I don’t consider myself very imaginative or creative. Any growth in my life has been because I like routine. I’m committed to my habit tracker. Having said that, I spice things up by changing my habits, often. Probably not a good thing since the whole point of habit tracking is to actually form consistent habits leading to habitual positive changes.  I do have the consistent ones i.e. exercise, meditation, not saying the F word, showing love, curiosity, and giving space.  But then the next week, I might add another habit or subtract one I think I’ve got down (I probably shouldn’t remove not saying the F word).  Tracking my mostly-changing habits has been medium good for me. While I might be able to look back at myself from say 5 years ago and see a positive difference, intentional change does not get the credit. It’s been more of a result of some haphazard habit changing. My growth curve may have been a little steeper had I been a bit more, dare I say it, goal-oriented.  I’ve never set goals.  I’ve always believed “forward motion is forward motion” with or without a goal. Goals have always felt too rigid or maybe that is my story. More likely, you have to have the imagination to set goals. I don’t think very often about what life will look like in 3 months, 6 months, a year, 3 years, 5 years, or 10.  Setting future goals is tough when you lack imagination. I am also painfully practical, a wet blanket, someone warned me not to be, which doesn’t lend itself to thinking outside of the box ,hence the lack of creativity. I’m not being hard on myself here, I’m speaking what I have always thought to be my truth. Zero imagination. Not creative.  

And then I picked up, Imaginable by Jane McGonigal.

In Imaginable, Jane McGonigal poses the question, When does the future start?  She is a futurist and a game designer and has worked extensively with students and companies, posing exactly this question.  So apparently, I need to be thinking about the future?  For most people, the future starts in 10 years.  Don’t take me (or her) literally here.  For some people the future starts in 2 months, when they start college or six months, when the pain of losing a loved one won’t be as painful.  But generally speaking, the future starts in 10 years for most people.  She has the reader go through some exercises, imagining themself in 10 years, really stretching their imagination, currently held beliefs, etc. She asks, “When you think about the next ten years, do you think things will mostly stay the same or go on as normal? Where are you?  Who are you with?  What is true in this version that isn’t true today? What do you want and how will you get it? How do you feel?”  She suggests getting very detailed and then, for fun’s sake (I’m not sure I would call it that) take all of those details and change them. 

I am only on Chapter 4, but I can’t get enough of this book because she has me rethinking (a-ha!) everything about my day to day ways. My belief that “forward motion is forward motion” gives me the permission to just keep putting one foot in front of the other, which is fine when you are simply surviving. But if you really want to change the world with your gifts, you’ve got to be able to imagine who you will be and how you will go about becoming this future self, which starts NOW.  She proposes that if you imagine yourself a certain way in a certain lifestyle, you begin to make those nuanced changes because it is already in your imagination, instead of just going about your days without intention behind them, without goals, without creativity.  You are capable of handling whatever happens because you have already imagined multiple scenarios and how this would affect you. I LOVE THIS!

So my little habit tracker has changed (again) with more intention and a dash of creativity to set me up for my future self.  This future self wouldn’t have been much different than my current self had I not picked up this book and started using my imagination, the one I thought I didn’t have.  I now understand when people say “everyone is creative.” Yes, we are because we have been gifted with imagination. We’ve got to use imagination.  Make it part of our daily habits.  Who knows where it will take us but wherever that is, we will be more open and prepared because we have considered the possibilities.  With more intention and creativity, we can build and imagine a better world. I will see you there.