The Element of Imagination and Its Hope for Helping Us Develop Toughness With Compassion and Artful Flair

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Have you heard about the Tough Mudder?

Recently, Andrew, whom I know through my SPM consulting, participated in a Tough Mudder event at Tahoe.

Tough Mudder was started by a Harvard MBA student who was previously a counter-terrorism agent for the British Government. Tough Mudder was his response to unimaginative and repetitive marathons, triathlons, mud runs and adventure runs. Tough Mudder obstacle courses are much more rigorous and interesting and are designed to test not just all around strength, stamina and mental grit, but also camaraderie.

You can read more about Tough Mudder here.

A Metaphor for Life

Tough Mudder is a great metaphor for life.

Life is a obstacle course. One big long obstacle course.

Along the way, we will face challenges and obstacles in our education, in our work, in our relationships, with our health, and in pursuing our life goals.

There will be much that will come at us.

Tough choices to make.

Tough challenges or deadlines to meet.

Tough health issues.

Tough disappointments to swallow.

Tough losses.

Tough times - when more things go wrong than right.

Tough people and situations to deal with.

Tough habits, phobias and weaknesses to conquer.

And any and all of it can be helped by using one faculty  - a faculty we are all blessed with.

Our imagination.

“Our imagination? Minoo, are you nuts? Aren't you showing a lack of imagination by saying that? Don’t you know there are 2 kinds of people? The artsy creative types. And the analytical, methodical types.  I am analytical, yes. Knowledgeable, yes. Resourceful. Methodical. But imaginative?  Psssh!”

Yes, you are imaginative.

Imagination is a faculty each one of us is blessed with. And it can come to our aid in many of life’s tough situations.

Stay with me on this.

Using our imagination to spiritualize our thoughts and actions

I recently met a Senior SAP R&D Manager on the bus to work. 

She was doing something interesting.

She had powered up her laptop and was reading bible messages for the day, first in Spanish, then in English. She said she read the bible passages on her way to work to spiritualize her mind for the day. She told me one of the ways in which doing this helped her:  She said whenever someone was nasty at work, she imagined the face of Jesus on the face of that person, and it made her think of them differently and deal with them differently.

This is how she uses her imagination.

We all use our imagination similarly when we approach a situation saying: “What would Jesus do?” or “What would Mohammed do?” or “What would the Buddha do?” or “What would Ram do?"

Or when we try to look at something through the eyes of our spiritual leaders, teachers and gurus…."What would Billy Graham do?" or "What would the Dalai Lama do?" or "What would Mother Theresa do?" or "What would Gandhi do?" or "What would Thomas More do?" Do you find yourself doing this?

We use our imagination when we try to look at something through the eyes of thinkers we admire. When we say: “What would Socrates think? What would Diogenes think? What would Aristotle think?”

 (P.S. If you want to find out one of the things I think Socrates was a master at, read my post The Art of Conversation. And if you want to find out why Diogenes was an original thinker, read my post The Man in the Bath-tub).

Using our imagination to deal with stress

Albert Einstein said “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere”

I know someone who has an unusual way of responding to the stress of dealing with someone getting mad at her and hurling angry words. She told me that whenever this happens, she transports herself to a lush and beautiful locale until the moment blows over.  She uses her imagination to stay calm and tune out verbal meltdowns.

This is a very creative way of using our imagination to deal with a stressful situation.

Indeed, many of us use our imagination to deal with stressful situations without even being conscious of it.

Someone at work recently changed the wallpaper on her computer to a beautiful picture taken on vacation in Hawaii.  When I inquired, she said she was entering a particularly stressful time at work and looking at that picture had a calming effect on her.  “Aha”, I thought, “perfect example of using one’s imagination to deal with stress”.

What do you do in stressful situations?  Could you use your imagination to transport yourself elsewhere? To your favorite place? Maybe, to your garden? A favorite vacation spot. Everyone needs a place in their mind to go to.

Using our imagination to respond to unexpected opportunities

I know someone who has been at the GM level at every company where she has worked. She is as wise as she is successful. She adopts a metaphor for every situation in her life.  Recently she was presented with an opportunity to do a consulting job for a company in a country across the world.  It would involve long air trips and doing business across time zones.  But instead of saying no to this intriguing opportunity, she adopted the metaphor of a magic carpet.  She said she thought of the opportunity as a magic carpet and the magic carpet would take her where it wanted to take her and she was to enjoy the ride.  Indeed, a very apt metaphor. Many times in life, we will be presented with unexpected and unusual opportunities.  We may have to answer these opportunities rather than question them. Imagination is the way to do it.

Albert Einstein came to the same conclusion when he said“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.”

What opportunities are you currently presented with - to which the wonderful“magic carpet” metaphor would apply?

Using our imagination to reframe a situation

Any situation can be reframed with the help of our imagination.

On my last assignment, I pulled out all the stops to design new commission statements and develop a new Excel model to do commissions. However, when I was passing control to the analyst who took my place, he and the new company controller decided to abandon my model and create their own model. At first, my internal response was typical. When our brainchild is cast aside, we find it hard to stomach.  The blow to our self-esteem causes us to think wrong thoughts and have wrong desires.  We want it to be hard for anyone to fill our shoes.  We want our absence to cause pain.  How many of you have exited companies with this feeling?  But since becoming a meditation practitioner, I have become highly self-aware, and one of the things I meditate on is not giving in to automatic negative thoughts like this.  Because of my meditations, the wrong thoughts surfaced for only a very brief time, and were supplanted with a beautiful vision expressed as an image.

