How to Create Your Ideal Life

Here’s a puzzler for you. What is one talent that everyone is born with? It requires no special abilities or skills or tools to use it. It does not need to be learned. It is available at any time, without a moment’s hesitation. It never goes away and it costs us nothing to use. It is the seed of every dream and every nightmare. Children use it more than adults. It is the springboard of every great innovation as well as every demise. Have you guessed it? It is…our imagination.

If you will, journey with me to a real place I recently visited. You wake up, excited to greet the day and start your vacation. After an enjoyable car ride, you arrive at your destination and, as you get out of the car, you breathe in fresh, clean, salty air. Everywhere you turn there is something delightful and lovely to appreciate. The sun is shining big and bright, highlighting majestic mountains completely surrounding you. The air is calm and warm. The waves lap at your feet and you are lulled into a rhythmic, meditative state. Throughout the day, you spoil yourself with delicious local cuisine, such as fresh oysters, artesian pizza, mouthwatering crepes and exquisite tailor-made coffees with fun shapes drawn in the foamed milk. You watch the sun set over the vast, mountain-packed skyline. Then, in the morning light, you bask in the sunrise as you savor your coffee, while giving thanks to the abundant, beautiful earth that just gives and gives and gives.

Are you with me? Did you feel the salt in your nose? Did you feel the waves on your feet? Could you see the mountains? Could you taste the food? Your imagination took you, and for a moment, you were there, transported, in the present, without any expense or pain or inconvenience.

While that trip may have been easy to do, it would be unwise to underestimate the power of the incredible inborn talent that took you there.

Napoleon Hill, who studied 500 of the most successful people, said “Imagination is the most marvelous, miraculous, inconceivably powerful force the world has ever known.” And yet, many of us are conditioned to either not use it, or use it in negative ways. We are told to “be realistic”, “get your head out of the clouds”, “stop living in a dream world.” Our natural talent gets stuffed down and ignored. Or, we imagine a future filled pain and misery, as if worrying will bring about anything other than what we are worried about.

Our imagination is one of the things that sets us apart from the animal world and allows us the possibility to create our own surroundings and future, good or bad. Most people take for granted this amazing talent of imagination and rarely gave it a second thought. Sadly, that lack of awareness automatically cuts people off from the origin of our most creative and highest expression of our truest selves. To be creative, we must imagine. To create a life we want, we must imagine. To become a better version of ourselves, we must imagine.

Here’s the rub. You cannot stop imagining. We are always imagining, whether we are aware of it or not. Everything, and I mean everything, in our lives started in someone’s imagination. In my office alone, I am surrounded by hundreds of items; each of them created first in the imagination before they went through all the iterations to get to my office. This may seem obvious and easy to skim over on our way to the next to-do on our endless to-do list. However, if you really give this some thought, you will find that imagination is infused with power to either create the life of our dreams or the life of our nightmares. It all starts with a thought, an idea, a story…in our imagination.

Actually, it starts with an awareness of that thought, idea or story. If we are always imagining, becoming aware of what we are imagining is the key to unlocking its power in your life. Take stock in where your imaginations hang out. When you think of your day tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, what does your life look and feel like? Do you think of it through the lens of Murphy’s Law, where anything that can go wrong, will go wrong? Or, are you excited by the possibility of what your imagination has shown you as possible; where you are chasing down your dream.

I have found that as adults we struggle with imagination for three main reasons. The first reason is that we think imagination is something only children do. As an adult, I’m too busy to give my imaginations much consideration or thought, so I don’t spend time imagining at all. Without realizing it, this option co-ops the person into simply accepting their lot in life, never really giving their dreams the space and attention to grow. Instead, they point to all the evidence as to why it won’t work and how it’s not worth the time.

The second reason is a concern that if we do let our imagination loose, it will not amount to anything. If what we imagine seems unrealistic, it becomes something ranging from a waste of time to heartbreak. This blockage of imagination stifles all kinds of growth that comes from chasing our dreams. When we don’t give up on our dreams, we build our belief in our self, we strengthen our persistence, and we become inspired from the inside out. This internally driven inspiration naturally creates and innovates, rather than competes and compares.

Conversely, the third reason is a fear that our imaginations will come true. We become afraid of the images that float through our mind and the potential consequences should they come true. Better to be safe than sorry. What can go wrong, will go wrong. Look before you leap. While these may seem like wise admonitions, they do little to stir the spirit. In fact, it tends to make us think more about what could go wrong, and in the overthinking of what could go wrong, it often does. Ironically, our imagination can take us to places far worse than the actual reality, causing stress and untold problems in the body and mind.

If everything around us started in someone’s imagination, then imagination is the seed of starting anything. When I ask people to imagine their best future, they typically start with something amazing and grand, and then, almost immediately, they put a lid on it by trying to figure out the “how” and applying all the reasons why it won’t work. Almost as soon as the idea has started, they smoother it by stating why it can’t happen; ignoring all the ways that it could work or has worked for others.

When I was growing up, I always imagined myself as a college graduate. Regardless of how many “facts” I had stacked up against me, and there were many, I was never shaken by them. I knew I would graduate from college, even before I left grade school. I held on to that image and would not accept any other option. It had no choice but to happen for me.

Some of the most common abilities we have are easily overlooked, yet they are far more powerful than they first appear. Author and motivational speaker, Denis Waitley famously said, “It’s not who you are that holds you back, it’s who you think you’re not.” Unleash your imagination on what you really, really want and then imagine yourself being that person. You’ll be giving yourself a great gift as your imagination unfolds your ideal life before you.