Shaking Up Your Model Of What’s Possible (Through Creative Imagination)

What’s Your Current Model Of Possible

Maybe you have a good life, a good job, a good marriage and good friends. I think that’s great. How about if it so resonates with you, that you remain in that good place.

But I want you to ask yourself…

• Is there something about good that satisfies you?
• What about good leaves you dissatisfied?
• Is good living fulfilling right now?
• Or does good really just feel like existing?
• As you reflect on this does it anger you to experience good?
• Or does it sadden you to experience good?
• Does it frustrate me that my life is just good?
• Is there more to living than at the level of good?
• What is my attachment to good?
• Am I living at my potential of contribution?
• Am I purposely expressing or accidentally living?

Let me just state, good is fine for lots of people. If you’re one of those people who read this and your buttons get mashed, then discovery is right around the corner for you I bet.

If you feel I am threatening your relationship with good, for fear that you may find risk in experiencing something great, then so be it.

I’ve had an attachment to good too so I’m not pointing fingers.

I look at my personal story around good and some of those questions came up for me. Some of this hit home and I felt the questions resonate.

I had reactions.

First sadness, then resentments and finally anger.

I knew this way of thinking had to stop.

Then I started comparing myself to other people who’s story looked more enticing than my own in order to validate how mediocre my story really was.

That just pissed me off worse and I began to beat myself up for not being good enough.

I knew this way of thinking had to stop.

I convinced myself I was doing all I could do to better my life and would then entrench myself in my story for safety.

I knew this way of thinking had to stop.

I felt that I lived below the surface of good for years. So if you’re life is good right now, then you’re one step ahead of me when from when I became conscious of good.

When you shed the blanket of good, you begin to discover things in and around yourself. You begin to create and own your personal possibilities.

Yes you want to take a moment to appreciate your where you’re at right now. Especially if it’s good.

I could rest under a thick blanket of good right now and feel safe & warm, but I’d know it would be a comfortable lie.

The lie wouldn’t be congruent with who I see myself as.

There’s no light under the blanket. Ok so you may have a pocket flash light 😉

I accept responsibility that I’ve lived in the box of other peoples expectations so that I’d be accepted.  So that I’d feel as if I’m part of something. That’s human nature. We’re built to exist in tribes and community. To feel accepted.

However if we’re honest with ourselves we don’t want to lose our individuality either. That’s our egoic selves. What we really want is to live free of attachments that bog us down and keep us from being in the now.

But within a herd of others trapped by the near genetic requirement to define us as a whole, claiming your individuality is like pushing wet spaghetti up a hill.

Later on in life in business I chose to stay in story every time my choice of personal freedom felt questioned. Why? Because dare I be ousted from the tribe of course.

• Your attachment to your story is stronger than you think.
• Your attachment to your story  is what keeps you in that place of good.
• Your attachment to your story around good is what keeps you from taking risk.
  
• Your attachment to your story around good has arrested your imagination.

If you find yourself in a place of discovery and wishing to explore it consider this:

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”– Albert Einstein

Maybe you’ve decided your relationship with good has become stale. If so then you’re prepared to have an open mind.

So how does one shake up their model of what’s possible and think differently?

“Logic will take you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”

You need to access your creative imagination.

You may have simply had your creative imagination hijacked at some point.

Why Creative Imagination Shakes It All Up

I’m going to give you some tools so you can use your creative imagination to shed more light, to experience more optimism and create more possibility but first what about creative imagination works?

We all have the ability to create and imagine things.

You and I do it all the time. But do we use creative imagination?

To purposely imagine what it is you desire most in life is a powerful tool because you are powerful enough to do this. Even if that means purposely imagining you have no great desires.

Our imagination is driving us all the time but when we find we’re unhappy about where we are it’s because we haven’t been consciously at the wheel or we’re not grateful for what we have created.

You decide today if you want to take the wheel.

You see, you can start today by vividly imagining your health in an optimum state, your finances finally in order & abundant as well as your relationships totally kicking ass.

You can visit your theater in your mind any time you choose and play out what you want your lifes direction to look like.

• Athletes have been using creative imagination via the theater of the mind, for years.
• Writers have been using creative imagination for hundreds of years
• Walt Disney created entire cities that continue to run and grow today, long after this death because of creative imagination.
• Musicians, artists and actors use creative imagination to see themselves performing expressing in advance if they choose.
  

Creative imagination isn’t just something artists, musicians, actors or even athletes use though. It’s done in business all the time. It’s worked for thousands of people and it can work for you.

Creative imagination is a tool you possess right now and you can use it to create your new story starting today.

