Power of Mental Imagery, Warren Hilton [classic books for 13 year olds .TXT] 📗
- Author: Warren Hilton
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A boy who is a poor visualizer will never make a good artist. A man who is a poor visualizer is out of place as a photographer or a picture salesman.
No person with weak auditory images should follow music as a profession or attempt to sell phonographs or musical instruments or become a telephone or telegraph operator or stenographer.
No man who can but faintly imagine the taste of things should try to write advertisements for articles of food.
Remember the rule: To the mind you are seeking to convince or educate present your facts in as many different ways and as realistically as possible, so that there may be a variety of images, each serving as a clue to prompt the memory.
You can put this rule to practical use at once. Try it. You will be delighted with the result.
HOW TOTEST YOUR MENTAL
IMAGERY
We suggest that you now test your own reproductive imagination with a view to determining your points of strength or weakness in this respect. And in doing so please bear in mind that the following questions are not asked with a view to determining what you know about the subject of the question, but simply how vividly—that is to say, with what life-like clearness—the mental image is presented to your mind, how close it comes to a present reality.
Go into a quiet room, close your eyes and try to bar from your mind every distraction. Now then, ask yourself these questions:
Visual.—1. Can you remember just how your bedroom looked when you left it this morning—the appearance of each separate article of furniture and decoration, the design and color of the carpet, the color of the walls, the arrangement of toilet articles upon the dresser, and so on? Can you see the whole room just as clearly as if you were in it at this moment? Or is your mental picture blurred and doubtful?
2. How clearly can you see the space that intervenes between your house and some far-distant object? Have you a clear impression of the visual elements that determine this distance?
3. Can you see a bird flying through the air? an automobile rushing down the street?
4. Can you imagine a red surface? a green surface? Try each primary color; which is most distinct to your mind’s eye?
5. Can you see a smooth surface? a rough surface? a curved surface? a flat surface? a cube? Does the cube look solid?
6. When you memorize a poem do you remember just how each word looked on the printed page?
Auditory.—1. Can you in imagination hear your door-bell ringing?
2. Can you form an auditory image of thunder? of waves breaking on a rocky shore? of a passing street-car?
3. Can you mentally hear the squeak of a mouse? the twitter of a bird? the breathing of a sleeping child?
4. Do these images come to you with the distinctness of reality?
5. Can you distinctly remember a voice you have not heard for a long time?
6. Can you recall the tones of an entire selection of music played on the piano?
Smell.—Can you distinctly recall the odor of strong cheese? of violets? of roses? of coffee? of your favorite cigar? Is it clear to your mind that it is the odor you are recalling and not the taste?
Taste.—1. Can you remember just how butter tastes? an apple?
2. Try to imagine that you are sucking a lemon. Does it pucker your mouth? Does it seem like a real lemon?
3. Can you imagine the taste of sugar? of salt? of pepper?
Pain and Touch.—1. Can you in imagination live over again any past physical suffering?
2. Can you recall the feeling of woolen underwear? of bedclothes resting upon you?
3. Can you re-experience a feeling of exhaustion? of exhilaration?
Heat and Cold.—Can you imagine a feeling of warmth? of cold? Does your recollection of the feeling of ice differ from your memory of a burn?
Go through the above list of questions, carefully noting down your answers. You will discover some personal peculiarities in yourself you never dreamed existed.
Try these questions on other members of your own family. You will be surprised at the varying results. You will perceive the reason for many innate differences of ability to do and to enjoy.
Think what an immense part imagination plays in the world of business, and you will see how important it is to know your own type of sense-imagery.
To some extent the power of forming mental images can be cultivated so as to improve one’s fitness for different kinds of employment. Such self-culture rests upon improvement in the vividness of your sense-perceptions. It suffices for your present purpose to know that to cultivate your power of sense-imagery in any respect you must (1) Keep the appropriate sense-organs in good condition, and (2) When sense-perceptions of the kind in question come to you, give your undivided attention to your consciousness of them.
THECREATIVE IMAGINATION
There is another type of imagination from the purely reproductive memory imagination of which we have been speaking in this book.
There is also Creative Imagination.
