to a successful conclusion of an creative idea.
In an article on the power of imagination, Andrew Chung writes - “Many of the greatest advances, like the theory of relativity were the product of an abundance of imagination….”
Another powerful creative tool is to combine imagination with visualization - this is the combo used successfully by athletes such as Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus - they take the time and make the effort to imagine various shot possibilities, then after calculating the best opportunity, they picture making that shot in their minds - imagination plus visualization - a powerful tool in developing a more creative, and happier you.
Imagination is something we all have but use sparingly, and when we do imagine something, it habitually deals with the usual mundane concerns of our lives and we are missing out on a wonderful opportunity to improve our lives.
Take the time and make an effort to use your imagination to think outside the box - innovative ideas and creative challenges that will bring about a new lease on life.
There are no days in life so memorable as those which vibrated to some stroke of the imagination. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Dave Wright is a retired television reporter and editor of PPP Retirement a site dedicated to the development of Positive, Productive and Profitable creative challenges to take you into and through retirement. He is also the producer of Quotation Movies - mini-movies featuring a series of motivational quotations over spectacular landscape and nature pictures.
Copyright © 2005 PPP Retirement Plans - Reprints Accepted
Tags: creative, creative challenges, creativity, imagination, imagine, unimaginable, visualizationSuccess Through The Eyes Of A Child
By admin | May 5, 2008
Adults, with eyes to see, can learn so much about success in life from children.
When a baby is born, it has instinctively in it everything needed to succeed in life. A child is like a fresh piece of canvas, ready to become a unique contribution to the world. A child has had less exposure to adult conditioning with regards to behaviour and expectations. Every child has the seeds of success for life within them. By observing children being children, adults can re-learn principles of success that have been buried by their adult world.
As I was driving home last week, I noticed a little boy and his mother by the side of the road. They had stopped walking and the mother was adjusting a toy crossbow to fit more comfortably over the boy’s shoulder. I realized that at that moment in the heart and mind of that small boy, he was not on a sidewalk by a busy road. Perhaps he was hunting in a forest, or was an intrepid explorer of the unknown, ready to pull out his bow and arrows at the slightest hint of danger. In his imagination he was a hero, confident, skilled, and brave. He was alert, prepared, with the expectation of overcoming danger or threat with his skill and swift reflexes.
For a child involved in imaginative play, there is very little distinction between fantasy and reality. Children live and play out their dreams totally in the moment.
There are many principles of success that can be learned by looking through the eyes of a child. Children’s eyes see with clarity and perception and reflect the reality of who they are. Children are uncluttered by training, brainwashing, and by living according to the unwritten rules and etiquette that have assailed the adult mind. For a child life has limitless possibilities that have not been squashed by logic, common sense, or limiting expectations that become part of the adult mind.
What principle of success can be drawn from the little boy with his bow and arrow?
One of the most powerful and yet unused principles of success is the process of visualization. Visualization is the act of creating compelling and vivid pictures in your mind. This is just what the little boy was doing. He was “that hero”; he acted like him, dressed like him, and could picture himself in another time and another place. For him, it seemed like reality. This is a spontaneous, natural process for a child.
Researchers have found that visualization accelerates achievement in powerful ways. It has been proved by research that when performing any task in life the brain uses the same identical processes that it would if you were only vividly visualizing that activity. The brain sees no difference at all between visualizing something and actually doing it.
This principle also is applicable when a person is learning something new. Visualization makes the brain achieve more. In a study by researchers at Harvard University, it was found that students who visualized in advance were able to perform tasks with nearly 100 percent accuracy. Students who performed tasks without using visualization only achieved 55 percent accuracy.
Visualization is frequently used by Olympic and professional athletes to improve performance.
Jack Nicklaus, a legend in the golfing world, once described how he uses visualization. “I never hit a shot, not even in practice, without having a very sharp in-focus picture of it in my head. It’s like a color movie. First I “see” where I want it to finish, nice and white and sitting high on the bright green grass. Then the scene quickly changes, and I “see” the ball going there: its path, trajectory, and shape, even its behaviour on landing. Then there’s a sort of fade out, and the next scene shows me making the kind of swing that will turn the previous images into reality.” The results of the power of visualization for Jack Nicklaus are convincing: he has won over 100 tournaments earning over 5.7 million in the process.
For a child a high proportion of time is spent in visualization. Adults may say, “He’s only playing” and not see the potential power for success that the child is practicing. Visualization is a process that is naturally strong in the learning and formative years of the child. Research now confirms that visualization activates the creative powers of the subconscious mind. It focuses the brain by programming its reticular activating system (RAS) to notice available resources that were always there but previously unnoticed. Visualization, incredibly, also magnetizes and attracts you to the people, resources, and opportunities you need to achieve your goal.
Next time you see children playing, pause to watch visualization in its purest form. What can you learn and apply to your own life to accelerate and achieve greater success using the principle of visualization?
Barbara White has over twenty years experience in educational leadership and teaching, as well as being a parent of three teenagers.
Barbara is now President of Beyond Better Development, which specializes in
motivation