Imagine Your New Self

Re-Creating Your Self by Christopher Stone

Imagination is funny

It makes a cloudy day sunny

It makes a bee think of honey

Just as I think of you

So begins a classic from the Great American Songbook. Yes, imagination can be funny, but, for the purpose of Re-Creating Your Self, imagination is also a powerful tool for change that can help you to accept the new beliefs in your Blueprint for Personal Change.

What is imagination? For me, imagination is simply the mental formation of an image or concept that is not physically real or present. That doesn’t make imagination just another fantasy. Whatever we imagine is created mentally and is real on that level, if not on the physical plane. Quite simply, then, imagination is one form of mental reality.

Imagination is one of humankind’s most purely creative processes. Undirected, it is also one of the most fickle. Sometimes we imagine that which we fear and don’t want to see created physically – an illness, an accident, poverty, war. Other times we imagine that which we desire strongly to become real physically – health, career success, peace, financial freedom, etc. This column is about training your self to consciously employ your imagination in a manner that will help you to accept your new beliefs.

CREATIVE DAYDREAMING

Like positive thinking, imagination has been a cornerstone of many self-improvement methods. It has variously been called creative visualization, dynamic imaging, positive picturing and mental imagery.

In Re-Creating Your Self, imagination as a tool for personal change is called creative daydreaming. I chose that term because everyone daydreams; they already know how to daydream. In truth, I’ve had students tell me that they frequently remember their mental daydreams more vividly than they recall many physical experiences.

For most of us, daydreaming begins very early in life. During childhood, daydreams rescue us from boring school lessons, embarrassing situations and heady church sermons we don’t comprehend. Daydreams frequently place us in a more appealing, exciting environment. Though we may remain physically in arithmetic class or the church pew, mentally, our daydreams transport us to a forest, where we single-handedly slay a two-headed, fire-breathing dragon, or perhaps, we’re transported to a beautiful blue lagoon.

In adulthood, we make similar use of daydreams to escape the doldrums of a dull job, or the stupefying boredom of a stale business meeting, lecture or ceremony that we’re compelled to attend. And let’s not forget sexual fantasies. They are often the catalyst for our most vivid daydreams.

One of the reasons that creative daydreaming is such a trusty tool for personal change is that most everyone is already an expert in this field.

One dictionary definition of daydream is “a mental fantasy while awake that fulfills wishes, hopes or desires.” Your creative daydreams are going to utilize your imagination to fulfill your wish to become the person you want to be, living the life you desire.

There are a few basic differences between your usual daydreams and the creative daydreams involved in Re-Creating Your Self:

* Creative daydreaming is a planned event, not a spontaneous happening like most of your usual daydreams.

* In creative daydreaming, you choose your subject in advance. The subject of most usual daydreams is random, spontaneous.

* The subject of a creative daydream is something that is obtainable in physical life, such as health, a better paying job, a loving relationship. In a usual daydream, your subject may not be obtainable in the physical world. For example, where on Earth will you find a two-headed fire-breathing dragon to slay?

WHY CREATIVE DAYDREAMING WORKS

Your beliefs, expressed through mental and physical actions, create the life that you know as your own. But the mental action always exists first and determines the kind of physical manifestation that will be created.

Because imagination produces mighty mental actions, we tend to eventually create physically that which we imagine first. For better or worse, the more intensely we imagine something, the more likely it is to be manifested physically. We can train ourselves to imagine health, financial and career success, happiness and love; by doing so, we help create our new self in fact. In Re-Creating Your Self, creating your new self is the purpose of Creative Daydreaming.

Creative daydreams propel your affirmations a dynamic step further. When you imagine your new self, you do much more than declare that person with words; you mentally see your new self as if s/he already exists. In fact, your new self is a mental reality as soon as you create him or her in your imagination. After your new self becomes a mental reality, the form is set for the physical manifestation.

A Re-Creating Your Self Thought: Because imagining sometime is a powerful first step toward making it physically real, I strongly suggest that you don’t entertain, even briefly, those things you wouldn’t want to see physically real and present in your life, or in the world in general.

Coming February 1: Creative Daydreaming: How to Do It

Have a Re-Creating Your Self comment, observation, or a question? Please send them to me at recreatingyourself@mail2teacher.com