The Power of Imagination in Shaping Our Happiness and Reality

In this short article you are going to be reminded just how powerful your brain is. In a few moments you will be invited to bring to mind a positive experience that makes you feel good. When you do, note if it is in colour or black and white? Notice what you hear? Music, the wind in the trees? The water lapping at the edge of the lake? How does this experience make you feel? Relaxed, energised? Can you feel the sun on your skin, the sand between your toes? Is there a taste or a smell?

Pause now. Close your eyes and for a few moments bring to mind that special time. Look around the scene and notice what make it such a good experience for you.

Question. Where did all of that sensory information you ‘created’ a few moments ago, actually come from? Where was it stored? How come it was so vivid?

The answer is simple. The formula you use to take in information, the way you store it internally and then bring it back to life, is a universal one. We all do it the same way. We can bring to mind any past event, as if it is real, right in this moment.

In your mind movie you played all of the characters. You were the director, the actors, the lights, the cameras and you provided all of the action. You were the creator. It was an inside job. It always has been an inside creation. If it is not happening now in reality, then you are making it up. It is all one big fantasy. As the saying goes; ‘If you are going to have a fantasy, then pick a good one!’

Let’s go back to your imagined past experience; your creation. Firstly, you will have stored all of the information from the original event in your mind, and then you retrieved it within a split second. It was as if you pressed that imaginary ‘play’ button in your mind and there it was, your creation in the form of an immersive, 360 degree, all encompassing cinematic experience.  

Let us develop this a bit further now. Your imagined experience will have had some or all of the components shown in this image below. You may have included what you saw, heard, felt, smelled or tasted.

You might have brought to mind a holiday experience that was amazing; that gorgeous turquoise water, the sounds of the seagulls calling overhead, feeling the gentle breeze on your skin, the relaxation in your body, a refreshing drink cooling you down, along with the scent of the clean salt air, all mixed together, all made up by you in your mind.

If you had been asked to recall a not so good experience, you might have brought to mind the holiday where it rained all week, where everywhere was flooded and it was far from the best experience of your life. A memory you’d happily forget! The point here is both events were real at one time, but are no longer happening in this precise moment.

So where is this all going you might be asking yourself? Here’s the point. If it is not happening now, right in front of you, then it is a ‘creation’ in your mind.

And if you are creating it using your imagination, then you are 100% in control of that creation. Therefore, you have the power to make yourself feel good or bad, simply by what you focus on in any given moment.

Think of it like when someone tells you a funny joke. The comedian offers up language, but it is you who creates the images in your head, and then this creation makes you feel like laughing. In other words, the comedian stands on stage building up the joke, but it is you inside your mind who puts it all together.

One last example to reinforce the point that it is ‘you doing it to you.’

Let’s say you have an experience with a work colleague who has upset you in some way. From your perspective they ‘deliberately’ excluded you from a lunchtime conversation, or didn’t invite you to the after work catchup, or they always seem to go out of their way to make you feel uncomfortable. Let’s pick the first of these scenarios and develop it more.

There will be two stages to this experience. The first stage will be where you felt excluded from the lunchtime conversation and in that moment this will have brought up some uncomfortable thoughts, emotions and sensations in your mind and body.

The second stage may well continue for the rest of the day, into the evening, throughout the night and perhaps for a few days more. During this time you will be constantly recalling the event, bringing to mind what you saw, heard and felt. You will have created and rehearsed a mind-movie called ‘rejection’. You now have free life time access to front row seats in your newly created cinema in your mind, in which you can view night or day this rejection movie. And you can add more thoughts and words and feelings to ‘your’ production so you can make yourself feel even worse! Remember, this is all in your mind. It’s all your creation. It’s all made up because it is not happening now.

Important point. Your work colleague will have rejected you from your perspective, but it is you who is replaying this scenario over and over in your mind. It’s now you making yourself feel bad. All as a result of your powerful mind, you are the one re-creating and re-cycling the event, embellishing it, making it multi-colour, with surround sound, almost like a virtual roller-coaster experience that keeps you in that state of misery. Remember this. It is you doing it to you! You are the movie director, the actors, the lights, the camera and all of the action. Every component of that made up movie is you.

The good news is you can learn to take control of your thoughts, learn how to dissolve the effects of the upsetting mind movies, and use your powerful imagination to create thoughts and beliefs that better support you, and begin to live a much happier and healthier life.

Before we finish up, here is a snapshot of how we can ‘edit’ our mind movies:

• First of all we calm the mind and body down. 

• We convince our mind that the original event is no longer happening in this moment.

• Once that is achieved, we are free to use our ever powerful imagination to rehearse ahead of time, how we would like to think and behave in certain situations.

• In other words, we use the same formula that made us feel miserable, to make us feel capable, confident or any other positive behaviour of our choosing.

Remember – if you are going to have a fantasy, pick a good one!

If you have enjoyed reading this article and would like to explore more of this type of mindset, then leave a comment on your thoughts about it. If you have a particular topic you would like discussed just put in into the comments section. Thanks for taking the time to read this and hopefully it will have made you consider just how powerful a person you truly are.