The power of Imagination

"Whatever the mind can conceive and believe,
the mind can achieve."

— Napoleon Hill

With just a little practice anyone can enter a state of mind that improves human capability... a state of 'heightened awareness,' where anything is possible! 1. The Power of the Imagination The autonomic nervous system controls your pulse and your glands. But your imagination can also take control... you can choose what you will think about. And what you think about can change your physical body. Imagination can cause you to age faster... or age more slowly... it can cause an ulcer... or heal an ulcer. Medical case histories are filled with stories of people who were literally scared to death. What would a coroner write on such a death report—"cause of death: imagination"? Here is an interactive example of the power of the human mind: First, suspend your natural disbelief, just for a minute, while you try this exercise. It's easy and everyone can, do it. It will only take a few seconds. First relax and take a deep breath and clear your mind; now use your imagination and try to clearly picture this in as much detail as possible: You have a bright yellow, ripe lemon in the palm of your hand. Rub the skin of the fruit with your hands. Feel the texture. Smell it. Now pick up a sharp knife and slice slowly through the lemon. Juice squirts and runs out of the lemon onto your hand. Put a drop of juice on your finger and touch it to your tongue. Is it terribly sour? For most people, just a simple little exercise like this will cause their mouth to water. Doctors will tell you that mouth-watering is an involuntary reflex of the autonomic nervous system. Or, to put that in layman's terms, you can't physically control it. However, you can use your imagination to think of lemons... and that will do the trick. Does it make you wonder... what else can the imagination control? It is vastly more powerful than most people realize. We've all had the experience of preparing for something important; maybe a big speech, maybe calling a potential employer, client, or even a first date, when simply "imagining" what would happen caused our hearts to race and our palms to sweat. But can the imagination control influences from outside the body? The answer is yes! We have known for a long time how powerful the imagination can be, but until recently few have dared to study it. Today, however, scientists in many health disciplines are looking into "relaxation and visualization" techniques. (The word "imagination" is more accurate than "visualization" because the most powerful visualization techniques, involve all of the senses, not just the "visual.") 2. Imagination: A Right-Brain Activity It was Albert Einstein who said that most people use only 10 percent of their mental capacities. By implication he was saying that his brain was no different from anyone else's, that he had only learned to use more of it than other people. Our brains function as two halves, a Right Brain and a Left Brain—two brains with two very different functions and points of view. One of the most exciting things you'll find in your alpha level is the ability to listen to your Right Brain. In normal waking consciousness, the Left Brain rules. It is logic, it is ego, it is the little voice inside your head that nags you and tells you that you can't possibly do this. The Left Brain helps you remember to balance your checkbook, brush your teeth, and take out the garbage. It's the timekeeper. It is also your primary mode of functioning on a daily basis at work. It likes to understand the world one thing at a time in a proper order, using deductive reasoning. The Left Brain "can't see the forest for the trees." The Right Brain, on the other hand, thinks globally. It is creative, intuitive, and instinctive. It is ruled by feelings and sensations. It understands everything all at once, in inexplicable leaps of faith. The Right Brain allows baseball players to catch a fly ball without sitting down with a pencil to figure out force, trajectory, and wind speed. Outfielders see the bat hit the ball, and without stopping to think, they intuitively start running to the spot where it is going to fall. If you ask great musicians to look at their fingers while they are playing, the music will invariably stop. At its best, music flows freely from the Right Brain. Great musicians learn how to put their Left Brains on hold while they play freely from their emotional Right Brain. 3.  Reprogramming Your Mind to Change Your Life Psychologists say that the harder you try to break a habit, the more certain it is that you will fail! This seems paradoxical, and yet most of us have had this experience. What you think about generally becomes your reality. If you are constantly thinking about your bad habit, it will never leave your mind; it will never go away. For the most part, people are very good at negative self-programming. Do you do this? When you get home from work, you plop down in an easy chair, take a deep breath, settle into a comfortable state of mind, and then start thinking about everything that went wrong during the day. If you go over in your mind everything that has gone wrong and everything that can go wrong, then what are you creating? You are reinforcing your troubles, deepening your problems, and prolonging your difficulties. Parents, teachers, clergy, doctors, and bosses are very good at correcting what we do wrong. Few ever show us what is right. We internalize this type of teaching and use it on ourselves. You can learn to break lifelong habits, almost effortlessly! Now that you understand this, you're going to stop thinking about your problems and start thinking about solutions, right? If only it were that easy for you. The bad news is that you are programmed to think the way you already do. The good news is that the alpha level is where basic programming can be developed for your mind. It is like the DOS, or system level, in a computer. A good hypnotist can bring you to an alpha level and give you mental programs to follow. In a Las Vegas act, you can be asked to walk like a chicken—and you will! In therapy, a hypnotist can help you break habits, like smoking. But the strength of hypnotism is always limited by the willpower of the participant. No hypnotist can make you stop smoking if you don't truly want to stop. There's an axiom in psychology that says when the will and the imagination are in conflict, the imagination always wins.