The Power of Creative Imagination

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We all use our imagination, all the time. Sure, lots of people think they don’t have much of an imagination, but that’s just not the case. We’re seeing things in our mind all the time, it’s just how we are. If you’re one of those people who think they have trouble clearly imagining things, try to think back to watching a favourite film, and focus on a particular scene.

Go on, do it … I bet you can see it quite clearly, almost as though it were being played out right in front of you. And you can hear the dialogue, right? And the voices … you can hear the characters speaking and laughing or whatever they’re doing, and it’s as plain as day.

That’s your imagination! You can conjure up images and sounds and feelings of things that aren’t happening right now (except in your imagination).

The power of the imagination

film setIt’s a very important faculty, the imagination. It’s our internal cinema, where we can instantly churn out footage for all kinds of reasons. There’s no need for a production team, or a screenwriter, or a foley artist, or a gaffer. They’re all you! There’s no need for a team of props guys and set dressers either … yes, you take care of all that, quickly and easily and without even involving the unions!

Construction, transport, lighting, it’s all taken care of. And there’s no need to wait three months or six months for enough well staged and watchable scenes to end up ‘in the can’ before you have anything worth showing. It’s instant!

Yep, we can produce something of watchable quality in a flash, and go ahead and watch it, again and again. And we can take care of post-production too, updating where necessary, and almost instantly.

Using the imagination creatively

It’s a very useful faculty as well. By using the imagination we can try out things in advance, and in safety. Instead of just diving in and trying to do something potentially lethal (e.g. some of the stunts you see folk doing on YouTube!), we can take it out for a dry run and see how it ‘feels’.

If we can’t even manage it safely in our internal laboratory, it’s probably not a good idea to jump on that unicycle and head for the slack rope you set up between two buildings! Not yet anyway … you might need some more real world practice, and some more visualisation.

The basketball experiment

You must have heard of the now famous experiment conducted back in (I think) the 50’s, where a group of basketball-playing schoolkids were split into three smaller groups. One was told to practice throwing hoops for twenty minutes a day for the next three weeks. Another was told to do nothing, just carry on as normal. The third group was told to just imagine throwing hoops for twenty minutes a day for the next three weeks, and to do it really well, seeing the ball slipping into the hoop successfully, time after time.

At the end of the three weeks they were all tested on how many hoops they could throw successfully. The first group, who had practised on the court, had improved by something like 23%. The second group (no practice), had not noticeably improved, things were about the same. The third group, who had only practised mentally, had improved by something like 21%!

So just using their imagination, i.e. visiting their internal cinema on a regular basis and seeing themselves successfully throwing hoops, they had improved their real world skills. And damn near as much as the first group, the ones who had practised on the court. This one experiment (which by now has been repeated many times and in many different ways) shows the power of the imagination.

We can improve our performance in all kinds of things just by visualing being successful. Now that’s truly amazing!

The value of daydreaming

Lots of people don’t recognise the value of daydreaming, which is just one aspect of using the skill of imagination. I remember a teacher who used to enjoy seeing how accurately he could throw a board duster and manage to bounce it off my head if I was staring out the window (he was pretty good at it too!). He thought I was ignoring him completely, and to be fair he was such a lousy teacher that he was probably right most of the time.