Uncover Your Full Potential: The Power of Imagination & Creating a Better Future

Live in the now. Let go of all thoughts of the past and the future and focus on what you need to do in the moment. It's never been more popular to tell people that they should live in the present, to be "present and mindful." To refrain from revisiting old or new memories or imagining future events, worries, and other things that probably won't happen.

But having all your experience focused on the present in this way may not be as fantastic as it's cracked up to be. Not only do we not have much choice but to live in the present and in the local place we find ourselves in right now. It's the only thing we have. All we can do is create a personal experience of being somewhere else via our thoughts. It’s a fantastic creative, imaginative, and hallucinatory ability that helps us much more than it hinders us.

This is perhaps best illustrated by the curious case of Henry Molaison. In his early teens, his epileptic seizures were so severe that he had no life. Doctors were baffled, and a controversial brain surgery was eventually performed. It involved the removal of the hippocampus on both sides. After the patient woke up, there was eager anticipation that was soon dispelled when it turned out that Henry’s epilepsy was a thing of the past.

The champagne was about to be uncorked by the research team when they suddenly discovered that Henry could no longer form any memories. This was a breakthrough in understanding what the hippocampus did, but for Henry, it was strange to lose his entire past and all future memories. It was further complicated by the fact that the same part used to shape our past is also used to contemplate and project the future.

Thus, Henry was permanently stuck in the present, unable to answer questions about either the past or the future. He couldn't recognize people he had met before, with every meeting being like the first. The same applied to facts and knowledge. Everything was new and fresh for him, which quickly was becoming "old" for everyone involved. However, all motor memories remained, and he could perform all worldly tasks just as good as he could before. That's how he lived the last 55 years of his life.

Hence, there seems to be a significant evolutionary advantage in neuroplastically shaping formless new memories and fantasizing about the future. When we don't do that, we simply don't function as well in the world of form that we live in. Could be useful to keep in mind when we complain that this ability gives us the temporary illusion of not being here and now. It's responsible for our entire capacity for learning and our ability to create a connection between resources, mistakes, and successes in the past and the results we can achieve in the future so that we can do better in the present.

Are you with me? It's not surprising that what Einstein called "thought experiments" are such an integral part of everyone's human experience. Working against it will always be about as fruitful as chasing your own tail. You can't stop functioning as we have all evolved to function. Instead, the key is to understand what is happening in all of us.

When you see the tremendous value in being able to move backward and forward on the timeline through your imagination, it brings a delightful freedom. The freedom to create something new. The freedom to draw resources from the past and ignore things that previously gave you unpleasant feelings. The freedom to discover that you never really leave either your ’now’ or your ’here’.

Once you realize this, it no longer makes sense to expend a lot of effort to 'come back’ when you see that you never actually left. All that happened was that you innocently missed your personal "thought experiment." With that insight, time and energy are released to fearlessly use and learn from your past. To be inspired by your idea of the future so that you can do the best you can with the now you always have. Because you might not be able to predict the future, but you can be an important player in creating it …