Right Track Coaching Newsletter
Transform * Lead * Love
November 2007

In this issue:

Imagine Your Future Self

"Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagination, because it fills the soul with an agreeable surprise, gratifies its curiosity, and gives it an idea of which it was not before possessed."
--Joseph Addison (1672-1719 – English essayist, poet and man of letters)

In the George Bernard Shaw play Pygmalion*, Henry Higgins (a professor of phonetics) wagers with his friend, Colonel Pickering, that within six months he can transform the unassuming flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, into a convincing duchess.

In moments of frustration while teaching Eliza, Higgins admonishes her and says, “Think like a duchess, act like a duchess, talk like a duchess, and one day you will be a duchess.” Higgins understood that to be what you want to be it is necessary to imagine it. Eliza did pass as a duchess!

Imagination plays a key role in the process of inventing new solutions to problems that seemed impossible to solve. It is like a lightning rod in keeping dreams alive. It adds passion to living fully.

Think back when you were a child and pretended you were a person or cartoon character that you wanted to be. Was it a famous movie star, a pilot, a fire fighter, lawyer, doctor, or perhaps you wanted to live someplace else? We all pretended when we were little. Then pretending was replaced with the do's and don’ts of growing up. More time was spent learning the ABC’s while ignoring imagination. Many school budgets eliminated the greatest resource for building diversity in leaders and inventors…liberal arts!

If you were daydreamer, you were more than likely told you were wasting your time. For shame on the daydreamers who created electricity, symphonies, computers, sanitation, vaccines, aircraft, printing and all that you see around you. Imagination stimulates solutions. Look around and take in how others used their imagination to make a difference in your life, i.e., imagination of the knife and fork advanced to delicate tools used in surgery to save lives.

"You see things as they are and ask, “Why?” I dream things as they never were and ask, “why not?”"
--George Bernard Shaw

*adaptations of Pygmalion
My Fair Lady
Pretty Woman

Questions hold the answers:

• Looking back to January 2007, what did you imagine you wanted by the end of the year?
• If you held off making resolutions, what held you back?
• If you did imagine outcomes, what were the results?
• Where do you give up believing in your imagination?
• If you were to imagine your future self in 2008, what would you be doing?

"If you can imagine it, you can achieve it.
If you can dream it, you can become it."
-- William Arthur Ward (1921-1994 – writer)

TIPS:

Make a date with yourself to try something new like a hobby to stimulate your imagination. Give yourself permission to take the time. The rewards will be more than if you keep doing what you are doing.

Create an imaginary playroom and have fun doing and being whatever you want. Notice any judgments you may have about this suggestion. More than likely you have the same judgments about trying anything new. Some judgments may be that “this is silly,” or “why bother, it won’t happen,” or “I am too old, too fat, too young, too shy,” or any self-talk that talks you out of becoming more of who you are.

Imagine the person you want to be and fill in the blanks similar to those spoken by Higgins to Eliza in Pygmalion: Think like a _____________, act like a _____________, talk like a _______________, and one day you will be a ______________.

“To know is nothing at all; to imagine is everything” wrote Anatole France, author and Nobel Prize Winner of Literature.

"To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe."
-- Anatole France (1824-1924 – Nobel Prize Winner 1921 Literature)

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Recommended Book:


A Whole New Mind - Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age" by Daniel Pink

"Humans are not ideally set up to understand logic; they are ideally set up to understand stories."
 --Roger C. Schank, Cognitive Scientist

Pink foresees the “information age” – the left brain dominance – moving over to the “conceptual age” of “right brain” influences. The excessive reliance on metrics is giving way to a very different kind of mind “in which artistic and holistic “right brain” abilities mark the fault line between who gets ahead and who falls behind.”

The “conceptual age” is dawning. Mastery of high-concept, high-touch abilities is a must. Pink sites two studies to support his ideas. These were done by economists over a ten-year period. They discovered that the largest gains were in jobs that required “people skills and emotional intelligence” such as registered nurses, as well as jobs requiring “imagination and creativity,” designers for example.

The book gives an excellent overview of the six essential aptitudes, design, story, symphony, empathy, play and meaning on which professional success and personal fulfillment now depend. To sharpen these abilities, Pink has included exercises from experts to expand your mind.

Check out our other recommended books!

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