Unlock Your Creative Potential: Feed Your Imagination, Lead Boldly

Imagine trying to lead without vision… That’s what happens when your imagination goes unfed—it weakens, leaving your ability to innovate stuck on autopilot. In this post, I’ll share four practical ways to recharge your imagination, so you can bring fresh ideas and energy to your leadership.

The other day I was in our print lab working on a project. As I was waiting for my print to finish, I wandered a bit and was looking at the 3D printer. Then my eyes focused on the back wall behind the printer. I saw this quote: “the desire to create is one of the deepest desires of the human soul.” - Dieter F. Uchtdorf

I believe this - I see so much evidence of this deep desire being lived out all around us.

But I also see how that desire to create and the imagination that powers it can get set aside or repressed.

Our imagination is at the core of growth and creation, even OUR leadership.

The imagination is the seed of our future results. But even our imagination can lose its potency.

It can become:

• crowded out by repetition and responsibilities.

• lost in self-doubt or boredom.

• pushed aside by fear.

• forgotten for lack of meaningful opportunity for its use.

When that happens, we may still have the urge to create, but a diminished ability to make it happen.

So, what do we do? We need to find a way to feed our imagination.

It starts with intentional curiosity.

Below are 4 simple ways to do this:

1)    Go for a hike, without a plan.

If you can, walk in the forest or a nature park. Study a tree, a mushroom, or a leaf. Watch the water move. Our natural world is an endless source of beautiful form, design, texture, pattern, and scale. Go to the ocean. You will find expansive repetition with vast variety, and many curious things. Find a time to look at the stars.

Seeing these domains of sky, land, and water will feed your imagination. It will fill you with a deep sense of scale and encourage you to imagine what else is out there.

2)    Look at art.

Art is an obvious way to see how our fellow humans have visualized ideas and created beautiful things. Art forces us to see things the way the artist saw them. This expands our perspective.

And remember, art is not just visual, and not just found in galleries or museums. Listen to music. Look at picture books. Study films or animated movies. Art is often a reflection of nature or culture, enhancing our view of both.

3)    Experience another culture.

Our imagination is expanded when we see how others navigate this life. It is great if you can go there and smell the smells, but if not – intentional observation or research of another culture is just a library away. I am not talking about an intense research project unless you are into that. But you can inspire your imagination by simply (and intentionally) looking into another culture.

The doorways into that culture are the art, food, music, and language. And culture is not limited to different countries or ethnicities, it might also be found in different fields of study, disciplines, companies, families, or neighborhoods.  

4)    Solve small-scale problems.

Play games. Do puzzles. Take something apart, then put it back together. Fix something. Build something.

The next time you are on social media, step back and look at it as a reflection of what our collective imagination is craving. My guess is that you will see all these things in your feed:

• Nature, Art, Culture, Clever people solving small-scale problems.

The problem with social platforms, however, is that they barely require passive curiosity. And their pace is mind-numbing. Our thumb moves faster than our brain can absorb and process. The constant scroll will not feed your imagination - and it might do the opposite.

Take your time.

Feeding the imagination takes time.

And we might feel like we are wasting time. In our world of high expectations, pressured productivity, and ever-constant drive to do more and be more – we may not feel like we have time to be curious.

And we might not see direct connections to our work and this act of filling our imagination bucket. But it is happening. If we are intentional, we will be constantly assimilating information into useful and creative ideas.

As we continue to fuel our imagination – even if results are imperceptible at first – we will create the imaginative results we want to see in our lives and organizations.

    - Written by: Scott J. Wakefield, Founder