Imagination is the difference
Do you remember – Alice in Wonderland – by Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)?
“It’s no use trying,” he said, “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I dare say you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was you
age, he always did it for half an hour a day. Wow, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
Memory and learning, and in our opinion, worldly success, are the result of the practice of Creative Imagination. Sure, unlike oxygen and water, you can live without it, but its absence surprises you from the Elite 5% of society. Being a spear bearer doesn’t require believing in impossible things, being a leader in your career does.
lightning said
Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald’s, defined an entrepreneur as someone who spends their time and money creating something to sell to people before they know they need or want it.
The entrepreneur acts, believes, thinks and feels, as if – once the public knows of his existence – they will swoon – after handing over the money – because he fills their deepest burning desire.
What makes the entrepreneur so sure?
They picture a Bill Gates level of success in their mind’s eye. They envision Yankee Stadium filled with consumers begging for their new video game, diet pill, or scrapbook. And they give a Duchenne smile (eyes and teeth) of success to come.
Remember when a cell phone only allowed people to talk and hear each other?
One entrepreneur argued that it should also be a camera, download music, and allow us to watch the latest episode of Deal-or-No-Deal or Lost, on video.
Now tell me, how did they know in advance that millions, tens of millions, would want the supplemental uses and would pay for it monthly?
Focus groups, surveys, and polls are wrong 80% of the time.
The entrepreneur acts on the intuition that comes from the movie screen of his mind’s eye. He sometimes appears as a still, small voice whispering a suggestion in his left ear, his mind’s ear. Come and listen, and act.
Intuition
We have all had a hunch, an intuition about playing the lottery or investing
on an IPO like Google at $85, but unlike the businessman, we laughed and continued reading the newspaper story about the latest murder. Expect! Is intuition always a sure thing?
Is it safe to get home tonight and not get hit by a Mack truck; that the company he works for will still be in business by this time next year; that the US government is right, and that Iran doesn’t already have a nuclear bomb pointed at us?
Humans hate change, love their comfort zone, and are dizzy with ambiguity.
“A horse is a horse, of course, of course,” and a zebra is a naked pony. Maybe.
How to vividly imagine
Two scientists from Drexel and Northwestern universities have tracked down the AHA! factor. No soft science to them, they used an electroencephalogram (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), to pinpoint what happens in the brain when we experience the WOW! area – maximum performance.
Rockets (synapses) are fired, in our Temporal lobe; that’s where conceptual processing happens; fireworks happen in our frontal lobe, the site of cognitive power.
When these two brain structures interact, the result is an AHA! idea.
The rest of the time our Methodic brain activity is produced by the Visual Cortex, in our Occipital lobe. There really is a physiological difference in our thought systems, and we have AHAs! ideas few and far between.
How do we produce more AHA! ideas in the future?
The article appears in the April issue of Psychological Science.
working out
We hate the sound of the word -exercise- because it reminds us of school and its boring experiences of following a teacher’s orders. The elite people, the 5% who run society, know the answer to the question: Who is the boss of you? He’s not the teacher, that’s for sure.
Here is an exercise to develop your creative imagination.
Choose one of the following: a roll of tape, headphones, glasses, or scissors. Pick up a pen and come up with ten imaginary uses for Scotch-Tape.
On the second day, use a different item, the headphones, and list twenty imaginary uses for it.
By the third day, try on the glasses and list thirty imaginary uses for that item.
Don’t laugh, do it for five minutes, three days in a row, and your mind’s eye will start
become creative and imaginative. For those who must know how and why, the answer is your right brain. Engage your right brain in manipulating ideas, playing with icons, linking a new idea to an old long-term memory, and the result is something new and unique.
Your left brain is in charge of order, logic, meaning, and language. He sits like a judge and analyzes the evidence. Your right brain controls intuition, emotions, and
pattern recognition; execute holistic thinking and see the big picture. both halves
work together to create creative imagination.
WATCHES
Here are seven ways to get creative and enhance your imagination.
Your job is to create mental movies that involve a link between a new idea and an image that is already in long-term memory.
Start by imagining other uses for a specific object, no matter how silly and ridiculous your answer is.
It’s like a baseball batter warming up hitting three bats; when he gets rid of the other two bats, the remaining one feels like a feather and his reflexes are sharper and sharper. These exercises sharpen his image reflexes for creativity.
The seven
a rare
b) lively
c) three-dimensional
c) Color
c) humor
f) exaggeration
g) Senses
Take these descriptions and use them one at a time.
a) An example of Rare is ghosts, witches or Flying Nuns.
b) Lively – refers to action – running like a tiger, jumping like a kangaroo, flying in a plane.
c) Three-Dimensional is how you see images in your mind; not flat, but with depth.
d) Color is its ability to make icons vivid, bright or dark, and memorable.
e) Humor is creating a silly, unreal or impractical mental image of a situation.
f) The exaggeration is an eight-legged pussycat, a dog with only one leg. How about a six foot potato sleeping in your bed?
g) The senses are: sight, hearing, touch, smell or taste. When you create a new mental image using one or more of your senses and exaggerate what they are doing, it becomes unique and gets locked into your long-term memory.
final words
“I can not believe that!” Alice said.
“Can’t you?” said the Queen pityingly. Try again, take a deep breath and
close your eyes.”
Do these exercises and you will believe in your Creative Imagination because it is only asleep, not dead!
Why should you bother?
It will help double your memory and even triple your reading speed by strengthening your right brain skills. You will improve your productivity and
create solutions to your personal challenges. Best of all: you’ll join the Elite and
enjoy your life more. Feeling good counts a lot.
See you,
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