But be careful not to confuse imagination with creative imagination.

What’s Behind Creative Imagination

There’s a difference between just imagining things and creatively imagining.

It’s necessary that we just imagine things such as:

1. Without the ability to imagine negative outcomes, we may do crazy stuff like not run when we see an animal that wants to attack us. We’d have no fear or flight response and we’d end up missing body parts, or worse dead.
2. Without the ability to imagine the outcome of a destination we’d never decide to take a vacation.

Maxwell Maltz discovered that the subconscious mind and the self image cannot discern the difference between real experiences or vividly imagined images.

Vividly imagined experiences are also called synthetic experiences and they have very real value in creating your reality. Just ask any successful athlete who envisions themselves making the shot, crossing the finish line or making the touch down.

Imagination is the driving force of all personality and behavioral change.

“Learning can be gauged by behavior change, if there is no behavior change then no learning has taken place.“-Wyatt Woodsmall

If you want to go from not good to good or from good to great, then creative imagination will be your tool.

“The pictures you create in your mind that are the most vivid and that you react to with intensity and you return to repeatedly are accepted by the self image as truths about you. Then they are translated as commands to our servomechanism which acts to verify those truths.“-Dan Kennedy

If you keep telling yourself, “I’ve just always been like that,” don’t expect your behavior to change or your model of what’s possible. You’re not giving your self image definitive positive mental pictures to latch on to in order to create change.

By not providing your self image with finite pictures of your outcomes this creates the long zigs and zags of you reaching your goals.

Decide you want to consciously guide these pictures rather than outside experiences to unconsciously guide you.

This is the difference between imagination and creative imagination.

Creative Imagination means you are the creator.

You create your reality and through your creative imagination you have the means to alter or improve your personality, your behavior and your habits without pain & struggle or the use of willpower.

Your health, your income, your relationships and your circle of life will be in a place of unconscious incompetence until you bring these next steps into action through creative imagination.

Steps To Activating Your Creative Imagination

So here are some exercises in creative imagination:

Step 1: Assessing

• What area’s of your life are you dissatisfied with?
• Now what would be the opposite of those dissatisfied experiences?
• Write just a sentence or two for each opposite experience.
• Now what area’s of your life are you satisfied with?
• Ask yourself why you’re satisfied with these area’s and how you arrived there so you can replicate the process with your opposite dissatisfied experiences.

Step 2: Creating

• Now go beyond your opposite, more positive experience and ask yourself; “if there were no limits on time, money or geography how far would you see yourself taking each item?”
• With that question in mind create and write down your perfect day down to the smallest detail. Leave nothing out.
• Keep this focused on having experiences rather than just the accumulation of stuff.
• Are these pictures & experiences in alignment with your values?

Step 3: Acknowledging

• What behaviors would you need to implement or improve upon to support your picture?
• What behaviors would you need to let go of to support your ideal picture?
• What habits do you currently have that don’t support your ideal self?
• What habits do you need to put in place to support your ideal self?
• What skills would you need to acquire or learn to support this vision?

Step 4: Planning

“What is possible is accomplished through planning it out.“

How to Engage Your Imagination In The Real World

Now to get this into action so you can get some feedback and some results.

Implement what you write out in Step 1 and 2 starting now:

• Prepare and plan for tomorrow the night before. Wake up ahead of the curve not behind it
• Take 15 minutes a day for the next 2 weeks to re-read your perfect day outline from “Step 2: Creating”
• If you require new skills, quickly research the resources required (I love to Google stuff) and take action on acquiring the info or training.
• Take time to go within your theater of the mind each day and play out the movie of you performing your new routines or habits in advance. See yourself experiencing the feelings you wish. You’ll find your current moment dramatically shifts and you feel more present and in the moment than ever.

The End Of The Beginning

This isn’t the end, it’s just the beginning of what’s possible for you you and I to create.

You may be thinking with all of this imagining, what about our present moments and just enjoying them?

Well a good side benefit is this:

You’ll find that the more you intentionally create these pictures of your experiences, via your creative imagination, the more possibility you have of experiencing positive feelings in the now.

You’re attitude adjusts as well it will also elevate above your current circumstances. You’ll find you enjoy more of what you’re doing in the moment. Even if it’s not exactly your passion your working on, your attitude is deeply nestled in what you know you’re going to experience.

Maybe this is why you’ve seen a guy who washes dishes for a living and has a great attitude. He’s doing his current duties purposefully because he knows it’s a means to an end.

Some might call this having hope or faith.

All I know is a purposeful & creative imagination is freak’n hard to stop when it’s set in motion.

“Winners Learn from their losses“

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