Chapter 4: Imagination and Observation
Idea Explosion!
How To Get the Very Best Ideas in 5 Easy Steps!
Most persons whose lives fall short of their great possibilities do so for lack of imagination. Imagination is the power of the mind to create mental images of objects previously perceived; the power to reconstruct or recombine the materials furnished by direct apprehension; the power to recombine the materials furnished by experience or memory. It should be for the accomplishment of a worth purpose; the power of conceiving and expressing the ideal. Producing ideas is an art. But an art is a waste of effort if it spends itself on the production, no matter how skillful, of something not worth doing. The human mind is not limited to the present by means of perception, or to the past by means of memory, but can anticipate the future by means of imagination.
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It is not the role of imagination to rule the mind or to make decisions. It sows the seed of desire, creates energy and fires the enthusiasm, all of which incite the will, thus setting in force powers of the greatest importance in achievement. Like any other natural faculty, imagination can be directed. It is creative. It is powerful. We automatically move in the direction of what we imagine, so we cannot be too careful of what we imagine, either for ourselves or for other persons.
We think in pictures, not words. It is important to form clear mental pictures. As you progress in your idea development, see every phase sharply in mind. This specific quality, this accuracy, will be of immense help. The images are the mental reproductions of things previously observed and experienced. They are the raw material of all intellectual work.
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Observation is perception with a purpose. You can be responsive to sensations without either perceiving or observing. This is usually called thoughtlessness, wool gathering, or mind wandering. As has been well said, “Every normal creature has seen the lightning flash, but Benjamin Franklin observed it.” Extend your eyes and your ears into unfamiliar matters and consider continually how some idea gleaned from one of these fields can be put to use by you in your own project. Listening, too, which is much more than keeping your mouth shut, should be cultivated observantly with a view to accuracy and precision.
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A young man walked into a store to buy a necktie. The blank bare wall behind the tie counter depressed him. What would fill it attractively and increase sales? He experimented with his camera and a darkroom, produced an enlargement more than ten feet long and sold it to the clothing store. He had started an entirely new business idea, now called photo murals that paid him handsomely.
One single observation or interpretation of a sensation has been the turning point of a person’s life in thousands of cases.
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