Imagineering – Tapping Into Your Imagination to Engineer Your Future

We live too much out of our memory, too little out of our imagination. Too much on what’s been done, not enough on what’s possible. That’s like running on a treadmill, moving but hardly going

anywhere.

When my daughter was 4 years old, I took her on a subway ride. In between the subway stations, she was curious and asked me, why it was dark outside the train. I said because we were underground and there were no windows in the tunnel.

Suddenly, her eyes lit up. With excitement, she said, “Mommy, are we in a dragon’s dungeon?”

As she finished her question, my eyes lit up too. What if the subway train tunnel were a dragon’s dungeon?

Imagination as Creative Ignition

Imagination can empower us beyond our present reality. Not only cure boredom, but it enables us to create any scenarios for the future.

Memory is finite. It deals with the past and limits us from expanding beyond what we think possible. Imagination is infinite. It deals with potentiality and can help us shape our future.

If you feel stuck in temporary boredom – a boring meeting, traffic jam, menial task – ignore the urge to distract yourself with your mobile phone, but rather start working on your imagination muscles. What if you are in a dragon’s dungeon right now doing what you are doing?

If you feel stuck in the long-term boredom…say, a soul-sucking job – how can you use your creative imagination daily to visualize the life you want rather than focus on the obstacles that keep you where you are?

You see, imagination comes from the same DNA as playfulness. You can not find a normal child that has high imagination but not playful; or very playful but doesn’t have imagination. One fuels another.

When you use your imagination to visualize or feel the feeling as if it happens now, you enter a fertile ground of creative problem-solving. Why won’t you? Imagination can create excitement, energy, and sense of certainty that you won’t get when you focus too much on the problem.