I’m a huge fan of the imagination. It’s such a wonderful
gift. With our thoughts we can be
anywhere and do anything, without even leaving our front door.
Imagination is the seed of all greatness. Without imagination, your favorite food, song or movie would not exist.
Albert Einstein, one of the greatest
scientific minds of the 20th Century, knew it too:
Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.
It is mesmerizing and magical...until it isn't.
There’s an ugly underbelly. I like to call it imagiNOtion. Yes, it's a made up word, but the phenomenon is very real. ImagiNOtion is when we use
our imagination to decide that a future experience will be negative, no matter
what. We talk ourselves out of potential goodness, because we've already imagined the worse possible scenario.
Let's say you're perusing an online dating site and a guy catches your eye. His profile that says he’s lost weight over the past few years and he has active lifestyle. Sounds interesting, huh? No. Instead, you decide that you couldn't possibly like him because you've already got the notion that he’ll be an
overbearing food Nazi, telling you what to eat, scrutinizing your food choices and treating every date like you're training for a marathon. You just won't be able to deal with that. You're absolutely certain of this. From his photograph and a paragraph.
Shit, you should work for the CIA. I'm sure they've got some aerial surveillance photos they want you to look at.
Your imagination is a powerful gift.
Use your powers for good. Not for evil.
Don't psyche yourself out of opportunities because you're scared. It's easy to tell yourself that you didn't really want it anyway, but you know you do. Don't take yourself to the depths of hell and back in your mind before you even get to step one. Every single thing outside of our comfort zone is a challenge. That's the point. It's life's not-so-little litmus test. If you can withstand the challenge, if you can just wade through all the bullshit and still persevere, what you want can be yours.
I truly believe that.
It's not easy; if it was, everyone would do it.
I'm not just talking to you. I'm talking to myself. There are things I want to do and be that will take an extraordinary force. It's not going to show up on my doorstep, while I'm sitting on my couch watching TV. I'm going after it like a rabid dog. Relentless doesn't quite cover it. I'll be tested and knocked down. I'll have to put myself out there, completely raw and exposed. I will fail. It will hurt. I'll dust myself off and try again.
I'll do it happily, just for the chance to pursue what I really want, instead of just taking what's handed to me.
All of this will happen outside of my comfort zone. Every last painful drop.
If I can do it, you can do it.
Let's go.
We're in this together.
