Stre-e-e-etch Your Imagination

"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."

Albert Einstein, Physicist, 1879-1955

This one quote alone is a pretty compelling reason to learn
how to turn our imaginative genius loose.

All of us have a fairly vivid imagination, but
unfortunately, we do not control it. It controls us. It
runs willy-nilly on its own, painting pictures in our minds
of things that we do NOT want to materialize.

What's even more alarming is the fact that the same reel of
pictures keeps playing over and over again. There are
statistics that indicate that of the many thousands of
thoughts that we have in the course of a single day, the
vast majority of them are the same old, tired out,
uninspired thoughts that we had earlier in the day, and the
day before, and the day before that, ad nauseum.

Here are some simple visualization exercises that will help
you train your imagination to flex its muscles. You can
perform these anytime, anywhere, and in just a matter of
seconds.

Exercise 1 - Color Me Beautiful

Focus on any object in your immediate vicinity. Mentally
change its color. Some people try to be too literal-minded
about this and claim that they cannot “see” the different
color. Just get a flashing “sense” of it being this
different color. That’s all that is needed.

Run through several colors in rapid succession. Change the
finish from a high gloss to a matte finish. Make it fuzzy.
Make it wet. You can graduate to seeing multi-colored
patterns: plaids, stripes, polka dots, animal prints, etc.

Exercise 2 – Bend Me, Shape Me, Any Way You Want Me

Once again focus on any object. Increase its size, more,
more, even more. Now shrink it back again. Make it so tiny
that it all but disappears. Make it fat and puffy and then
skinny and sunken. Pull it like taffy and make it stretch
and twist and bend and fold. Now turn the object inside
out.

Again, you do not need to “see” every single detail. The
idea is simply to get your imagination to come out and play.
You want it to break free of its well-worn, literal rut, and
more importantly, you want to get comfortable seeing things
that are not yet in your physical world. Let’s do one more…

Exercise 3 – Mental Aroma Therapy

Our sense of smell is by far the strongest sense that we
have. A single aroma is enough to unleash a flood of vivid
memories. Also, olfactory sensations are the first ones to
reach the brain. So not only does smell provide a powerful
link to our recall. It can also serve to stimulate and
excite our imagination.

This exercise consists of simply “recalling” certain odors
that are most pleasant to you. What aromas make you feel
calm? Smell them now. What scents make you feel powerful?
Train yourself to mentally whiff that scent when you’re
feeling small.

Think of smells that make you feel confident, free,
intelligent, rich, kind, playful, or anything else that
occurs to you.

As you go through different odors that cause you to
experience these pleasurable sensations, take note of what
pictures each aroma conjures up for you. What aspect of
these mental scenes pleases you most? (This is a great way
to engage your mind during lost, odd moments.)


These pictures and odors should be remembered and
incorporated into visualizing your goals. The point of
these exercises is to get your logical mind to loosen up, to
release its choke hold on your creative spirit.

Why is this so important? Because the fastest, most
efficient way to achieve any goal is to SEE it in our mind's
eye. We are to act, feel and give heartfelt thanks as if it
were already a done deal. Some authors call this
"Thinking from the end."

Giving our imaginations a workout will help us accomplish this.

"Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you
everywhere." Albert Einstein