“All problems are problems of the imagination; and all solutions are solutions of the imagination”.
– Albert Einstein (paraphrased, at least)
The Problem
Where ever you are right now, I’d like you to join me in a journey of the imagination! Let’s pretend and imagine, just for a few moments…
- Imagine, if you will, that right now you are in a small room, maybe 2m x 2m and 2m tall.
- Imagine that room is empty except for you, there is nothing else at all in the room, just you.
- Imagine that the walls, floor and ceiling are absolutely solid and completely unbreakable. Not even a pneumatic drill or high explosives could dent it. Not that you have access to any of that.
- Imagine that there are no windows, no doors, no doorways, no holes or openings anywhere.
- Imagine that you are trapped there, and imagine that there really is absolutely no means of escape.
Really really imagine that, in all of its detail. Really focus –
- What do the walls look like?
- What texture if the floor? How light or dark is it?
- What, if anything, can you hear in that room?
- Is it warm or cold, damp or dry?
- Are there any smells?
Make it as vivid and real as you possibly can.
Now that you are imagining that you are trapped in an inescapable room, heres a question for you – how do you escape?
As you imagine that room with its solid floor, walls and ceiling, remember that there is no visible means of escape; there are no tools you can use; nothing to help you.
There’s just you and your imagined unbreakable room.
So, how DO you get out?
The Solution
The answer is actually deceptively simple.
Stop imagining that you are trapped in an inescapable room!
OK, I can hear you groaning and quite possibly muttering “Cheat!”, but you have to admit, that is the perfect solution.
Think about it for a moment. You imagined you were stuck in that room, right?
But here’s the thing – in reality, were you actually, at any point, genuinely stuck with no means of escape?
No, of course not. You were just imagining you were stuck. Which means that at any time you could have left the place you were in. If you really wanted or needed to.
You imagined you were stuck – even though, clearly as you and I both know, you are not stuck in that room right now, nor were you at any time you were reading this. And so the most efficient way out of that situation is just to stop imagining it, right?
The prison in which you imagined yourself stuck was nothing more than a construct of your imagination, so obviously the easiest way to escape was to stop imagining it. Sure, you could have concocted all manner of weird and wonderfully complex scenarios which could have enabled you to engineer an escape eventually, but none of those were as quick or easy as simply stopping imagining you were trapped.
The Reality
Now that we look back over the scenario, the solution is completely obvious. However for most people who were imagining it, there seemed no way out.
Which is all too often sadly the case in our daily lives – far too many of us (and I’ve been there myself more times than I’d care to admit to!) find ourselves feeling trapped in all manner of situations and scenarios, with seemingly no way out.
When in reality, either there is an obvious way out, or we are not actually trapped at all, it is just a construct of our own wild imagination.
And that is especially true when we think of the things which scare us, the things of which we are afraid, our very own fears. All too often we construct elaborate scenarios around our fears, building that small escape-proof room in which to allow our fears to trap ourselves.
Which is where I come in! I help you to figure out what is actually going on, and I serve as your sat nav to find your path out of your situation and into the freedom of the situations you do what. Where your situation is one of pure imagination, I help you harness your wonderful imagination to enable you to break free; where your situation is one of mindset, I help you to develop and install (rapidly) the new helpful mindset you need.
It’s time we had a chat, you and I.