3 Deer at a Stream

I suddenly had this vision of self-esteem being a stream of water, and the new analyst, new controller and myself all as deer drinking from the stream.  I had had my turn at the stream. Now it was theirs.  When I had to prove myself, the stream of self-esteem was there for me.  Now it was someone else’s time to shine.  Later on, it would be someone else’s time still - as the new analyst and the controller would be supplanted.

From the moment this image entered my mind – my mindset was different.  It was hard to say if I held this image - of the 3 deer drinking from a stream - or the image held me.  But during my last weeks at the company, I cheerfully finished up my assignment, and continuously encouraged, praised and supported the new analyst and the Controller. Now even after I have moved on, I feel a warm glow towards them.

Tuli Kupferberg says: “When patterns are broken, new worlds emerge. When I was able to escape the normal way of thinking it was almost that I saw all the characters in the scenario in a different alternate world”

This is what happened to me. I entered an alternate world. And my imagination helped me get there.

I now realize situations can exist in many different spheres and our imagination can take us to a different sphere.

Has your imagination ever helped you to reframe a situation and elevated the situation to a different sphere?

Using our imagination as a shield

Trevor Blake is mentioned in my post The Element of The Creative Pause and Its Hope for Turning Us Into Idea Generation Machines. He is the author of the book Three Simple Steps, which is one of the most mind-blowing reads of the last decade. In this book, he says he learned an imaginative technique to make himself feel invincible from watching a tv interview with a young golfer.

Seve Ballesteros was only 16 when he went up against golf titans like Jack Nicklaus. In a TV interview, when he was asked how he did not get overwhelmed playing against golf greats and having to cope with the raucous crowds that accompany them, he explained, and I quote from 3 Simple Steps, “he had learned a technique, whereby he imagined a thick glass jar descending from the sky and covering him completely. Inside his glass jar, he was able to shut out everything and remain focused.” 

After watching this TV interview, Trevor Blake put Ballesteros’ technique to use immediately. He started taking a separate route to school from his siblings. During his lonely trek, he imagined a glass cloak descending from the sky and covering him completely when he walked.  This made him feel safe and brave from the bullies who had dogged his life earlier.

This is the power of our imagination.  It can make us brave.  It can make us focused.  It can make us feel invincible.

Have you ever used your imagination as a shield like Seve Ballesteros and Trevor Blake? 

If you haven’t, there will come a time in the future when you can.

Imagination as A Fairy Godmother

All of us wish for fairy godmothers.

Imagination is like a fairy godmother.  Only this fairy godmother resides in our subconscious. And it is ever ready to supply us with an imaginative answer to any of life’s tough challenges.

It is our Get Out of Jail Free Ticket.  Our Get Out of Bullying Free Ticket.  Our Get Out of Our Skin Free Ticket.

Using Our Imagination to Revisualize Our Lives

In this TED talk, Amy Purdy tells us how she used imagination to revisualize her life and live life “king size” after the devastating loss of both her legs.

As JBS Haldane said, “the future is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine”.

When we imagine that things that are bad now, or how sad or bad we feel now is permanent, it’s only because we lack imagination.

As I tell you in my post If Life is So Good, Why Do I Feel So Sad, I once suffered a depression. Yet here I am today, possibly one of the happiest people in the world.

When we imagine we can never give up a habit or personality trait, we show a lack of imagination. We can give up anything. As my post The Path to Change and How Many Times A Day Do YouVisit Ireland? tells you, I successfully gave up anger.

When we imagine we can never stop being a tiger mom or a helicopter mom, we show a lack of imagination. As my post It’s Called Motherhood 2 explains, I went from being a tiger mom to a helicopter mom to a hippie mom. AND?????? And the world did not come to an end.

Finally, we can use our imagination to change our thoughts about people who are in a bad place or an unfortunate place in their lives.  If we think of each of them as a bird with a broken wing, our next thought would be “how can I help this bird with a broken wing?” We would become Broken Wing Angels.

If not for Broken Wing Angels, some people would never make it.

This was who June Carter was – a Broken Wing Angel - and this is why she was Johnny Cash’s salvation.

Johnny Cash was a real mess when he went into a cave with a flashlight to die.  His intention was to keep going in the cave until his flashlight gave out and then without light or food and no way of finding his way out of the cave, he hoped to die.  The flashlight gave out, but after a while in the dark, Johnny Cash had an epiphany he was meant for more and this was not the way it was supposed to end for him.  He crawled back towards the entrance of the cave in pitch darkness, and was close to death when he finally made it out.  Waiting for him at the entrance was his mother and June Carter.  The rest is history.

I will end this post with the lyrics of the1971 Grammy winning song which Johnny Cash and June Carter sang together. The song was written by Tim Hardin.

"If I Were A Carpenter"

If I were a carpenter
And you were a lady,
Would you marry me anyway?
Would you have my baby?

If a tinker were my trade
would you still find me,
Carrying the pots I made,
Following behind me.

Save my love through loneliness,
Save my love for sorrow,
I'm given you my onlyness,
Come give your tomorrow.

If I worked my hands in wood,
Would you still love me?
Answer me babe, "Yes I would,
I'll put you above me."

If I were a miller
at a mill wheel grinding,
would you miss your color box,
and your soft shoe shining?

If I were a carpenter
and you were a lady,
Would you marry me anyway?
Would you have my baby?
Would you marry anyway?
Would you have my baby?

Thanks for reading and have a great day and week....M.....A Pearl Seeker like you.