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Thursday, June 24, 2010

Use your imagination & better yourself

While watching my oldest son play in our front yard, I found myself paying close attention to what he was doing and what games he was coming up with.  On the surface, it looked like he was talking to himself (something that I'm guilty of doing even at 30 years old).  But as I watched him playing, I was amazed at the little story that he had come up with for himself.

The all-powerful, and often ignored, imagination was hard at work.  Not only was his imagination running wild and making his play time fun, but it was helping him solve a problem, boredom.

For him, nothing was unattainable, nothing was too odd or unacceptable (he proudly proclaimed he was a superhero named "Tootsie Roll"), he was having fun the way he wanted to.  Watching this made me wonder where my imagination has gone.  It's not that it has disappeared completely, but I don't let it run as freely as I once did, or feel I could.  I've let myself become too complacent with solving problems and I've fallen into a trap that's all-too comfortable when it comes to generating ideas and taking action on new projects.  I've also noticed this in others as well.  We've become too obsessed with determining the worth of something based on what it's been designed to do and stop short of thinking what it wasn't designed to do.

Let's free our inner superhero, color outside the lines, imagine the unimaginable, and any other cliche you wish to add to this list.  Bottom line, let's get creative and bring back the fun, not only in our work, but in our lives!