Do you ever catch yourself wondering how certain technological advances were created? You can become one of the most imaginative people in the world by building your creative muscles! In this episode, Jimmy shares three exercises to help you bring your imagination into reality.
Episode Keys
- A strategy for giving yourself the highest probability of success for your future.
- Why you must establish a consistent exercise of creative practices to formulate your imaginative lifestyle.
- How to build your imaginative muscles in the same manner as Walt Disney!
- The comparison between goals and creative process.
- Why you should take your mind out of reality and into the world of imagination!
Podcast Transcription
When you sit back and look at all of the wonderful inventions we have in our world today, you say, there’s no way I could ever create that. Or there’s no way I’d ever imagine that could even have been created yet. Someone else did it. Hey, good morning. This is Jimmy Williams with Live a Life By Design, your Monday morning moments of motivation. And I am going to share with you today, something that I hope will open up your mind and your creativity. So you may imagine the biggest, the best and the boldest of your future ahead today. We’re gonna share some things that just require a little bit of work on your part. I don’t often ask you to take any physical exercise because you know, we’d hate for somebody to have to do some sit ups or something in this world, right? Don’t know about you, but I’ve already had mine this morning.
Did some of those good downward dogs got stretched out, got some pushups done. Oh, I just love kind of stretching getting the old body up this morning, early five 30 in the morning, moving along just a part of life for me. Folks. I’d love it. It that way take control of the day at early morning time. But I digress. You know, one of my favorite quotes from Robert Kennedy, the great Senator from Massachusetts and Robert Kennedy said only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly. So what that means is is no risk, no reward right today, we’re gonna visit and share with you a simple three exercises that I hope will help break open. All of that creativity that is hidden within each of us. We just have to find the way to unleash it on the world. Some people are very good at that at, and some of us have to work a little harder, but we all are capable of creating imaginative, work into reality.
If we fail to imagine as a society, we fail our fellow man, for instance, what would be the state of travel in our world to day, if the great inventor such as Leonardo DaVinci or the Wright brothers hadn’t exercised their imaginations for their era. Certainly when they took that few hundred feet of flight and car in the Carolinas, the Wrights brothers looked at that as the breakthrough on their creative invention. At that time, the airplane, then it spawned an entire industry that we today utilize and take for. Granted just got off an airplane myself this last week, and I’m sitting there as we’re flying through the sky, 34,000 feet above the ground. The altitude is just beautiful. You can see the horizon and non-ending horizon. It just turns into a sea of blue as I looked out the window and I could only in my mind imagine how far can we go?
And how fast can we go? As human beings in this planet, we’ve recently sent non astronauts. That’s the only term I’m going to use is just regular citizens into outer space. We have the capability now through Tesla and through Jeff Bezos companies to take the opportunity of sending anyone that wishes to go and has the, the means to invest in it, to experience what it’s like to leave this planet and seek out another one. The end of the day, that is just astonishing to me, how someone of 2022 said, I wanna send just someone that is not an astronaut into outer space and bring them safely. Home. SpaceX was one of the creative genius of Elon Musk. And he wanted a company that could provide beyond what is currently being developed at NASA, those tools, those rockets, those types of technological advances that would help us go to Mars.
That’s one of his goals he wants to look at what would life be like on Mars? Now that takes a pretty big imagine nation today. I’m not asking you, Hey, how can I get my family to Mars? Unless that’s really what you wish to do, but I want you to think about simply getting on an airplane or, or wait just a minute. Let’s go. Even back further than that. If the right brothers hadn’t used their imagination, if they hadn’t built on what Leonardo DaVinci had started in his drawings, years and years and hundreds of years earlier, would we still be riding horses perhaps, or taking trains or even driving cars? Well, but wait a minute, though, that takes imagination as well. So you can see that what we’ve done to bring fourth technological change innovation in our lifetime has only come about because someone imagined something bigger, better, and bolder in their life.
And they sought out to make it a reality. One of the most innovative organizations in my lifetime, and I coincided, I’ll be honest with you admire it. Tremendously is Disney, not just because of the rides, the clean parks and the outstanding service you receive from the characters that wait on yet Disney. It’s just their simple approach to what one man had as a vision with his brother that then brought the vision into the present tense. He brought in a place where he saw families enjoying wholesome, fun times, creating memories for life. In one of his parks. He brought about those imaginary items in his life, which by the way, remember Walt was fired by an local newspaper in Kansas because he wasn’t creative enough. Boy, don’t you know that gentleman’s looking back and regretting that move. But Walt set out to say, if I can imagine it, I can bring it about with hard work, focus and persevering.
