Children use their imaginations with no problems

[cylon]

I've noticed many things I have in common with posters here, and that is that using our imaginations to pretend we are someone else, or that our circumstances are more favorable, can be challenging. To compensate for this, we have several useful tools we use, affirmations, dream boards, and occasionally visualization.

Until just recently, when I sat down to visualize I did it the way a serious grown-up would. First, I have to make sure to get the visualization RIGHT... everything needs to be perfect. Have to keep in mind all the things I've studied, and make sure I do them in the proper sequence. This is my life I'm creating here, this is SERIOUS STUFF.

While sometimes it worked ok, I had a couple challenges. One, it was difficult for me to sort of stay "on message", if I visualized say a nicer place to live, or success in a certain area of my life, I would start to doubt the likelihood of it coming true, and soon I'd be visualizing what I really THOUGHT would happen instead, which would be the real world, life is difficult negative images running through my head. Two, I would get scared that I was being irresponsible. There are so many important adult things in my life, I can't for a second let them go and pretend that life is better. That would just leave me vulnerable, and more likely to run into harm's way.

So, that's how serious adults go about it. But I think there is an easier way that most of us used to be experts at. And that is the way kids pretend that they are someone else, or have different life circumstances. That's all kids do, pretend they are who they want to be. Real world considerations never come into a child's mind, if they want to become someone else, it just happens. And it's enjoyable too.

I think it would be funny if a kid was playing at being Batman or something, running around making "POW! BAM!" sounds, if an adult asked the kid, "So to step into this character what was your method? Do you have affirmations that say "I am the Batman"? Do you visualize yourself as being Bruce Wayne for twenty minutes before you run through the house making noise?" That child would look at the adult with the "adults just don't get it" look.

I think the closest we as adults get to this state is when we are on vacation to a place we want to go. Being away from our day to day concerns, in a new, maybe nicer environment, it gets easier to daydream and play "what if" with who we are and what our lives can be. But when we get back home, it's right back to the real world and all our important problems.

So, why do kids visualize and give off the vibration of what they want so naturally, while adults need a professional to walk them through the same process? Well, as we become adults most of us learn that to use our imaginations can be dangerous, selfish, lazy, not seeing the big picture, you name it. Life is SERIOUS BUSINESS after all. And soon, our egos take pride in being adults, and I suspect take some sort of perverse pleasure in denying ourselves real pleasure. Puritan work ethic and all that. We become addicted to being out of touch with our true selves. When we are kids, we ARE our true selves.

Which leads me to believe that youth isn't so much blissful ignorance that is only possible because our parents did the heavy lifting so we could use our imaginations... I think youth is actually the feeling of being in touch with who you really are, and who you really are is the creator of your life experience, and it's possible to do it in a fun, joyous, almost childlike way.

This came to me as lately I've been having thoughts like "say, what if I actually WAS the guy that had all this stuff I wanted? What if I was that guy RIGHT NOW? How would I feel? How would I act?" And it's like I become a kid again, I'm pretending at being someone else, it all comes quite naturally, and it lasts as long as it takes for my ego to step in and say "whoa, slow down skitzo! Life is hard and difficult. When I became an adult I put away childish things" or whatever that depressing poem is.

In conclusion: kids get it, and don't need affirmations to convince themselves they are Batman. They just act like Batman until they want to act like someone else. The only reason they lose that ability over time is all the adults telling them to grow up and "get real".

This is all the stuff that's been in my head this last month I've been away from the forum. If you read it, hope you got something from it.

[bmlyeryk]

and people think kids "just dont get it"....well im quite envious of kids

they seem to be the only kind who really know how to live and take advantage of life, unless an adult programs their mind the wrong way (kids are highly suggestible)

ive been thinking about it for a while & came to the conclusion that kids are a lot smarter than people think, at least being right-brained. they know how to use instinct and they realize life can be "magic". unfortunately this tends to be taken away from them as they are told many things are "impossible"

[themaster]

I didn't read it for now.. sorry cylon..

What I did get out of it was bmlyeryk comments..

Yes, kids are born with more of their abilities switched on.. some of them are adopting our same old myriad belief systems we've been using for a long, long time.. but more of them are letting go than ever before..

[Melchior]

Yeah, seriously, why so serious?

Something I'd like to add to the kids thing is that there is also not the level of doubt in their minds of how the world works, their own limitations, etc. compared to what grownups believe. Another difference between 'kids' imaginations and 'adults' imaginations, which I think you may have implied, is that for kids, it is a game, it is play, life is fun and pretending is enjoyable, whereas for the adults, it's no longer a game, it's the real world, there are consequences. One is practice, the other is performance. But, as some people like to believe, life is perhaps just a more sophisticated game than what we had played in our youth. Is it still 'just a game' though? Well, that would depend on how you look at it... and there are many ways of looking at it, I assure you.

Either way, real life is treated differently than pretend life because it is different, there are different rules and different outcomes that manifest in the real world rather than only in imagination. Heard of the term "child's play" before? That's because back then, it was easy, but back then, just imagining something didn't make it manifest in the 'real world' like what you are doing now.

[Zas]

This is useful to me, thanks for sharing.

Originally Posted by cylon

I think the closest we as adults get to this state is when we are on vacation to a place we want to go. Being away from our day to day concerns, in a new, maybe nicer environment, it gets easier to daydream and play "what if" with who we are and what our lives can be. But when we get back home, it's right back to the real world and all our important problems.

This in particular was a little eerie to read as I just got back from a little trip that allowed me to be in a very different place than I have been for awhile, so I'm trying to integrate what I learned here and have been a little lost, heh. Thanks for the signpost.

[Andrew Brunelle]

Our imaginations are taken away from us by our educational system in America. We're told that things are they way we are told they are and hardly ever do creative work, at least not after middle school. We are trained to be worker bees and to unquestionably follow orders. It is a great way to be trained for the working world if you want to hang onto the bottom rung of society for the rest of your life.

Lucky for me, I still retained some of my imagination. Imagining and thinking outside the box is not much of a challenge for me because I am constantly learning on my own, reading, and expanding my mind through experiences. All you need to do is remember how to imagine. It's tough at first, but once you get the hang of it again, it's not so hard. Then you can go creating the life you want up there and make it into reality down here. As someone famous once said, "We build our castles in the sky, then put a foundation below it."