Nov 14 2015
“Imagination is a magical power.” I said this in front of twenty five thousand young people as part of We Day this year. We Day is a global movement encouraging activism, engagement and volunteerism in young people. Every young person in the Saddle Dome in Calgary, the Rogers Centre in Toronto, had earned their way to the event by volunteering locally and globally.
What this statement actually means to me, is that imagination has the power to change your mindset, impact your physiology and change your life. I have benefitted from my powerful imagination my whole life. In school, looking out the window, imagining everything from the upcoming sports day to building a new doll house, I was told to stop day dreaming. Fortunately, I ignored this terrible counsel, and continued right on dreaming.
I watched the 1976 Olympics and was captivated by the poise and power of the young gymnast from Romania. Her name was Nadia Comaneci, and from that moment on I wanted to become an Olympic athlete. I saw the terrible conditions of drought in sub Sahara Africa, and I vowed that someday I would work with those children. W.O. Mitchell came to our little public school and read from his landmark book Who Has Seen the Wind. I wanted to be a writer.
When we dream, we create a strong intention for what we want; we can see it, hear it, feel it. Our brain can’t discern the difference between a real and imagined experience, so we begin to adopt the mindset, the posture, the physiology of someone who is actually already an Olympic athlete. Imagining opens up our mind to possibilities, something that becomes increasingly precious as we move through adulthood. I know many people who were perfectly good dreamers when they were young, and now that they have reached mid life, have somehow stopped dreaming. When you stop using your imagination to dream for your life, you lose a magical power. This power is not just for young people, for professionals starting their careers, for Olympic athletes, it is for each and every one of us, at every stage of our life.
In my coaching practice, I work with clients who have disconnected from their dreams. The dreams they held when they were young have either been reached, or these clients have given up on those dreams. Using NLP, hypnosis and other coaching modalities, I encourage them to reconnect with the things they were most passionate about and find a way of bringing that into their lives. A lawyer, who always wanted to teach, found himself teaching presentation skills to other lawyers, a woman who had dreamed of racing the Ironman, finally reached this goal at fifty. She was a lot slower thirty years after first imagining this feat, but the satisfaction was perhaps even sweeter.
This is not necessarily about doing a 180 in your life or becoming a world beater, it is about connecting with you passions and talents to live a deeper, more fulfilling life. My work as a speaker, a writer, and a coach is simple: I assist people in living their best life. In this endeavour, imagination is a magical power. ...Silken