Some of the great minds in human history were people with buckets load of imagination that could envision what other people have no concept at all. Einstein and Carl Sagan were two good examples of what your imagination should be like. Here are two of their quotes with characteristic simplicity:
Let your imagination run wild.
“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it, we go nowhere.” – Carl Sagan
“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”
Albert Einstein
Imagination is an integral part of the human mind that covers both the creative and learning spheres. Increasing one’s imagination creates possibilities. It is considered to be the creative faculty of the mind that helps a person in process-oriented activities, such as thinking, memorizing, remembering, or opinion forming.
A rich imagination can enable a person to pursue and accomplish many great things. There are various ways to enrich one’s imagination how one can enrich imagination.
Build a team whose members have diverse backgrounds and mindsets. This broadens the creativity process.
Each person will contribute different thoughts and ideas, which lead to unique conversations when everyone comes together. The education, background, and experience of individual members lead to a creative group.
Team members will learn from one another. Different perspectives lead to new skills and effective innovation strategies. The result is a stronger team equipped to take on new challenges and quickly solve problems of all sizes.
Creating a great customer experience for your business requires more than just good customer service. You have to get to know your customers and invest in longer-term relationships so you can provide personalized experiences across the customer journey — from beginning to end.
A crucial aspect of creative thinking is the capacity to imagine. As an author and educational advisor Sir Ken Robinson once said: “Imagination is the source of every form of human achievement.”
Without imagination, our ability to blend ideas, to see things not as they are but as they might be, is greatly hindered. If we cannot imagine new possibilities, our ability to think creatively is limited.
How can we think of ways that generate novel and worthwhile ideas if we keep coming back to existing and proven ideas?
Here are some tips on how to be good at imagination:
Read
Creativity and imagination are sparked by learning. One’s willingness to learn new things gauges one’s ability to accept and adapt to change. It improves one’s adaptability to imaginative reasoning and creative thinking.
Reading is too often associated with “book learning,” which is often boring, irrelevant, and worse, required. The fact is, reading anything, fiction or nonfiction provides a peek into the mind of the writer.
It opens up vistas of other people’s experiences and insights and provides a rich crop of possibilities. You are reading about what other people in faraway places have experienced or thought, giving you a private audience to these same experiences and thoughts. Keep reading, and it will open your mind. You can create a world in which anything is possible.
Expand your interests
Passion fuels imagination. Expand your interests by shifting your focus to include other interests that you may be passionate about.
There’s a Mexican proverb that translates roughly to “Tell me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you who you are.” That may sound politically incorrect, but the fact is the people around you have a significant impact on you. If you surround yourself with people of wide imagination, some of it should rub off on you.
Creative people
Synergize your energies by spending time with people who share the same interest as yours. Brainstorming, planning, or simply talking to people will keep creative juices running, giving new and fresh ideas.
Daydream
Daydreaming is more deliberate than merely dreaming, which makes it more effective in opening your mind to possibilities. Edgar Allan Poe says, “They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”
When you take a break from your daily tasks, or you are stuck in traffic, observe the things around you and let your mind wander. What is the life of a traffic cop like? Do plants feel pain? Is there more than one plane of existence? You can amuse yourself by speculating on these things, and it will soon become a habit. It can one day trigger an idea for a book, or for a new product that may change your life.
Brainstorm
If you have an opportunity to be part of brainstorming for new products, new ideas, or new technology, go for it. You can pick the brains of the people around you by simply being the sounding board. Just being around when these things are being discussed can open new vistas to your imagination.
Look at things differently
At the points when you feel tired or bored, and, and you feel that your creativity is running low, look at things from a new perspective. This will give you a fresh approach to things that may even trigger new ideas that you once thought were not possible.
Play
Hopscotch may not do much for your imagination, but playing games like Dungeons and Dragons or Minecraft can get you going down the path of imagination. Fortunately for you, you can legitimately play your heart out nowadays with nary a cocked eyebrow. Use it.
Be open to unexplored paths
Creativity is often tagged together with originality. To come up with new ideas may be challenging and even often daunting, as unexplored paths may pose unexpected threats. It is also an avenue where one can find genuine ideas that can result in a successful endeavor.
Question everything
Curiosity may have killed the cat, but curiosity brought it back. However, satisfying your curiosity is not an end in itself. To spark your imagination, you should always be asking questions. Why? Where? How? What? Who? If there are things or events that you don’t understand, ask. You might be surprised at what you find out.
Tell stories
Your imagination remix.
People love to listen to stories, and each person has a story to tell. Practice imaginative and creative thinking by telling as many stories as you can. Let it be descriptive. Let it allow you and your listener to visualize what is being told. Visualization is an important part of increasing imagination.
Visualization is often perceived as one’s ability to create a clear and vivid picture in mind. This concept entails various senses as well. Visualization also involves one’s sense of touch, smell, taste, and other senses. Visualization enables you to imagine the story being told or the object being described. The more imaginative and creative the mind becomes, the more elaborate one’s visualizations can be.
Produce
What can be more imagination-stirring than producing something creative? Creating something all your sparks your motivation to explore your potential further. Touch is a sense that is often underrated, but it carries a plethora of emotional responses. It excites your sense of accomplishment, making you want to go as far as you can. Seeing something take shape even as you are contemplating your next step is heady, and it will drive your imagination to new heights.
Collaborate
Sound off your ideas with friends, families, co-workers, and mentors. Find out what they think, and how they react. This can help you narrow your focus and pursue a promising line of thought further than you first believed. Sharing can help validate or challenge you and influence your direction.
Be curious
Learning new things sparks creativity and increases imagination. A part of learning new things is curious. Children tend to be more imaginative because of their curious nature. Our inherent nature to seek answers or to learn new things does not disappear overage. Feed curiosity by learning and experiencing new things and notice how your imagination improves. Feed your curiosity by asking questions and build your ideas with the help of insight from others.
Meditate
Release your inner self by disconnecting from the outside world on a regular basis. You don’t have to say “ohm” if that’s not your style, but reserve a time of quiet in the midst of your busy life to recharge your mind, body, and spirit. Let in whatever will come, and go with it.
Try lots of new things
It is often said that if you keep on doing the same things, then you will keep on receiving the same things. Challenge yourself to experience new things or embark on new adventures and endeavors.
Study new, different topics
Expand your knowledge and skills set to open up opportunities to let your imagination free rein. Learning new things stimulates your mind, and motivates you to try new things. Each novel experience opens possibilities.
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options for innovation workshops to get noticeable results.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that struggle gets better every day you learn and apply new innovative ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Do you have a lesson about making your innovation learning better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
More reading on creativity and innovation from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.
