Imagination is the engine that drives life
Thinking outside the box is the most powerful thing in the world. But how many people break through the self-imposed walls in life? Not many and with the billions everywhere too few come out of that box. For anyone willing to read or listen, I’m ready to share these nuggets about how to break down those walls and be imaginative. So here’s a little tip to get you started: Stop caring what others think and start thinking honestly about yourself.
I’m not saying don’t take advice if it’s not good, but to step out of the “box” you have to be really selective, realistically creative and honest with yourself to the core. The best lives anyway follow a pattern of your own making, right down to trusting intuition above all the advice of others “who know better” and being really selective about taking any advice. Indeed, the creative and synthetic imagination (in that order) is the engine of life. Creative imagination because there is a better way of doing things than the established way waiting in reality waiting to be discovered and synthetic imagination in that more can be done with what already exists when we look a little beyond it in productive and creative ways.
When I think of creativity and imagination, the first thing that comes to mind is the word ‘different’, not the word ‘better’. Because “better” is a value judgment that says this is better than that and there’s no better way to do it, that’s it, that’s where it ends. The word “different” can reveal possibilities instead of ending them with value judgments. “This is better than that” makes false assumptions about reality, “we can do this differently” really opens up more possibilities. Different is the open road that leads to new and better places, better is the dead end. So this is where the creativity really begins, with that difference. Creativity in this sense is the ultimate “grey area” in realistic thinking, it’s better to make “black and white” absolute value judgments like “this is better than that” when it stifles creativity or improvement, it’s actually unrealistic thinking and acting .
So start thinking about reality in different ways, not so much better ways, because it is through this difference that reality really improves. For example, I remember when my father used to take the engine of his own car apart twice and put it back together before starting it, after fixing it, to see how he could make it work better with his knowledge of how to fix a car, and he actually managed to make it work better, this is an example of productive divergent thinking. Buying a “better” new car isn’t always the answer, is it? Of course, this extreme example is a prime example of how creativity actually works. But it shows that what I mean by creativity is “different”, never “better”. New ways of looking at reality are the differences that make things better anyway.
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