The Power of Imagination

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Your imagination is a powerful thing – do you understand actually how powerful it is?  It has the ability to make the most beautiful heaven or most heinous hell right inside your own mind…and the really interesting part? It has the ability to make that heaven or hell in your “real” world as well.  Don’t believe me? Well, you should!  You’re imagination plays a bigger role in your happiness, success, and achievement of goals that you ever imagined possible (pun intended!).

Let’s journey further into the rabbit hole of our minds and see what we discover…

“The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: Decide what you want.” – Ben Stein

Yup, that is the Ben Stein who said that – the Ferris Bueller, Comcast hawking, character of a boring professor Ben Stein, who is actually a bar certified lawyer and a well respected financial analyst.  Huh…who knew…

I love that quote because it is so obvious but so extraordinary.  Why is it extraordinary? Because it is so easily forgotten.  The first step to getting what you want is to decide what you want.  Simple? Yes, extremely.  But how many of you set out to achieve something that is ill-defined or unstructured? I see it everyday not only in my own life but in the lives of people I work with: we all want to get somewhere, even if we are unsure about where it is we are planning to go.

The problem is that we think we know where we want to go – we pick a general, nebulous direction and start heading toward it.  Unfortunately, this is about as effective as choose “north” as where you want to go on vacation: north is a direction, not a destination.  Yet we often confuse these two concepts, or feel like a direction is good enough for now and we’ll find a destination on the way. You know where you end up if you do that? Nowhere.

Knowing what you want is a scary thing in and of itself, which is why I think so many of us shy away from it.  It is a prohibitive thing: if I know for certain that I want to go to New York City tomorrow then it means that I am saying I don’t want to go to Boston, Dallas, or Paris tomorrow.  I may want to go there sometime in the future, sure, but if my destination is NYC then I am saying that every other place on the globe is not my destination.

In our world of you-can-have-it-all thought, where we have TVs that let us watch multiple stations at the same time and phones that allow us to talk to our mothers while texting our friends while watching a YouTube video, deciding what we specific want is a tall order.  We are so afraid that we will miss something, miss an opportunity, that we keep our options open and remain as noncommittal as possible so that we aren’t tied down and lose a chance.  But what we don’t realize is that by not committing to anything specifically and prohibitively we are really stifling our chances of getting any of what we want.

Do I believe that you can have it all? Absolutely.  But I don’t believe you can get it all at the same time.  Getting what you want – and I’m talking about those things you control – requires dedication, specific and goal-directed action, and a little bit of tunnel vision to accomplish your dreams.  Overtime, these accomplishments build up, meaning you collect what you want until you have it all. But I don’t believe it is possible to get all your major goals at the same time, especially if they are spread out over various areas of your life (ie. love, career, finances, lifestyle, home).

This is where imagination comes into play. Going back to Mr. Stein’s well articulated point, the absolute first step to getting what you want is to know what you want.  How do you know what you want? You can imagine what it would be like to have certain things and make choices from there. Would you rather have a tarantula or a cat as a pet? If you’re goal is to be able to have an animal you can cuddle with and stroke, then you can imagine what it would be like to do that action with both choices.  While in this case the choice speaks for itself (I hope!), there are many options that require you to imagine both clearly and decide which is better/more satisfying/happier for you.

Yet imagination is also an important tool once you’ve decided what you want, because it can keep the goal tangibly in front of you.  When you’re working toward a goal in the future, it is hard sometimes to stay focused.  Unlike the literal image of a horse walking toward a carrot, when you have future goals there is no tangible, visible thing you are moving toward.  It is more like a feeling, a hope, a dream – those things are emotionally substantial but otherwise insubstantial.  Using your imagination to vividly visualize the accomplishment of your goal, or what you life will be like once you’ve accomplished your goal, you can keep that future dream tangible as a carrot you are walking towards.

So today when you have some free time, whether it is driving home from work, waiting for the kids to get out of piano class, or just trying to make time go by quicker at your desk, I want you to explore your own imagination and literally let it run wild.  Allow yourself to daydream what your perfect future looks like – if everything went your way, what would you have? Who would you be? How would you feel? Where would you live? What would you do with your days? What would you contribute to the world? These are just a few questions to use as imagination germs.

Remember: the necessary first step to getting what you want is to know what you want.  Your imagination is a tool you have access to 24/7 that can help you specifically identify exactly what you want, where you want your life destination to be.  Start there, and the rest will fall into place easier than you think.  Don’t be afraid to choose!

Here’s to your Uncommon Life,