What is our imagination?
Seriously. Did you ever ask yourself why you imagine things the way you do?
Before I'll go into my personal definition of imagination, let me tell you a breathe-taking story first.
A story that I only like to call "The Broccoli Incident".
My whole life I lived with the imagination of Broccoli tasting like shit (I mean, it looks like a little tree..), then @Belcher told me to man up and eat it daily as part of my new dieting habits. The man behind my new dieting habits told me to do it, so of course I did it. And I loved it.
/end of story
Now, after this roller-coaster of emotions that this story resembles, let's bring this to a more serious tone.
By the way, there's also a similar story called "The Asparagus Incident", but you can probably imagine how that one went down..
Anyway, on to the promised more serious note (not too serious, no worries) and why I told you all that.
The broccoli story is actually a great real life example of imagination's power, and therefore serves as a great intro.
Right at the start I asked you what our imagination actually is.
Well, if we imagine something we actually try to think about something we don't know yet.
What happens when we try to do that, is that our mind tries to build an unknown situation in our mind, that requires tools it doesn't have yet. It can only work with the tools it already has, with the knowledge from past experiences.
Think about that for a second..
Our mind tries to explain something it doesn't know yet. In order to explain the unknown, it tries to connect the dots with lines it already knows from the past. It tries to put together a puzzle, without realizing that a whole lot of pieces is missing.
Let's go even deeper.
It feels like our brain tells us details about an unknown situation, but if the situation is unknown, it doesn't really have details about it. So what basically happens, is that your brain explains you a situation based on the things it learned in the past.
Let's use the broccoli story. My brain didn't know anything about the taste of broccoli, because I never ate it. My brain only knew about my dislike for other vegetables and when I tried to imagine eating broccoli it would always give me the feeling of it not tasting good. Usually, you don't question that decision, since it feels just natural this way.
What about business?
Well, let's do a quick exercise:
Assume that you never ran a successful business.
Now try to imagine running one.
Your brain will show you something, give you potential road blocks, potential failures, a huge mountain of things needed to be done, all things it learned from reading or from conditioning since your childhood.
But does your brain really know that? It didn't experience it yet. And still it feels like that's the way it is.
What I want to make clear here is, that your imagination about situations your brain can't know yet, are no future predictions.
Your brain can only tell you things from external sources (tv, teachings, etc.) or make assumptions based on past experiences.
But it really doesn't know a lot about things it didn't experience itself yet.
The brain acts the way it is trained to act, or conditioned to. Growing up winning in every sport tournament you did, will pretty safe make your brain imagine you winning the next one too. Your brain shows you images based on past experiences.
But what will your brain show you, if you never ran a successful marketing campaign for a business? What will it show you, if you never made a dollar off a business you own? What will it show you, if you never really lost weight, no matter what you "tried" in the past? What will it show you, if you never had the balls to ask that beautiful girl at the coffee shop out?
It probably won't show you winning at it.
If you don't see yourself winning at it, it creates a fear. Fear of failure. And that creates inaction. You don't think that you can win, you can only see what could go wrong, so you don't even start, or you stop when it gets a bit hard.
It seems so real, what your brain is showing you in your mind, that you don't even think about the fact, that your brain is only showing you images that it paints with colors, that you already own.
Maybe it's time to get new colors.
It may only need one moment that will change your imagination. Like the broccoli story, after eating it for the first time and realizing that I love it, now my brain has new information, and based on that new information I imagine eating broccoli as something tasty.
MJ's book was in some way kinda like eating that broccoli for the first time. I never even thought about the possibility of living a life young and wealthy before reading it. One book later I believed it. You can't think of something you don't know. But it's your job to get to know new things.
Don't let your imagination, that is only based on what you experienced so far, stop you from believing that there's more to achieve and to experience.
Seriously. Did you ever ask yourself why you imagine things the way you do?
Before I'll go into my personal definition of imagination, let me tell you a breathe-taking story first.
A story that I only like to call "The Broccoli Incident".
My whole life I lived with the imagination of Broccoli tasting like shit (I mean, it looks like a little tree..), then @Belcher told me to man up and eat it daily as part of my new dieting habits. The man behind my new dieting habits told me to do it, so of course I did it. And I loved it.
/end of story
Now, after this roller-coaster of emotions that this story resembles, let's bring this to a more serious tone.
By the way, there's also a similar story called "The Asparagus Incident", but you can probably imagine how that one went down..
Anyway, on to the promised more serious note (not too serious, no worries) and why I told you all that.
The broccoli story is actually a great real life example of imagination's power, and therefore serves as a great intro.
Right at the start I asked you what our imagination actually is.
Well, if we imagine something we actually try to think about something we don't know yet.
What happens when we try to do that, is that our mind tries to build an unknown situation in our mind, that requires tools it doesn't have yet. It can only work with the tools it already has, with the knowledge from past experiences.
Think about that for a second..
Our mind tries to explain something it doesn't know yet. In order to explain the unknown, it tries to connect the dots with lines it already knows from the past. It tries to put together a puzzle, without realizing that a whole lot of pieces is missing.
Let's go even deeper.
It feels like our brain tells us details about an unknown situation, but if the situation is unknown, it doesn't really have details about it. So what basically happens, is that your brain explains you a situation based on the things it learned in the past.
Let's use the broccoli story. My brain didn't know anything about the taste of broccoli, because I never ate it. My brain only knew about my dislike for other vegetables and when I tried to imagine eating broccoli it would always give me the feeling of it not tasting good. Usually, you don't question that decision, since it feels just natural this way.
What about business?
Well, let's do a quick exercise:
Assume that you never ran a successful business.
Now try to imagine running one.
Your brain will show you something, give you potential road blocks, potential failures, a huge mountain of things needed to be done, all things it learned from reading or from conditioning since your childhood.
But does your brain really know that? It didn't experience it yet. And still it feels like that's the way it is.
What I want to make clear here is, that your imagination about situations your brain can't know yet, are no future predictions.
Your brain can only tell you things from external sources (tv, teachings, etc.) or make assumptions based on past experiences.
But it really doesn't know a lot about things it didn't experience itself yet.
The brain acts the way it is trained to act, or conditioned to. Growing up winning in every sport tournament you did, will pretty safe make your brain imagine you winning the next one too. Your brain shows you images based on past experiences.
But what will your brain show you, if you never ran a successful marketing campaign for a business? What will it show you, if you never made a dollar off a business you own? What will it show you, if you never really lost weight, no matter what you "tried" in the past? What will it show you, if you never had the balls to ask that beautiful girl at the coffee shop out?
It probably won't show you winning at it.
If you don't see yourself winning at it, it creates a fear. Fear of failure. And that creates inaction. You don't think that you can win, you can only see what could go wrong, so you don't even start, or you stop when it gets a bit hard.
It seems so real, what your brain is showing you in your mind, that you don't even think about the fact, that your brain is only showing you images that it paints with colors, that you already own.
Maybe it's time to get new colors.
It may only need one moment that will change your imagination. Like the broccoli story, after eating it for the first time and realizing that I love it, now my brain has new information, and based on that new information I imagine eating broccoli as something tasty.
MJ's book was in some way kinda like eating that broccoli for the first time. I never even thought about the possibility of living a life young and wealthy before reading it. One book later I believed it. You can't think of something you don't know. But it's your job to get to know new things.
Don't let your imagination, that is only based on what you experienced so far, stop you from believing that there's more to achieve and to experience.
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