Reminiscing with my brother, cousins and friends recently brought back wonderful days of pretend! We were cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, soldiers, superheroes, star athletes, great inventors, astronauts, adventurers and so many more characters. Everyone was always at their best in our imaginary world. For many of us, who we pretended to be ultimately shaped who we became. Our daydreams seemed all the more real because they included all five senses: sight, smell, sound, touch and taste. All of us knew that happy thoughts made Peter Pan fly.

Recalling those days was like a refresher course in imagination. The mind does believe what we tell it. I was Wonder Woman! As adults, we need to reconnect more closely with that part of our mind that lets us see all that is possible in our lives. Yes, most of us can identify a goal, feel the desire to reach it, know what we want, who can be of help and even believe it genuinely can happen “if.”

But, can we visualize it as we did as children? Every morning before you climb out of bed to start the day, and every evening as you climb back in to rest, take a few moments to relax and let your mind imagine. Start with recalling a happy memory and allow your mind to travel there and fill in the details. Then, move to another exercise where you see yourself planting a seed and nourishing it into full bloom. As you did as a child, make it real in your mind. Picture the success in your mind. See yourself doing what you need to do. See yourself reaping the rewards for those actions. Jot down how you went about creating this mental picture and enjoy the results.

Share the memory!

I Care, Barb