“When you grow up, you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family, have fun, save money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact. That is – everything around you that you call life was made up by people no smarter than you. And you can change it. You can influence it… Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.” – Steve Jobs
Every average human being has been given a gift. That gift is called our imagination and it is the most powerful tool I believe we have on this planet. Almost every living thing in the world is dependant on their environment and fitting into their environment; adapting to their environment. Humans have the ability to change our environment to fit us: You don’t like the cold where you live in Canada? Move to Florida. You don’t like your employer? Find a new job or become your own boss. Don’t like your income? The influence of your friends around you? Your weight? Your activity levels? Your diet? The list goes on and on. One great beauty to being human is that, to use another quote: “What the mind of a person can conceive and believe, it can achieve” (Napoleon Hill).
Steve Jobs was a real life example of someone who was dissatisfied with some things, so he changed them. His influence has crept into almost every little corner of the planet! Even better examples would be people like the Wright brothers who brought about something that I’m sure humans have wanted to do since we’ve been able to look at birds and dream! 150 years ago if you had said you were going to learn to fly you would have found yourself in a ‘special hospital’. Now it is common place to fly right around the world in just a few hours.
Why am I writing this today? I want to encourage you that, like Jobs’ quote above, most of what you believe about what is possible or what you ‘should’ expect out of your life is based on very limited paradigms and beliefs. I want too encourage you, today, to begin dreaming and using your imagination. Imagination has been used to give us every technological advancement, every philosophy, every new dish of food that you enjoy today!
I want to encourage you to begin using your imagination today. Make a choice that you will begin to dream a life for yourself that currently doesn’t exist but is absolutely possible! Here is one hurdle that I’m pretty sure you will experience when you attempt to begin. You have been taught since your entered school to STOP using your imagination. You’ve been told not to day dream, to be realistic, to learn to use logic and critical reasoning skills. The problem with using reasoning skills, and you know this well, is that you can reason yourself out of or into everything. Was it not far more reasonable to believe the world is flat? After all… If the world is shaped like a ball how would the people on the bottom keep from falling off? You can use reason to believe or not believe anything. Call me some time and I will prove it to you. I encourage you to stop using your reasoning brain because you’ve been taught to over-reason your life to the point that you don’t expect the things that will get you what you want.
Dare to dream today! Dream of what you possibly… might… could want if it were possible. That first teeny dream will allow your brain to start opening up to new possibilities. As you begin changing your brain in this way it will progress slowly at first, but then take off as you see that you can influence your life by simply thinking different thoughts and focusing on what you CAN do rather than what you CAN’T.
