Creative vision requires you to stimulate your imagination to work toward your definite major purpose and to put the results of that imagination to work.
Expressed by people unafraid of criticism, creative vision is responsible for the shape of civilization today. It has brought every advancement in thought, science, and mechanics that allows our current standard of living. It inspires you to pioneer and experiment with new ideas in every field. It is always on the lookout for better ways of doing things.
Creative vision belongs only to people who have the habit of going the extra mile, for it recognizes no nine-to-five working hours and it isn’t concerned with monetary rewards. Its aim is doing the impossible.
Synthetic Imagination
Imagination, like reasoning, takes two forms: synthetic and creative imagination. Each can contribute to the betterment of your own life and the world around you through creative vision.
Synthetic imagination combines previously recognized ideas, concepts, plans, or facts in a new way or puts them to new use.
An excellent example of synthetic imagination is Edison’s invention of the lightbulb. He began with one recognized fact that other people had discovered: A wire could be heated by electricity until it produced light. The problem was that the intense heat quickly burned the wire out. The light never lasted more than a few minutes.
Edison failed more than ten thousand times in his attempt to control this heat. When he found the method, it was by applying another common fact which had simply eluded everyone else. He realized that charcoal is produced by setting wood on fire, covering it with soil, and allowing the fire to smolder until the wood is charred. The soil permits only enough air to reach the fire to keep it burning without blazing.
When Edison recognized this fact, his imagination immediately associated it with the idea of heating the wire. He placed the wire inside a bottle, pumped out most of the air, and produced the first incandescent light. It burned for eight and a half hours.
Edison’s creative vision depended on several important principles of the science of personal achievement. He applied the habit of going the extra mile because he labored without immediate pay. He worked with definiteness of purpose and was inspired by applied faith to carry on with his work through an incredible number of failures that would have broken most people.
Finally he applied the mastermind principle by assembling a team of skilled chemists and mechanics to perfect his invention, finding the right kind and thickness of wire, the right quantity of air to leave in the bulb, the best way to construct the bulb, so that his invention took on the most efficient form possible.
Synthetic imagination does not depend on having tremendous personal advantages. Edison had spent only three months in grade school, had supported himself for many years as a telegrapher, and was fired from almost every job he held. He began to lose his hearing early on and eventually became almost completely deaf. But he turned his life around through definiteness of purpose, the habit of going the extra mile, and applied faith.
Creative Imagination
Creative imagination has its base in the subconscious. It is the medium through which you recognize new ideas and newly learned facts. All your efforts to impress your definite major purpose on your subconscious work to stimulate your creative imagination.
F. W. Woolworth was working as a clerk in a hardware store. He was, at that point, simply determined to be a good and valuable employee. When his boss complained about piles of out-of-date goods that weren’t selling, Woolworth’s imagination went to work.
“I can sell those items,” he told his boss, and with his employer’s permission, he set up a table in the store, laid out all of the dud merchandise, and priced everything at ten cents. The stock sold remarkably fast, and soon the owner was searching for anything he could lay his hands on to put on that table, which became the most profitable spot in the store.
Woolworth had the faith to apply his new idea to an entire store; his boss didn’t. The Woolworth chain of five-and-dimes quickly spread across the nation, earning him. a fortune. His former boss once commented, “Every word I used in turning that man’s offer down has cost me about a million dollars I might have earned.”
Woolworth was so committed to his then-modest purpose of being a valuable employee that his imagination was ready to back up his commitment with powerful ideas. He certainly went the extra mile for his boss, but because that man didn’t have the vision that Woolworth had, other investors formed Woolworth’s mastermind alliance and profited from it.
If you feel the need for a creative vision in your life, you can begin to develop it by getting on better terms with your own conscience, inspiring yourself with greater self-reliance, providing yourself with a definite major purpose, and keeping your mind so busy with that purpose that you have no time left for fear and doubt. Nothing will happen in your life that you do not inspire by your own initiative. Creative vision is the power which inspires the development of that personal initiative.
Source: Keys to Success by Napoleon Hill