“Imagination is everything.  It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.”
~Albert Einstein

Sometimes we use visualization during our coaching sessions or team facilitations. It’s a great way to bring people’s right-brain and hearts into the conversation and a great way to ignite their imagination.

And according to Einstein, imagination is everything.

When we imagine, we allow life to have fewer constraints and more possibilities. When we imagine, we let go of our (often self-imposed) restrictions and think “out of the box.” When we imagine, we infuse ourselves (and others) with creativity and allow things to happen that might not have happened (and we might not have allowed).

But sometimes we can be afraid to let ourselves imagine. And sometimes we mistakenly think that imagination has no place in leadership and in work. Sometimes making time and space to let ourselves imagine can seem like too much work.

But if it’s true that imagination is everything, or even close to everything, and if it’s true that it’s a way to preview life’s coming attractions, then how can we make more time for imagination and how can we invite and allow it even more into our work, our team meetings, and our days (not to mention our brainstorming sessions and creative jamming)? That is, I suppose, the key question.

The only way I know to make time is to make time. To make it important. To value and encourage imagination – and invite and accept even the weirdest ideas that might result from imagination time. To welcome the potentially slightly absurd plans that might arise and to embrace the things we’d never thought of before and ways we’ve never seen things before.

To let imagination be everything (and to let it be fun, to harken back to a blog post from a few weeks ago), and to let it preview our coming attractions.

How have you encouraged imagination and what wild results have you had?
Please leave a comment.

If you enjoyed this post, you can read more like it in our book, The Power of Thoughtful Leadership: 101 Minutes To Being the Leader You Want To Be, available on Amazon.


If you want more imagination in your life and your leadership, contact Lisa at lkohn@chatsworthconsulting.com.

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