How Your Imagination Can Make You More Successful
Pursue your art of the possible in 2021
As we approach the end of a tough, tough year, what keeps you motivated? Maybe it takes a bit of daydreaming, daydreaming about a better life? Did you know that your view of the future determines your future success? It’s true. Your view of the future shapes your current behavior, which in turn drives your future results.
Years ago, whenever a business colleague and I got stuck on a complicated problem, he would say, let’s pursue the art of the possible.
I love that phrase because creative thinking is art, and thinking about the future is to think about the possible.
Creating your future is to pursue the art of the possible. Your future is yours to paint and to write. Your life is your canvas and your journal. So close your eyes and imagine your future — what is your “possible?”
Your future depends on this
Prospection is our ability to pre-experience the future by simulating it in our minds. (Greater Good Science Center “GGSC” at UC Berkeley)
Twenty years ago, my wife and I dreamed of moving to the sun-soaked beach life in Southern California. Over the next year, I lobbied my boss hard and finally convinced him to approve my relocation to our posh office on Wilshire Boulevard.
I walked into our Chicago city townhome late that evening bursting with excitement to give my wife our update. What I didn’t anticipate was her surprisingly good news— we were expecting our second, precious little girl! In a blink of an eye, we put our California dream on indefinite hold.
But as they say, you can always dream, right? And that’s where the skill of prospection comes into play — prospection is our ability to envision the future; to plan, predict, and daydream.
Over the following decades, we kept our California dream alive. We drafted and edited our future story, and our future narrative affected the decisions we made over those many years. The picture we painted…
