All it Takes is a Little Imagination

I love the fact that a Nobel Prize winning scientist said that imagination is everything. All too often we leave imagination to children, forgetting that we would be nothing without it. If we are smart we utilize our imagination everyday – dreaming, thinking, pondering – we may call it by more adult sounding words, but it is really as simple and childlike as just calling it our imagination.

Call it brainstorming, or white boarding, riffing or even just a bracing dump. Whatever word you use be sure to start anything you do with a little imagination. I was rearranging a space and stopped, thought big ideas through imagining what it could be, then went to work trying to get it close to my ideas. It didn’t turn out exactly as I imagined yet it is fabulous none the less. I only would have gotten there by using my imagination.

When we imagine there are no limits. We can fly, we can breathe underwater, we can paint sky scrapers or even organize our pantry in a single afternoon. Everything from the fabulous to the mundane can be made better by engaging our imagination. When we forget to use it things become boring, bland, or way too adult. Imagination reminds us that anything is possible, that we do not have to solve for all the variables right now, and it allows our minds to soar! It is only by imagining the impossible that we begin to see the possibilities in anything.

Today is your day to use your imagination. Let go, put aside the practical and only think about the impossible, the improbable, the big picture and the possibilities. Do not worry about the HOW, those solutions will come later, think about the sky being the limit. If you could do anything, what would it be? What do you REALLY want, and what is preventing you from getting there? Imagine the options if you put aside the to do lists. Maybe it won’t be just like your ideas and yet you won’t get anywhere if all you think about are checklists and to do items. Children dream big because they haven’t had the failures and disappointments of adulthood…so put on your little kid pants and think silly, impractical, even dare to think nonsense. You will be surprised at how excited and practical your new ideas can become. All it takes is a little imagination.