Imagination Power

Image courtesy of Bartek Ambrozik

One of your greatest powers is ... your imagination.

Let me explain. William James was a philosopher and one of the leading thinkers a century ago. He said this about the power of the mind: “Anything you may hold firmly in your imagination can be yours.” He believed there was tremendous power in imagination and wrote in length about how humans can bring about significant positive changes in their attitudes, behaviors and relationships by first holding a vivid image of their best selves, or the person they want to become, in their imagination.

In his book The Winner's Edge, writer Denis Waitley tells of high school basketball players who learned the power of holding something firmly in their imaginations. The students were divided into three groups. Group One was told not to practice shooting free throws for one month. Group Two was told to practice shooting free throws in the gym every afternoon for a month. Group Three was told to IMAGINE shooting free throws every afternoon for one hour for a month. (Frankly, I can hardly “imagine” a group of athletes, after sitting in class all day, dressing out, going to the gym, sitting in the bleachers and just thinking about shooting free throws for an hour every day. I suppose it's all in the name of research.)

But look at these results. Group One, the no-practice group, slipped slightly in their percentage free-throw average. Group Two, the students that practiced, increased their accuracy by about two percentage points. Group Three, the ones who imagined shooting, also increased about two percentage points – the same as the group that practiced.

Neuroscience is just now discovering that there are biological reasons for this phenomenon William James talked about so long ago. But here is the point. Do you want to excel at some endeavor? Do you want to improve your outlook? Is there a skill you'd like to perfect? Do you want better relationships? Or would you like to replace your fear of something, such as speaking in public or heading up a project, with more confidence and courage? If so, then mental practice, holding a vivid image of what you want in your mind, is as important as physical practice. The time you spend "seeing" in your mind what you are trying to accomplish actually helps to bring it to pass.

I don't mean we have to sit down and imagine something for an hour every day. It's as simple as holding a vivid mental picture of what you truly desire and returning to it as often as possible.

Imagine your success. Visualize doing that thing you fear. Get it in your mind. Then imagine your success in that area again and again, like free throws going into the basket. What does it look like to be confident? How does it look to be actually doing the thing you're afraid to do? How does it feel? Can you imagine it in detail? In a short time, you will discover that things really are changing for you.

And after that, well, just imagine what else you can do.

-- Steve Goodier

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Imagination Is Everything

Three-year-old Jonathon is gifted. And precocious. I’m told that when his parents took him to a restaurant, he ordered a grilled cheese sandwich. “Jonathon, I’m sorry, we don’t serve grilled cheese sandwiches,” the server replied.

He asked playfully, “You have a grill, don’t you?”

She answered, “Yes.”

He continued, “You have cheese, don’t you?”

“Yes, we do.”

“You have bread, don’t you?”

“Yes.

“Well,” he said, “I’ll have a grilled cheese sandwich.”

Three years old. (You may think his parents should have taught him better manners, but please don’t let that keep you from seeing the marvel of this small child’s imagination.)

The smiling server returned after checking with the chef and told the boy they would be happy to fix him the sandwich. “But I forgot to ask you what you want to drink,” she said.

“I’ll have a milkshake, please.”

“I’m sorry, Jonathon, but we don’t serve milkshakes,” she answered. But this time she was ready for him. “Now, it is true we have milk. And it is true we have ice cream. But we don’t have syrup,” she explained.

He laughed. “You have a car, don’t you?”

There’s always a solution. Whatever other intellectual gifts Jonathon seems to have, the trait that may serve him best is imagination. He has the valuable ability to imagine a solution to whatever problem comes his way.

Albert Einstein famously said, “Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.” In other words, what we can see in our imagination today we may experience in life tomorrow. He also said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” He knew that we humans are limited by how much we can learn, but we are never limited by how much we can imagine.

I have come to realize that I am held back far more by my lack of imagination than by my circumstances. When I believe nothing can be done, I search for a way OUT of the difficulty when I OUGHT to be searching for solutions. How can I change anything when I’m looking for a way out? When I perceive my situation as impossible, I resign myself to that fate and give up.

But WHAT IF I were to look at it differently? WHAT IF I approached it in a different way? WHAT IF a creative answer could actually be found? I often settle for less when I should be asking myself powerful questions that begin with the words “what if. . .”

Some two hundred years ago a class of noisy boys in a German primary school was assigned a task to keep them busy. They were instructed to add up all the numbers from 1 to 100. The children settled down, scribbling busily on their slates -- all but one. This boy looked off into space for a few moments, then wrote something on his slate and turned it in. His was the only right answer. When the amazed teacher asked how he did it, he said he wondered if there might be some shortcut. He went on to say, “I found one: 100 plus one is 101; 99 plus two is 101; 98 plus three is 101, and, if I continued the series all the way to 51 plus 50, I have 101 fifty times, which is 5,050.”

The teacher decided then that this child needed special tutoring. The boy was Karl Friedrich Gauss, and he became a great mathematician of the 19th century.

Gauss solved his problem when he asked himself the question, “What if there is a shortcut?” Two of the most powerful words I know are “what if.”

The solution to my problem, the way through a dilemma or the beginning of that next creative change in my life almost always starts when I decide that I am NOT locked in. “What if” questions release my imagination so I can better see what was hidden.

Imagination is everything. And what if I were to use the words “what if” more often? I can only imagine what might happen.

-- Steve Goodier

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