And that is one of the reasons. Every time our family has taken a trip to Orlando, Florida, Paris, France, Anaheim, California, wherever we’ve been at one of their parks. We still have a couple of go over in the, in the Asian markets, but whatever we’ve done, I always left feeling inspired by what be can be accomplished with imagination, belief and hard work. It just is that simple Tesla, the electric vehicle manufacturer has proven that imagine nation is rewarded by market share and wealth beyond our comprehension. Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla and well, quite frankly, many other outstanding companies whose foundations are created through his powerful imagination has brought to life. So many technological changes. How we see and operate a vehicle. It is just to me, fascinating. Steve jobs had another uncanny knack for creating what others had simply thought was pure imagination. Steve jobs.
When he proposed the CEO position to Steve skull of Pepsi, the opportunity to work with apple as the CEO, he simply asked one question that really triggered the imagination in the mind of Mr. Scully. He simply asked him this, do you wish to continue producing sugared water? Or do you want to work with us and change the world? Now that was a statement or a question in this instance that triggered in Steve Cully, his belief that he and Steve jobs together working intently could imagine and bring to reality what is necessary to change the world. And for those of us that use apple products, not endorsing them, I’m just saying they’re really good products. But for those of us that use them, we realize, Hey, he did do something so fantastic. It was at our minds unimaginable, but not to Steve jobs. So today I will share with you three exercises.
That’ll help you grow your imagination muscle and become the person you wish to be. This first exercise is rather simple. Take a blank piece of paper and a pen. If you don’t have them grab those. And at the top of the page, write the words, no boundaries. Now, why would I do this? Well, first I wanna plant in your mind. There are no limitations on you for this exercise. It wouldn’t matter how much it costs. It doesn’t matter how much time it doesn’t matter how much technical capability. It doesn’t matter anything about resources. There are no boundaries for what you will be doing in this exercise. There’s no fixed method of performing this exercise because all of us may think differently about life. The goal is to fill the page with as many ideas you can generate in five minutes. Now, why do you think I chose such a short period of time? Our goal here is to get our mind focused. I want to kickstart your brain with the only limiting parameter is that you must observe the five minute rule for this exercise. Now pause the podcast for only five minutes. Now, when I say pause, ladies and gentlemen, I don’t mean turn it off. I simply mean hit the pause button and come back after five minutes. Let’s see how many ideas you can create in that five minute. If there’s no disturbance, you’re just sitting down focusing purely on this exercise. All right, let’s go.
Welcome back. How many did you write down? 10, 20, 40 ideas. Well, don’t fall into the gap. If you only came up with three or four, that’s okay, we’re gonna work on this muscle. It’s not like you started lifting 500 pounds in the gym. On the first day, the mind is the same. We will start working with smaller numbers and then we’ll have goals to create more ideas as the time continues on this exercise. So one of the methods of experience, a better process is to place yourself in an environment where you’re not disturbed, no electronics, no people, simply a pen and paper. I often use outdoor scenery to help me create imaginative ideas. Go outside, sit on the patio, look at the wind, blowing through the trees, and then look at the birds, flying overhead, hearing them sing, whatever it takes to get your juices flowing for imaginative ideas.
Now, wherever you find the inspiration, you may look at that briefly until your creative time has been sufficient. Take the top three ideas. You decide what the rankings are for the list. I’m not giving you any rankings. If you just pick the top three ideas from the created list, you just produced circle them and place them at the top of individual pieces of paper. So idea number one has its own sheet idea. Number two, its own sheet and idea. Number three has its own sheet of paper. Now allow yourself an additional five minutes with idea. Number one, only focusing on that particular idea. The, the, the point is to come up with as many ways that you can bring idea one into, even if you just make a partial step, that is the point moving forward with the idea, bringing that imagination to reality. Now there may be additional developments of idea.
Number one something you hadn’t thought about previously, some tactics to complete a piece of the idea, or even a tangential idea that may, may not have been discovered in the initial brainstorming phase. This is an approach that will work for you, but you must continue to lengthen the amount of time you can stay focused on the task of imagining. The second exercise requires you to place yourself in a library or bookstore. I know what you’re saying. Hey, Jimmy’s trying to, to trick me into reading a book. Heaven forbid if I did that. You know, I’m a voracious reader. I highly recommend you read some good books, but I just want you to know you are partially correct in that. I’m not asking you to read the whole book. I simply want you to pick up a book in a fictional, perhaps a space novel area of the library or the bookstore.
