Imagination Takes Me Everywhere

 

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

  – Albert Einstein

Imagination is directly or indirectly where our expectations of life originate.  We take a goal and make a plan.  We see into the future possibilities.  We attach meaning and purpose to a particular way we “see” the goal being accomplished.  Imagination is how we come up with the plans in the first place.  It is what enables us to make anything possible, anything happen.

The imagination is the golden pathway to everywhere.

  – Terence McKenna

One of the danger signs on the road of our imagination is that we project meaning into everything that happens.  Now if we are projecting good, positive meanings to what is happening, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  However, many times what we are projecting is suffering into what is happening.  If someone sent you a text message that said, “boy, what a day I am having”.  What’s the first thought that comes into your head?  Without the emotion in the voice or cues from body language, where does your mind go first – to something great is happening in their day or something horrible is happening to their day?

Reality is something you rise above.

  – Liza Minnelli

We need to constantly ask ourselves, what am I busy painting onto the canvas of my imagination?  There are no rules to what I decide to paint.  If I think that I can only be successful if my view of my current reality is matching to what I imagined my life would look like, then I am going to be doomed to disappointment.  How many times have I whined in my head, “but this isn’t how it’s supposed to be?”  How can I rise above what I perceive to be my reality, to what I am trying to create in my life?

Imagination is the most marvelous, miraculous, inconceivably powerful force the world has ever known.

  – Napoleon Hill

Imagination is what leads to creation.  Think of all of the great science fiction writers and their imaginations.  Deep sea diving, submarines with Jules Verne.  Star Trek and their recorders to our cell phones.  Isaac Asimov and self driving cars and the stun gun (taser).  H.G. Wells and atomic power.  We are so close to being able to print and replace body parts, organ transplants, tricorders for medical diagnosis.  To travel to the stars and go beyond our galaxy.  All things that have happened and will happen in our futures, because someones imagination said, “what if . . , “.

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

  – Albert Einstein

Imagination is what you need to see that although there may be problems in your life that need to be solved, they are also realities to be lived through.  It is the meaning I give to my life that enables me to perceive that I am successful, that I am happy.  How I perceive my life to be, is the reality I am creating for myself.  The meaning comes from my feelings about what is happening.  I can get lost in the maze of what it should be.  I can also choose to see life as it truly is and acknowledge that most of the times when I have really grown have been when I was in the middle of some sort of failure.  Taking the risk of failing, is really taking the risk that the growth that comes out of that failure is worth the cost of failing.

The world is a canvas for your imagination.  You are the painter.  There are no rules.  Get to work.

  – Fearlessmotivation.com

There is a beach collage in the movie “The Man of the House” which the mom Sandy, (played by Farrah Fawcett) adds to every time she goes to the beach with the family.  All through the movie she is adding a piece to it, until finally she sets a final piece in it and declares it is done.   It is highly likely that this collage in her head when she first imagined it and what she actually created are not the same.  But who makes the rule that it has to be the same?  We do.  We are the ones painting on our canvas.  We decide what stays there and what gets scraped off and repainted with something new.  The rules are created by us and we can change them.  Our imagination can reshape the rules, can reshape what is on the canvas, can reshape anything to mirror what we desire to achieve in our life.  My perception of my life is what makes up the reality of my life.

The power of imagination makes us infinite.

  – John Muir

So what am I focusing on?  Is it something that brings my imagination into reality?  Because if my reality and my imagination are not even close to being the same, then I need to refocus to make it so.  It’s funny how sometimes the way to make that adjustment is to learn to lose how I thought it had to be, in order to find out a better way to live it.  It’s a matter of holding onto the vision that imagination has created and trusting the process of trying, failing, learning and trying again.

Live out your imagination, not your history.

  – Stephen R. Covey

Raise your eyes to see the possibilities everywhere around you.  They are always there.  An endless hallway filled with doors waiting for you to step through.  As you go through a new door, remember – nothing in life is to be feared.  It is only to be understood.  To be perceived in such a way that it creates the reality that you are searching for.  So don’t just sit there.  Get up and get busy!

 

Sheryl Silbaugh

I am married with 4 grown children who are all married and currently have 14 grandchildren and two great granddaughters. I work fulltime as a Director at Bank of America and I am the founder of LemonadeMakers.org, which is a website and Facebook page dedicated to personal transformation and growth. We all have life's lemons show up in our life, this website helps us to make them into lemonade.