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Where did we hide the imagination?
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Posted by editor Fri Jul 14, 2006 16:02:51 PDT
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0 responses 1 comment “It’s just your imagination,” your good friend scolds.

And with one little phrase, imagination is assigned to the scrap heap. While it’s true our imagination can get out of hand, especially in fostering unfounded fears and worries, it’s equally true that many things we enjoy most in life are the result of enlightened imagining.

Nobody had great expectations for Albert Einstein or Thomas Edison as children. In fact, they were both written off as fanciful thinkers. Yet the fertile and receptive imaginations of these two twentieth century dreamers have forever changed the lives of people on planet Earth.

Einstein explained his inquisitiveness this way: “I want to know God’s thoughts. The rest are details.” Einstein never lost his childish need to know. He refused grown-ups’ standard answer of “that’s just the way it is!”

Like Edison and Einstein, Henry Ford’s imagination also changed the world forever.

When young Ford began building cars in his garage, he was one of hundreds doing so—just in the state of Michigan. It took a pretty smart and mechanical person to build a car in those days. You had to know about metalworking, engines, electrical systems and assembly. It took a highly skilled person to build a car from scratch. Then, as now, highly skilled people came at a high cost. Thus, cars were expensive and ownership was economically constrained to the wealthy.

Ford didn’t invent the assembly line. He observed it in the packing houses in the Midwest. He saw the carcasses of slaughtered livestock conveyed around the meat processing plants by a moving chain from which hooks held individual former livestock. The chain moved from station to station where workers specifically trained to harvest one specific cut of meat performed their solitary skill.

Ford instantly demonstrated his expertise at technology transfer. He realized that unskilled workers could be taught to be efficient at one or two tasks. He invented the assembly line—a mirror opposite of the disassembly lines he had borrowed from.

Unfortunately, Henry Ford is also good fodder for lack of imagination. Once he became almost a monopoly in producing autos for the masses, he settled into his “that’s not the way things are done” mode. Having progressed from the Model A to the Model T, Ford was hearing from dealers that folks in the showrooms were asking for colors.

Ford’s infamous and unimaginative answer was, “ They can have it in any color they want as long as it’s black.”

General Motors and other manufacturers laughed all the way to the bank—in living color.

Routine is the enemy of imagination. The ruts in our mind from going the same way for so long get so deep we lose our perspective.

Tried and true may not necessarily be so. Tired and trite may be far more accurate.
Napoleon Hill is famous for his saying, “Whatever your mind can conceive and believe, you can achieve.”

Often dismissed as a theory closer to poppycock than factuality, there’s more and more proof that Professor Hill had it spot on.

Modern athletes of the most elite caliber offer overwhelming substantiation. Whether grand-slam winning tennis stars or Olympic gymnasts, these winners practice mental performance before the actual physical performance. They actually play a movie in their minds of them correctly and successfully completing the desired action.

They imagine themselves winners before they become winners.

Most of us aren’t world-class athletes, but I submit to you that every single one of us deserves a world-class life.

What do you believe?

Next Week: Imaginative Living 101

Mark Moore is a Chartered Financial Consultant with Q4 Insurance & Financial Services, Inc. Securities and Advisory Services offered through Commonwealth Financial Network, Member NASD/SIPC. Your feedback is valued. Email Mark at MarkM@Q4Financial.net.

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Comment From: Sparks

I enjoy your column a very lot. Thank you