Do you use your imagination in your daily life, or do you think that imaginary games are just for children?
When I look back at my childhood I was always using my imagination. I had tea parties with my toys. I played cowboys & indians with my brother and friends in the road I lived. I imagined being a dancer and singer and practiced routines with friends for our performances for our parents for hours and hours and hours.
I’ve no idea when I stopped those activities, but I did. Did you?
I think some people use their imagination more than others as it’s a natural thing for them to do. But what about the rest of us? Why do we fall out of the habit of using our imagination?
My sixteen year old son is having difficulty imagining what to do with his imaginary money each day in the money game we’re playing. It’s interesting because he used to create the most magical imaginary stories when he was younger.
Artists and architects use imagination all the time
Composers, artists, architects, entrepreneurs and some scientists use their imagination all the time. They dream of the things they’re going to create and then set about creating them. Sometimes an artist will only have a sense of what they want to create and yet when they put brush to canvas that sense becomes something real. A scientist will have the result s/he wants to achieve and will work tirelessly to create that result – just think of the lightbulb. 3000 tests before the Edison got the result he’d imagined.
On a course I’ve done this year we played a game called, “and then….”. You may have played it as a child or with your children, or at school. The game is all about creating a story between 2 people each taking it in turns to add more detail as the story/idea moves forward. Everyone who played it had so much fun. My partner and I created this amazing imaginary story. I’m still hoping my partner is going to write it down and use it to create his first children’s book. I’d buy it for sure! Such adventures we had in a very short space of time.
Adventure and fun – all from our imagination?
Yes, we did have adventure and fun in our imagination. Honestly. I’m not making that up. But maybe that’s the point – we’re often told as children NOT to make things up, so we stop. We’re told that “making things up” is a bad thing – we may have told a tale about another child in the playground; something we saw in our community that didn’t feel right.
Personally I don’t remember the cause or even when I stopped imagining or making stories up, but looking back I certainly see now that I moved from making up my own stories to watching others in films and in books. I’ve always been an avid reader and I’m sensing that that’s where I took my imagination – to the books I was reading. I had adventures with those characters. I’ve travelled the world from books. In fact I told my eldest son quite recently that on my lockdown holiday I’d been to the South of France, Cornwall, the Lake District and America all in the space of 7 days! 😉
So why don’t we use our imagination more? If you’ve got any ideas I’d love to hear them in the comments below.
Imagination is for grown ups too
We all have an imagination and we can all use it not only to create stories or beautiful art, or a wonderful dinner, or a new business. We can use it to create new ways of doing things. New ways of being ourselves. We don’t have to be stuck – we can use our imagination to see new opportunities or different ways to solve a problem.
When we stop using a part of us we stop being ourselves. Each of us has Imagination, Intellect, Will power, Conscious mind and an unconscious mind, from Five Institute five energies. When we [re] learn to use each of these we become free to be ourselves.
Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.
Albert Einstein
When we start to imagine different outcomes, scenarios, more ideas are sparked. More options for solutions come into our awareness.
What if you allowed your imagination to create it’s own story for today? What would your day look like? How will you feel at the end of the day? You may feel this is bizarre, but there’s no cost to imagining what you’d love today. No-one can tell you what your imaginary day should be look. It’s yours. Just yours in your imagination.
I wonder what you’ll create today in your imagination. I hope you have a wonderful adventure. I’m off to spend an imaginary £160 🙂
If you’re unsure about how to take the first steps to re-discovering your imagination, the 21 days of Hope series is a good starting point. 5 minutes a day is a great way to start imagining again 🙂