Creative Imagination is more than mere memory. It takes the elements of the past as reproduced by memory and rearranges them. It forms new combinations out of the material of the past. It forms new combinations of ideas, emotions and their accompanying impulses to muscular activity, the elements of mental “complexes.” It recombines these elements into new and original mental pictures, the creations of the inventive mind.
No particular profession or pursuit has a monopoly of creative imagination. It is not the exclusive property of the poet, the artist, the inventor, the philosopher. We tell you this because you have heard all your life of the poetic imagination, the artistic imagination, and so on, but it is rare indeed that you have heard mention of the business imagination.
The fact is no man can succeed in any pursuit unless he has a creative imagination. Without creative imagination the human race would still be living in caves. Without creative imagination there would be no ships, no engines, no automobiles, no corporations, no systems, no plans, no business. Nothing exists in all the world that had not a previous counterpart in the mind of him who designed it. And back of all is the creative mind of God.
Mind is supreme. Mind shapes and controls matter. Every concrete thing in the world is the product of a thinking consciousness. The richly tinted canvas is the physical expression of the artist’s dream. The great factory, with its whirling mechanisms and glowing furnaces, is the material manifestation of the promoter’s financial imagination. The jeweled ornament, the book, the steamship, the office building, all are but concrete realizations of human thought molded out of formless matter.
Mind, finite and infinite, is eternally creative and creating in the organization of formless matter and material forces into concrete realities.
Says Max Müller in his “Psychological Religion”: “The Klamaths, one of the Red Indian tribes, believe in a Supreme God whom they call ‘The Most Ancient One,’ ‘Our Old Father,’ or ‘The Old One on High.’ He is believed to have created the world—that is, to have made plants, animals and man. But when asked how the Old Father created the world, the Klamath philosopher replies: ‘By thinking and willing.’”
We get what we desire because the things we desire are the things we think about. Love begets love. The man who is looking for trouble generally finds it. Despair is the forerunner of disaster, and fear brings failure, because despair and fear are the emotional elements attendant upon thoughts of defeat.
Behind every thing and every act is, and always has been, thought—thought of sufficient intensity to shape and fashion the physical event.
Mind, and mind alone, possesses the inscrutable power to create.
Your career is ordered by the thoughts you entertain. Mental pictures tend to accomplish their own realization. Therefore, be careful to hold only those thoughts that will build up rather than tear down the structure of your fortunes.
Creative imagination is an absolute prerequisite to material achievement.
The business man must scheme and plan and devise and foresee. He must create in imagination today the results that he is to achieve tomorrow. He must combine the elements of his past experiential complexes into a mental picture of future events as he would have them. Riches are but the material realization of a financial imagination. The wealth of the world is but the sum total of the contributions of the creative thoughts of the successful men of all ages.
With these principles before you, you can plainly see that the creative imagination must be called upon in the solution of every practical question in every hour of the business day.
Consider its part in two phases of your business life—first, when you are contemplating a radical change in your business situation; second, when you are seeking to improve some particular department of your business.
In the determination of how best you can better yourself, either in your present field of action or by the selection of a new one, take the following steps: (1) Pass in review before the mind’s eye your present situation; (2) Your possible ways of betterment; (3) The various circumstances and individuals that will aid in this or that line of self-advancement; (4) The difficulties that may confront you. Having selected your field, (5) Consider various possible plans of action; (6) Have prevision of their working out; (7) Compare the ultimate results as you foresee them; (8) Decide upon the one most promising, and then with this plan as a foundation for further imaginings, (9) Once more call before you the elements that will contribute to success; (10) See the possible locations for your new place of business and choose among them; (11) Outline in detail the methods to be pursued in getting and handling business; (12) See the different kinds of employees and associates you will require, and select certain classes as best suited to your needs; (13) Foresee possible difficulties to be encountered and adjust your plans to meet them; and, most important of all, (14) Have a clear and persistent vision of yourself as a man of action, setting to work upon your plan at a fixed hour and carrying it to a successful issue within a given time.
There is excellent practical psychology in the following from “Thoughts on Business”:
“Men often think of a position as being just about so big and no bigger, when, as a matter of fact, a position is often what one makes it. A man was making about $1,500 a year out of a certain position and thought he was doing all that could
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