I have often pondered the question around, what drives one person
to consistently take the daily actions, which result in great success and what
encourages someone else with the same potential, to sit back and do nothing. The
research that I am conducting is pointing me towards, a finding that highly
driven or inspired achievers find their strength in the power of their
imagination. It seems that people, who can visualise a crystal clear picture of
exactly what they want in their future, will endure short term pain for long
term gain. In other words the people who see or visualise possibility, i.e.
prize of what is possible, are willing to pay a price today, to earn the prize
they have visualised for tomorrow.
As humans we are wired to be pleasure seeking and pain avoiding.
Our natural tendency as humans is thus to avoid anything, which will cause us
pain, even if that pain is the small daily discipline, or daily action required
to achieve success. It is a natural drive within all of us to move toward
pleasure and avoid the possibility of pain at all costs. Unless you have
something to focus on, which will result in you enjoying a far greater degree
of pleasure in the future, it is extremely unlikely that you will take action
every day to realise a better future, as the actions you need to take will
result in discomfort or pain.
When you understand this about yourself, can you now see how crucial
it is to have crystal clear vision of exactly what you want in your future and
for you to make this picture as pleasurable as possible? The more you can
envision yourself in a pleasurable place, where you can actually feel, taste, smell,
hear and see yourself experiencing incredible levels of pleasure, the more
likely and easier it will be for you to inspire yourself to experience the
daily pain associated with carrying the actions you need to succeed. Your
vision of the future allows you to see everything, including challenges and the
daily action you need to take as something, which is “ON YOUR WAY” and as such,
you always find ways to “GET SOMETHING” from the challenge or the daily actions
you take.
Understanding our imagination
Our frontal lobe separates us from every other species on earth.
It allows us to have an imagination. We are able to see things, not as they are
today, but rather how they can be in the future. This amazing ability allows us
to gaze into the future and based on our beliefs, values and expectations, allows
us to draw a mental picture, which we can then turn into our reality in the
future. Our imagination is the first step in the creation process.
The power of our imagination and our ability to turn a clear
vision into a tangible future, was proven in research conducted by Dr David
McClelland of Harvard University. He utilised a number of “projective tests”,
in which he used photographs or drawings depicting various scenarios, to test people’s
level of motivation. One of the experiments he conducted was done using a
picture of a person lying in bed, with their eyes closed and their hand raised over
the alarm clock. The window in the background was very bright, with the sun’s
rays clearly shining through the window, indicating that it was morning. The
people were then asked to tell a short story about the person in the picture.
Dr McClelland’s hypothesis was that “motivation comes from
internal images” The subjects in his research study who told the most inspiring
stories and demonstrated the most active levels of imagination, were the people
who become the most successful in the future.
This study was conducted over a fourteen year period and to ensure
that their responses were solely a function of levels of motivation and no other
factors played a part in his findings. All the subjects were of the same sex,
age, social background and level of education. His extensive experiments,
proved his hypothesis. The subjects who gave the most passive responses, like
the person was lying in bed and about to go back to sleep because it was a
Saturday and they did not have to go to work, were the least successful, ten
years later. The people who gave the most active answers and said things like “The
person is waking up early so that they can complete an important project”, were
far more successful ten years later.
The experiments conducted by Dr McClelland were very complex and extensive.
They most certainly proved his hypothesis around motivation and the direct link
to imagination. If you want to be successful and live your dreams, fuel your
fertile imagination with crystal clear pictures of exactly what you want in your
future and you will be driven and motivated to do what it takes to realise
exactly that in your future. When you hold a vivid picture in your mind of
exactly what you want to achieve, the enormous power of your mind goes to work
to deliver exactly that to you. The more detail you can build into the image,
the easier it is for your brain to go to work and bring just that imagined
picture into your reality.
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