Creative vision, expressed by men and women who have been unafraid of criticism has been responsible for the civilization of today as we know it. It has also been responsible for the scientific inventions of modem times which have led first to the steamboat age during the days of Robert Fulton; then the railroad age, the electrical age, the steel and iron age, the department store age, the skyscraper age, the automobile age, the airplane age, the age of plastics, and finally the atomic and space age.
Creative vision inspires men to pioneer and to dare to experiment with new ideas in every field of endeavor. It is always on the lookout for better ways of doing man’s labor and supplying man’s needs.
Creative vision is a quality of mind belonging only to men and women who follow the habit of going the extra mile, for it recognizes no such thing as the regularity of working hours, is not concerned with monetary compensation, and its highest aim is to do the impossible.
This quality, more than all others, gave us Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and many other great statesmen who laid the solid foundation for our way of life.
And it gave us Thomas A. Edison in invention, Henry Ford in automobile transportation, Orville and Wilbur Wright in the development of the airplane, James J. Hill in railroad pioneering, F. W. Woolworth in chain store merchandising, Andrew Carnegie in the development of the steel industry, Charles M. Schwab in the same industry, John D. Rockefeller, Sr., in the refinement of crude oil, and many other American industrialists who pioneered our system of free enterprise through the trial and error method, and developed it to the point at which it is today.
Creative vision may be an inborn quality of the mind, or it may be an acquired quality, for it may be developed by the free and fearless use of the faculty of the imagination.
There are two types of imagination:
(a) Synthetic imagination, which consists of a combination of previously recognized ideas, concepts, plans or facts arranged in a new order, or put to a new use.
(b) Creative imagination, which has its base in the subconscious section of the mind, and serves as the medium by which basically new facts or ideas are revealed through the faculty of the sixth sense.
It is known that any idea, plan or purpose, brought into the conscious mind repeatedly and supported by emotional feeling, is automatically picked up by the subconscious section of the mind and carried out to its logical conclusion by means of whatever practical media are available.
Understand this truth and it will be clear why you should adopt a definite major purpose and begin at once to carry it out. The understanding of this truth will also reveal one of the major benefits of the master mind principle, as a master mind alliance in operation inspires the use of the imagination, and leads to the development of creative vision.
Creative vision is definitely and closely related to that state of mind known as faith, and it is significant that those who have demonstrated the greatest amount of creative vision are known to have been men with a great capacity for faith. This is both logical and understandable when we recognize that faith is the means of approach to Infinite Intelligence, the source of all knowledge and all facts, both great and small.
Source: PMA: Science of Success by Napoleon Hill