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 Theme of Zoom Meeting: Positive Imagination
© 2020 by Richard E. Gordon • rgordon118@tampabay.rr.com
last updated: 5/23/22
Duplication Prohibited without author’s permission.

Questions:

The following questions contain links -- underlined words to click on  -- words that will take you to related information on the internet. I suggest you try answering each question before checking out a link. And then, if you would like to venture further, explore where the link leads you.

1. What is imagination?

2. Are there any mental exercises you can do to expand your positive imagination?

3. How can your imagination be especially helpful to you during hard times such as living through the isolation and stress of a pandemic?

4. How might parents help their children develop the powers of a positive imagination?

5. Are the standardized tests so popular in schools today failing to recognize the imagination/creative abilities of students?

6. Consider a student showing only average ability on standardized tests, college boards, and IQ tests.  Can such an average test taker yet have a brilliant imagination? If your answer is “Yes,” what are the implications for guiding a student into certain career choices?

7. What value, if any, do you see in having a college course or workshop in positive imagination? Can you really learn how to have a more powerful positive imagination?

8. How can imagination be a doubled-edged sword?

9. How can imagination help us achieve our goals?

10. To have a great imagination, must you also have a great intelligence? Is there evidence that intelligence and imagination are closely related?

11. If you were recommending career choices for a young relative who has a great imagination that she loves using, what career might you recommend?

12. Do any non-human animals have imagination?

13. As we leave childhood, do we use our imagination less? Should we cultivate and exercise our imagination throughout our lifetimes?

14. How can you use your imagination to influence your subconscious? Can you make an imagined event seem so real that it sinks into your subconscious mind as though it were a real experience?

15. How might you use your imagination to create a happy experience that may become as real as an experience that actually happened to you? Consider, for example, that Horace’s mother abandoned him when he was an infant. How might Horace use his imagination to create a happy experience with his mother – an experience that actually never really happened, but his imagination makes it feel as realistic as a happy memory? Do you see something positive about using your imagination to create such happy but fictionalized memories?  Another link you may find interesting: Implanting Fake  Memories Could Treat Depression.

Quotations:

1. “Nothing limits achievement like small thinking; nothing expands possibilities like unleashed imagination.” –William Arthur Ward

2. “Visualize what you want to do before you do it. Visualization is so powerful that when you know what you want, you will get it.” –Audrey Flack

3. “Imagination is even more important than knowledge.” – Albert Einstein

4. “Every amazing, impressive invention in the world once resided in someone’s imagination. And yes, we can all imagine. If you worry, you imagine. If you dream, you imagine. If you plan, you imagine.  It seems like we all can and do imagine, but not always knowingly, or helpfully!” – Mitra Manesh

5. “The imagination to envision better times — especially in hard times — is vital. 1960s America saw war, assassinations and polarization. Yet, in that same decade, Americans found the vision to create Head Start, Medicare and a space program that affirmed the power of science and ingenuity to lift humanity to new heights.”—Office of the Chancellor, UCLA, June 19, 2020, Graduation message.

6. “Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.” –George Bernard Shaw

7. “Decades of intensive observation have revealed that under some circumstances, animals can imagine the future or the past, can pay attention to imaginary objects, and can pretend that one object is another.” --By Jason G Goldman

8. “Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of the imagination.”
—John Dewey

9. “To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.”—Thomas Edison

10. We were punished for daydreaming in school. We were not taught to develop our creative imagination; we were taught to suppress it. It takes courage and perseverance to let go of control and trust our intuition.” —Linda Naiman