Creative Imagination: The Secret to Obtaining Amazing Results In Life

“You’ve got to hang experience on a latticework of models in your head. What are the models? Well, the first rule is that you’ve got to have multiple models — because if you just have one or two that you’re using, the nature of human psychology is such that you’ll torture reality so that it fits your models, or at least you’ll think it does” – Charles Munger on Mental Models

From birth we’re raised to believe that the smartest people get all of the glory and all of the gold.

Good letter grades, pass/fail marks, academic acclaim…all of these are used to praise those who naturally fit in to our neuro-centric society.

Still, that doesn’t explain an interesting fact: only 30% of Fortune 500 CEOs have a bachelor’s degree.

Why do people who never went to college have PhD’s and people with elite Masters’ degree distinctions working for them?

That’s because success in life is not about how “smart” you are. Rather, it’s about how you implement creative imagination in order to think effectively.

In this article, I’m going to show you some tools to increase your effective thinking and as a result have more creativity in the process.

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What Is Creative Imagination? + Some Examples of Creative Imagination

The future must become the present in the imagination of the one who would wisely and consciously create circumstances. We must translate vision into Being, thinking of into thinking from. Imagination must center itself in some state and view the world from that state. – Neville Goddard, Awakened Imagination

It’s no secret our world has many problems.

Most of these need thinking in a new way in order to solve them. That’s where creative imagination steps in.

Creative imagination is the ability to take already existing pieces and configure them in a new way to create something that’s better than the sum of its parts.

What are some examples?

Airbnb isn’t the first company to offer short term rental services. They are the first company to offer a new thing in an appealing way.

Uber certainly wasn’t the first company to offer public transportation. They did do it in a way that made it incredibly easy, given the widespread use of smartphones.

Lil’ Wayne certainly wasn’t the first rapper to use punchlines and ad libs. Yet he was one of the most distinctive and acclaimed rappers of the early aughts.

A lot of people feel the pressure to be “better”. This is a relic from our schooling, more often from overzealous parents who want their kid to be the next Daniel Kahneman or Albert Einstein.

“Better” isn’t always….better.

Coming up with something that’s widely acclaimed isn’t a matter of “better”. It’s a matter of “different”.

It’s how you appeal to the needs of your environment at that point in time.

Also, not every problem has a ready-made solution. Sometimes, it takes a “latticework” to bring things to a close.

What Are Your Mental Models/Maps?

Everyone knows what a map is. It’s a way to help you get from A to B in the shortest amount of time.

Did you know you can “shortcut” your thinking as well? You do so by the creation of mental models.

A mental model is a representation of an action within your mind’s eye. It describes implementation and execution.

This is also known as a paradigm or a self-concept in self-image psychology.

For example, if I asked you: “how do you drive a car?” your explanation would be filtered through the perception of the mental model you have of “how to drive a car”.

Another one would be “how do you file a tax return?” or “how do you ask a woman on a date?”

Your answer would be dependent on your mental model.

That mental model is dependent on various things, but most importantly your training and preparation.

Your creativity is limited to the degree of the amount, variety, and depth of your mental models.

Since creativity is the reorganization of already-existing objects into new forms, your knowledge of how those objects functions determine your creativity.

You can only know how those objects function with time and experience.

Physically, this manifests in the form of neurological networks connected by a series of interlinking axons.

Overtime, these neurological networks become coated in myelin from repeated use. This is how habits are formed.

Do You Have Mental Blocks?

As I hinted at earlier, everyone is creative in some capacity or another. It’s just whether their brain allows them to formulate creative solutions.

Since we have a mental model and effectively a paradigm for everything we do, it’s clear that these affect our behavior.

Thought acting on physical tissue creates a level of mind, which then creates actions. Repeat the thought over and over again, then you have a belief/self-concept.

These influence our mental models, which then influence our creativity. This means most of us are operating far below our true capacity.

How to Exercise Creative Imagination

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”- Plato

First: Develop awareness.

Ignorance is the number one reason why many people lack creativity.

Ignorance create fear. Fear stifles creative potential and creates further self-limiting beliefs.

A good way to cure this ignorance is to read books. Read them on various fields on various subjects. These will be your building blocks. You then further refine that by developing self-awareness.

Conscious awareness is the light that dispels the darkness of ignorance.

Second: Connect the mental maps.

Every time you read or take in a new piece of information, your brain decides whether to discard or to file it away for further use.

This is because you have primed your brain to be cognizant of certain things that will help it achieve its objectives. This is known as “psycho-cybernetics”.

When you identify something as particularly useful, you at that time make a mental representation of it.

When you gather enough mental representations, you start to see that they all link together. Some of them fit perfectly, like adjacent puzzle pieces, others require another piece between them to connect.

Eventually, you’ll find that there are several basic mental models that contribute to creative imagination psychology.

You don’t need to know every little thing about everything in order to be an effective thinker. You just need to know the big ideas that govern success or failure in that area.

For example, a good mental model to always carry around is “compound interest”. In the world of investing, this is valuable.

Knowing that any amount you invest allowed to grow for any number of time will result in exponential gains is a key foundation stone.

Third: Practice effective mind management.

The art of mind management is easily one of the most important skills you need to develop in the modern world.

The amount and variety of stimuli present in our interconnected 21st century society makes it possible for you to never even see any inkling of your potential all because you are too distracted.

Once you’ve been able to create your mental models, you need to understand when and how to deploy them.

You do that through effective mind management.

If you want to learn how to implement and develop mind management, check out Self-Persuaded: The Definitive Guide to the Art of Mind Management.

Fourth: fire, fire, fire

Since we’ve already established that repeated thoughts create a certain type of functioning in the brain, we understand that our brain can constantly reconfigure itself in response to experience.

Mental maps need several “practice runs” to be solidified until they can be used as a way to become creative.

You can’t just do something one time and expect to get great results.

You make sure you have the good form and the good result will follow.

Think about shooting a basketball into a hoop.

You keep on shooting and shooting until you develop the proper form which leads to a ball through the hoop. You eventually do it so you can have good results no matter where you are, even if you’re under pressure in a real basketball game.

Once you have good fundamentals, you build on that and make your own creative embellishments.

Conclusion + Wrapping Up

The rewards in life often don’t go to the most intelligent, they go to the people who can exercise creative imagination properly.

You do that through the creation of mental models which you build upon.

Everyone has different mental models to how they explain the world. One isn’t more “right” than the other, but there are some that are more efficient.

When a mental model is created right, you can relate to the underlying reality that governs much of our universe and use it to think more effectively and come up with creative solutions to problems.

That involves properly setting the foundation for correct mental thinking to occur and then letting the process unfold so you can become a creative thinker.

That’s how to you exercise creative imagination and make true progress in life.

After you read this, you might wonder “what are some mental models I can use to help me in my life?“. Well, you don’t need to wonder any longer.

I’ve written a book with 40 of some of the best mental models in the realm of psychology, philosophy, productivity, and self-improvement. It’s called 40 Mental Models to Expand Your Thinking and Your Life.

If you want to grab a copy, check it out below.