The C.A.T. Principle – Global Ebook Awards GOLD & SILVER Winner for Best Self-Help Non-Fiction Ebook of 2014 & 2016

Imagination: Are You Using It?

The art of imagination, or is it an art? To use our imagination is to put to use the one human faculty that no other creature on earth can lay claim to. Everything that exists, from this keyboard I’m typing on, to the screen whose colors reflect the letters I input, was once the product of an imagination. It was once an idea conjured, an idea invented, and an idea developed.

Famed American writer William Arthur Ward (1921-1994) once said that, “If you can imagine it, you can achieve it. If you can dream it, you can become it.”

These are powerful words, and yet why do so many of us go through life with an imagination that seems to dither as we age? When we’re children our imagination runs wild with fantasy, make-believe and tall tales, and yet with every passing year, these yarns of yesteryear slowly disappear as time takes its toll. We seem to place ourselves into a life of routine, whereupon our imagination meets a fate akin to an old book on a dusty shelf hidden from the beams of light. The knowledge is there, but dormant it sleeps.

How do we break out of this never-ending downward spiral of originality, and reinvigorate the inventiveness we once knew? It may not be as difficult as we think. Not unlike dominoes, imagination has a strange way of kick-starting a chain reaction. One thought feeds the next, and the next, and the next, until such time ideas flow without barrier, without boundary. It’s the spark that ignites the fire; it’s the seed that germinates the chute.

The challenge lays not so much in the ability to dream new ideas, as it does in a shift of mindset: a shift from trivial thought to creative thought. Sweep the mind of chatter and blather, and instead pad it with ideas of value. We must resist the mindless trap of gossip, and make way for the fertile ground of intention. Imagination isn’t a product of empty deliberation, but is a blend of habit and inspiration. When we change our thought patterns, we open our minds to new realms. It’s as if a new horizon dawns, and things that once seemed vague and hazy, suddenly become clear (see Clarity: When the Fog Lifts…).

So whether or not imagination is an art, is a mute point. What matters is what it can do for us, and more importantly what it can do for the greater world. Imagination brought us the printing press, and it brought us to the Moon. When used wisely, it knows no bounds, and possibilities are endless. But shut it down, and we lay waste to the greatest gift known to humankind.

Imagination: are you using it?

For more, check out The C.A.T. Principle: Change, Action, Trust – Words to Live By, a Global Ebook Awards GOLD Winner for Best Self-Help Non-Fiction Ebook of 2014, available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. See the latest Amazon reviews here. Now revised and expanded, and a Nominee for the Best Self-Help Non-Fiction Ebook of the 2015 Global Ebook Awards.

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A 2014 Global Ebook Awards GOLD Winner for Best Self-Help Non-Fiction Ebook.

2015 Global Ebook Awards Nominee for Best Self-Help Non-Fiction Ebook