Right. Superheroes, superpowers and imaginary adventures…to help business professionals dramatically improve performance! Imagination? This is business. Who has time for imagination? But just wait a minute.
Human imagination is the most powerful creative force on the planet. Without it mankind would still be living in caves. (Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure we’d still have cell phones. But think of how bad the coverage would be from inside a cave.) Every man-made thing around us was first an idea in someone’s mind, put there by their imagination.
Albert Einstein said that “imagination is more powerful than knowledge.” He said, “Logic can take you from A to B. But imagination can take you anywhere.” He understood the power of imagination. Imagination is so powerful because of how our minds work. Or said differently, it’s so powerful because of how imagination works within our minds.
There are 5 unique characteristics of how imagination works within our minds.
It helps us ‘suspend our disbelief’. As humans, one of our biggest challenges is our lack of belief in ourselves or our abilities. But our imagination allows us to ‘suspend’ that disbelief in ourselves, because our imagination basically tricks our minds into believing. It tells our mind, ‘it’s not like I’m really going to do this, I’m just imagining what I would do if…’
It bypasses the critical mind (the gate-keeper to the subconscious mind). The critical mind is the part of the mind that protects the status quo in our lives. It exists between the conscious and subconscious mind, regulating what within the subconscious mind (our beliefs, values, self-image, habits, etc.) gets challenged based upon what’s happening in our conscious mind. The older we get the stronger our critical mind becomes. But our imagination slips right past this gate-keeper to access ideas available in our powerful subconscious minds.
It engages both the conscious and subconscious minds simultaneously. This one is related to #2 above. Since our imagination doesn’t trigger a defensive response from the critical mind, it can work with both the conscious and subconscious mind at once. We can ‘think’ creatively, emotionally, and logically all at the same time.
It allows us to visualize things that do not yet exist. Our imagination allows us to see things that don’t yet exist in our ‘mind’s eye’. It literally allows us to picture in our mind something we have never seen, touched, heard, smelled, or tasted.
Finally, it accesses our untapped potential (also known as the collective subconscious, infinite intelligence, or super-conscious mind). This one is ‘out there’ a little for some. But we have potential – abilities which we aren’t yet consciously aware of – that is not only untapped, but also current unknown to us. We can think of this one as the feeling of ‘flow’ we get sometimes when everything is working together. Or that ‘sixth sense’ that tells us something is wrong, but we can’t explain what’s wrong or how we know it. Our imagination is gathering information below our level of awareness, just like dogs can hear sounds we as humans can’t.
So utilizing our imagination really gives us direct access to the immense power of our subconscious mind (and more) to improve our performance. This is something that is impossible without our imagination.
Bonus Point: For those of you who think you need to stay in the ‘real’ world governed by your 5 senses, think about this. We can only see the small visible light range of the electromagnetic spectrum. (The electromagnetic spectrum includes radio waves, microwaves, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, x-ray, and gamma rays.) If we were to layout a roll of old 16mm movie film – the kinds with the individual frames – to represent this spectrum, and ran it the 2,000 miles from Los Angeles to Anchorage Alaska, the visual light range would be a single frame of that film somewhere around Seattle.
So when we ‘see’ only what’s visible to the human eye, we miss everything out there except that single frame. In the last 150 years, looking beyond only the portion of the spectrum we can see, mankind has harnessed radio waves, microwaves, infrared, ultraviolet, and X-rays in tremendously beneficial ways.
So before you dismiss the use of imagination in professional coaching, just imagine what you could achieve if you were able to leverage the full power of your mind and focus it on your most important activities.
Question: Do you regularly use your imagination to look for better ways to achieve your results; or do you depend mostly on your habitual thinking to rerun past behavior? Where in your life do you think you could experience greater success by looking for more creative solutions to challenges?
