Imagination

If you were asked to name the human brain’s greatest achievement, you might think first of the impressive artifacts it has produced—the Great Pyramid of Giza, the International Space Station, or perhaps the Golden Gate Bridge. These are great achievements indeed, and our brains deserve their very own ticker-tape parade for producing them. But they are not the greatest. A sophisticated machine could design and build any one of these things because designing and building require knowledge, logic, and patience, of which sophisticated machines have plenty. In fact, there’s really only one achievement so remarkable that even the most sophisticated machine cannot pretend to have accomplished it, and that achievement is conscious experience. 

Seeing the Great Pyramid or remembering the Golden Gate or imagining the Space Station are far more remarkable acts than is building any one of them. What’s more, one of these remarkable acts is even more remarkable than the others. To see is to experience the world as it is, to remember is to experience the world as it was, but to imagine—ah, to imagine is to experience the world as it isn’t and has never been, but as it might be. 

The greatest achievement of the human brain is its ability to imagine objects and episodes that do not exist in the realm of the real, and it is this ability that allows us to think about the future. As one philosopher noted, the human brain is an “anticipation machine,” and “making future” is the most important thing it does.

This comes from a book called “Stumbling on Happiness” by Dan Gilbert.  Why am I talking about it here…because imagination can take us where we want to go…

We heard that since we were a kid.  Well actually we didn’t hear it we practiced it!  As a kid our imagination was in full bloom - on display for everyone to see.  We were princesses and pirates, cowboys and indians, spacemen and superstars.  We pretended everyday.  We imagined ourselves and our world as something different…

Have you ever just watched a kid…or listened to one when they were pretending…imagining.  It is so uplifting…and just plain enjoyable.

We often say after watching kids play, ‘If we could just bottle that energy and excitement!”

We can…

It starts with our imagination.

Many of us have stopped using this power…and it’s like a super power

Why have we shut down our imagination factory?

Imagination is not just for kids.  As the passage stated imagination is the greatest achievement of the human brain.

Let’s use it.

Let’s use it for good (another super hero reference)

So as you walk your store tap into your imagination.  Imagine what could be.  Imagine what it would be like if everyone is

Energized!

Excited!

Happy!

Imagine success…and it can happen!