For example, pick up the book. If you can find it by I Rand, that’s called Atlas shrugged. Notice the first few pages as you read this novel, this utopia of society is only one totally obtuse one on the current world we live now. Why do you think the author writes in such a manner because of a tremendous imagination? The author captures is thoughts. Goals are similar to imagination. You must first place a picture in your mind of the finished product book, song service, what, whatever it is that you’re attempting to create before the first step is taken in the process to bring it about. I am certain that Elon Musk didn’t sit down and come up with a complete electric vehicle in one setting. Most likely he discovered new technologies through battery power. Then he imagined the power distributed through the vehicle’s wheels in an efficient manner to gain significant speed while maintaining efficient use of the batteries. After many months of research and development, the first Tesla was driven off the assembly line.
Your three pages from exercise. One become the ultimate goals you wish to achieve this sheet for exercise. One becomes the first draft of the steps needed to realize your imagination. The third exercise is the most simple of the three. I want you to remove the words I can’t from your vocabulary. That’s it it’s that simple. Every time you catch yourself using these words, remind yourself that you are the most capable, proficient, and brilliant you on the planet. And Hey, this is a true, because you are the only you on the planet. By placing this positive aspect of thinking in your mind, your brain will go to work, bringing your creativity into reality.
If you’ve been a listener or subscriber of this podcast, or even just a few episodes, you know what a fan I am of star Trek. I just got hooked on it as a child. And I continue through adulthood to be amazed at the things brought out in a star Trek episode from the creative mind of gene robury. He was the creator of the concept that became the series and he had such a vivid imagination. It was just uncanny. He’s been credited with the original thought, get this of the mobile flip phone. It was based on a prop. He created for his shows called the communicator as to technology evolves in our world. It did so in the series and in the movies for star Trek before you know it, the communicator which was held in your hand, like a flip phone had been reduced to a simple pin on the uniform of the star Trek officer with a simple tap.
You could start speaking and talk thousands and thousands of miles from where you stood. Notice the scenes, the costumes, alien life forms, and other facts that came from the mind of this brilliant ideator. The good news is you can do the same. What’s holding you back is simply a lack of confidence in yourself. You see, as children, when we were playing, we could take something as simple as a cardboard box and with just a little work, some crayons or magic marker or paint, we could create a spaceship, a battleship, an airplane, an automobile. We could convert that simple cardboard box into something through our imaginative power to it gave us a release from where we were on planet earth and took us to where we wish we were so many things we lost as children because we became realistic. Well, realism can occur too. After imagination.
If we want it to don’t tell us we can’t have electric cars. Don’t tell us people can’t just go to the moon when they want to. Even though they’re not in the astronaut program at NASA, we’ve done it. We’ve seen it. We’ve experienced it. It is one of those things in life that you don’t need to sit here and tell yourself I can’t because you can and will become bigger, better and bolder through the use of your imagination. So dismiss any thought that you currently have in your mind that says you are limited because of your background, your current status of education, your vocabulary. These are all things that can be worked on today by reading the good books by taking courses at the local community college or a university by simply taking the time to invest in yourself, you can become the reality of what you’ve only imagined yourself to be. Before we close out this episode, I’m reminded of one of my favorite John linen songs about imagination. It’s simply titled. Imagine the lyrics are a little different than what I may have as a philosophy of life, but it is something that John Lennon imagined would come true. At some point, his entire philosophy was to spread peace and joy throughout the world. That was his only purpose in life. And by reading the lyrics and listening to this timeless classic, you can place yourself in the she of this formal Beatle.
Let me just read a few of the lyrics. Imagine there’s no heaven. It’s easy. If you try no hell below us, above us only sky. Imagine all the people living for today. Imagine there are no countries. It isn’t hard to do nothing to kill or die for and no religion too. Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one I hope someday you’ll join me. And the world will be as one. Now I replaced the word us to me. I was speaking as if I were John. Can you imagine when he took that pen and paper and sat down at the keyboard and wrote out this beautiful song that turned out to be one of his best sellers to me, he did something that all of us can do. Put ourselves in the best frame of mind to sit quietly, turn on our creativity, have a simple piece of paper. Get rid of all the technology and take that pen and start writing down. Whatever you imagine about whatever aspect of life you wish to do or create this week. Focus on these three exercises and give yourself a chance to simply dream and imagine what can be done your world. Our world demands. You show up as your best self every day. So go out, start this world this week with a new mindset and go live life by design.
