When we imagine something, we beckon it into existence.
When we imagine something, we beckon it into existence.
One day, someone says something, or we see someone do something, or a thought appears, unasked for, in our minds.
And we think, one day, I could do that.
And then, depending on your worldview, one of two things happens.
If you favour a rational worldview, you might think something like this: your Reticular Activating System understands, once you have imagined something, that this thing is important to you. And so, as it filters all the impossible-to-comprehend set of inputs for your conscious mind, it filters for things relating to that imagined thing.
And so the opportunities appear.
The steps towards the idea become clearer.
The once unimaginable thing seems more and more possible until…
Here you are, with the opportunity to take it.
I love that way of thinking.
And that’s not always how it feels.
More, it feels like: when you follow your bliss, as Joseph Campbell once said, doors will open where you would not have thought there would be doors, and where there wouldn't be a door for anyone else.
When we have the courage to imagine, we invite inspiration.
When inspiration is present, we invite divine intervention.
We invite the universe, or God, or the ancient spirits of the land, to aid us.
We step out, with faith, over the chasm and trust that we will be caught by the bridge that we couldn’t see until we took the step of faith.
When we have the courage to imagine, to hear the call of adventure, the call of wildness, the call of God, we have the power to create what we imagine.
Then some day we may find, before us, the opportunity to grasp that which we have imagined and which, perhaps, seemed beyond our wildest dreams.
Not everyone takes that opportunity.
Not everyone reaches out to touch it.
There is an audaciousness to the ones who do that.
A boldness.
Two moments of courage, then.
One, to imagine.
Two, to accept.
To accept that the world and future we have wished for has been offered to us.
To step over the threshold.
To reach the end of normal and create tomorrow.
Two thresholds.
One, to imagine.
Two, to accept.
And from where does this moment of imagination come?
And how do we create these moments for ourselves?
And how do we become - or help someone else become - someone who can embrace the courage, twice, to cross the threshold, twice.
Those, perhaps, are the great questions of our age.
Or, perhaps, just the great questions of my life.
Whether it is one more game of football.
Or a trip to a coaching event on the other side of the world.
Or a two-day coaching intensive with a client of the deepest courage and imagination.
Or creating four books, or a podcast, or a business.
Or - for you - likely something much more important than any of those things.
Whatever it is.
Let yourself imagine.
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This is the latest in a series of articles written using the 12-Minute Method: write for twelve minutes, proof read once with tiny edits and then post online.
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