Imagine you drive an old beat up 1972 Ford F100 truck, but it usually starts everyday.
You really want to buy a shiny new Ford F-150. You’re qualified for the loan but you just haven’t gotten around to pulling the trigger.
For people like me like it makes sense to man up, find an F-150, and buy it. It’s new, it looks better, feels better, and it has the new car smell. Ahhh!
But…
Everyday you drive the old F100. It smokes, sometimes it breaks down on you, but you’ve driven it for years and you’re used to it.
This is what so many of us do with our marketing. You get comfortable in your box and it becomes harder and harder to step out it even though something better is out there.
The fastest way to “better” isn’t necessarily in taking a course, reading a new book, or copying one of your competitors.
It’s using your creativity and accessing it through your imagination.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “the imagination and the senses cannot be gratified at the same time.”
Gratify here means to indulge or satisfy. When you try to fix a life or marketing problem with the senses (looking around, reading, listening to videos and podcasts, etc.) it’s too easy to miss the boat because your imagination isn’t active, it’s passive.
On the other hand when you use your imagination you move from reacting to creating.
Steve jobs said, “creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while.”
The prime times to access your imagination is first thing in the morning, last thing at night, during meditation, or getting in the shower.
You can also access it driving, moving your body (dancing, hiking, exercising, etc), cooking, all sorts of other ways.
Find a way that works best for you.
And don’t forget Napoleon Hill’s words in Think and Grow Rich. “The creative faculty becomes more alert, more receptive to vibrations from the sources mentioned, in proportion to its development through use.”
So uh…use it!
Adam