Do you still use your imagination?  My bet is: not so much.  When you were a child your imagination was on overdrive and now it’s like a favourite toy you’ve put away. You never take it out to play anymore, in fact you forget you even have it.

But imagination is the gateway to creativity, passion and purpose; it cures boredom and solves problems.

What imagination is

Imagination is the capacity to see what isn’t, to create from nothing.  It allows us to leave linear thinking and take intuitive leaps of the kind that allowed Einstein to formulate the theory of relativity.  Einstein ‘imagined’ what it would be like to ride on a beam of light.  Imagine that.

Imagination allows us to dream without limits and then invites us to make it so.

Dreams and visions are the children of imagination and without them we have no real purpose or passion.

Imagination is the jet fuel of vision

Imagination is what makes leadership vision possible.  We must be able to ‘see’ something with our mind, something not yet existing, a place we’ve never been to and imagine what it looks like, smells like, feels like.

MLK had a dream, JFK said we’d put a man on the moon and bring him safely back to the earth, Mandela said freedom for all South Africans, and Reagan talked of America as a shining city on a hill.

We don’t imagine anymore

There is no grand vision of what we’re living into anymore.  No compelling “I have a dream” type vision that we share.

Instead we seem to be hoping for a better status quo, hoping the economy improves, our jobs stay safe, crime goes down and the climate doesn’t change too much.  We haven’t used our imaginations to create an inspiring vision or story that lights us up collectively for a better future.  A world with no wars, where everyone has free health care, basic housing and transportation when they need it; robotic service is the norm, free limitless education is on demand and human beings no longer work to provide for their family (because that’s already handled for everyone) but choose to work on whatever speaks to their passion, their higher self.

Like a muscle

Imagination is like a muscle, it grows stronger with exercise; weaker with disuse.

Use it to cure boredom or solve problems

Are you bored or in despair about some aspect of your life?

Then when why not imagine yourself out of it.  Here’s an exercise to begin exercising those imagination muscles again and maybe even give you an inspiring vision you can start to work towards.

Imagination exercise

Start writing or journaling about whatever it is you’re bored about, whatever you’ve given up on, and then start writing a future alternative of how it changes.  Imagine it like a TV show or movie where something happens that causes the situation you’ve given up on to change.

Suspend belief

Don’t worry about believing it is possible just go with the exercise; think of far-fetched interventions and happenstance that cause that situation to change.

Have alien landings, lottery winnings, chance meetings, book writings, meeting the romantic ‘one’ etc. happen in your writings.  Doesn’t matter.  Use your imagination.

At the very least you’ll have some fun imagining again. You’ll run up with how limited your imagination has become because of inactivity.

And don’t worry about impossible dreams.  Impossible dreams were what Gandhi, MLK, JFK and Mandela all had in common.

Imagine now.  Suspend worry and disbelief.  Imagine yourself without worry and doubt.

Keep it alive in children and teens96ec0b0068fbadae_640_imagination

And if you have children or work with them.  Take care that their natural urge to imagine is not stifled.  Encourage them to use their imagination to write stories, screenplays, poetry and alternative futures for their lives and the future of the world.

Have them keep online journals to store them.  Above all let’s all start imagining again and see how many of us can produce an inspiring dream that we’re willing to fight for.