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I feel like I could rule the world. I know, I could be what I want to be like a day's travel never looking
back. Okay, it's Sean. And I'm here with one question Friday, where we take one listener question, and we play the audio on air and then we try to answer, we try to drop a knowledge bomb, right? I'm already imagining you listening to this and your mind is, your mind is blown the brain is leaking out.
Year. And that's, that's how you're going to end this podcast, okay? So let's go ahead and listen. It's been a sent me three audios. I can pick any one of the three. Haven't heard it yet. I'm going to pick door number one, let's go. Hey guys. My name is Matthew and I have the question for Sean. So he talks about not wanting to be in the imagination graveyard. What are some tips and tricks that you do to keep your imagination creativity alive especially when you feel stuck or you don't know what to do.
Okay, perfect, this is right up my alley. And let me break this down for you. In three parts. I'll first start by saying this. I think this question touches on something a tactic that is one of the most useful things that I do that. I don't really hear anybody else talking about, okay? So that's the that's the teaser which is what I'm about to talk about is one of the most useful things to me and I rarely hear people talking about it. So let's break this into Parts you and you're asking about
Imagination of this. Great little phrase imagination graveyard. I don't think I said that but I'm stealing it from you. So the first thing is, if I said, all right picture somebody who's got an amazing imagination, right? Who who in the world has an amazing imagination often when people think about is a child, right? So when were kids, we get praise for our imagination and we're always plant making up games and stories and magical creatures and imaginary friends and all this good stuff. So that's the first place we go. We think kids imagination is for kids. The other place we go is maybe like a
I don't know, like somebody who works at Pixar like, oh, you're super creative. You create these movies and stories, so you need to be imaginative and the rest of us, we don't really need that and I think that's totally wrong. So, I actually will put this forward. I think that everybody is using their imagination everyday, but you just don't recognize it because, when you're a kid, your imagination is about fun and possibilities and magical fantasy lands. And when you're an adult, your imagination is actually manifest as stress. Okay. So what
I mean you wake up and you're you look through the alarm clock you see the time and immediately you realize that. Oh man, I'm going to be stuck in traffic. All right, so where's your brain gone? Your brain has imagine a situation that hasn't happened that is not necessarily a fact or a proven. But you're imagining that the either the roads are going to be clogged or the airport's going to be busy or they're going to lose my bag or you. Imagine that I have this presentation. I'm going to I'm going to f----- it up, right? I'm going to stumble on my words or I'm going to get
Nervous or people aren't going to get it or people are going to laugh at me. Whatever we are constantly imagining negative scenarios happening. This is very common in adults, right. And you know how do you feel when you imagine these things right? You feel anxious. You feel stressed, you feel depressed. These are all code words. For the same thing, fear and fear only takes place in the imagination. And so the first thing to recognize that imagination is not just something that kids do is something that adults do all the time. They just codename it stress.
And that's because they are magining bad scenarios that haven't happened yet. That might this happens as a parent. You want your kid and instead of being, you know, marveling at how they're playing, you're imagining up, they might hit their head on that thing right up. They might stub their toe over here, right? How often do we do things like that? Okay, so that's step one. Now the second thing is okay, well, what's the big deal? We're imagining this. Well, what's the implication? What is the result of this imagination? Well, the first is how you feel because when you imagine something going poorly, you feel stressed anxious anxious.
You know, depressed, sad. Whatever. What are these negative emotions are emotions that. We usually do want to experience for an extended period of time. So it changes our mood, but it also changes our decisions, right? If you imagine that you're, you know, going to be stuck in traffic. Maybe you'll leave earlier. I'll take a different route or maybe you won't go at all. Same thing with your imagine that the presentation is going to be. You're going to forget what you had to say. And your people are going to be looking at you. Like you don't know what you're talking about. So maybe you'll actually just ask somebody else to do it or
You'll avoid the situation altogether. So, imagination drives, not just your mood but your decisions. So what I mean, if at the beginning of this if I said how important is your imagination, so yeah, it's beautiful. It's important to have an imagination but your mood and your decisions are like the most two, most important things that you have in life. And what I'm telling you is that they're driven by your imagination about what you're Imagining the future to be like and so all of a sudden imagination becomes is pretty important thing.
And the problem is imagination is a muscle that we haven't used consciously since we were kids, right? Like, we're always doing it in the background, but how often are we actually intentionally trying to improve our imagination. It is a muscle that's just been weakening and atrophying since we were like, you know, five years old. And so here's how I do it. Okay, so that's the importance of it now. Okay. What do you actually do about that? Well, the way that most people in my friend group, my peers, the way they think is extremely, rational analytic?
Logical. And they love lists like nobody loves lists, like a business person and I do were an achiever, they Lovelace right, you know, write it down, knock it off and those doing work to a certain extent. They actually work on getting a pretty good result, but they get there in the sort of like toughest most stressful way possible and I'm not really interested in that, right? Like I want to win and I want to enjoy it while I go to me. Those are two non-negotiable things not willing to lose and not willing to have this, you know, rough.
Tough it out experience. I know I want to have an enjoyable awesome experience while I'm doing it. So that's just the way I've chosen to live my life. Okay. So now all right let's take a quick break to talk about HubSpot. That's right. The sponsor for our podcast. Now, HubSpot gives you a seamless CRM platform with easy-to-use tools, that gives your team a full picture of your customers. You know? Have you ever seen a customer and you don't understand where, what's going on with their payment plan? I don't understand. And you don't realize they have a custom payment plan or your sales team needs.
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What I do differently instead of making a list which is like a text format. I used the brain, the way the brain actually works which is a brain is more visual system, and it's a visual auditory system. And so I use my brain. When I think about what I want to do, my tasks, my goals stuff like that, I don't make lists, I Make Scenes like, scenes in a movie. So I'm imagining how I want something to go and I think I even started this podcast is saying something like that are. Ya think I said I'm imagining.
You listening to this with your mind blown and you're bringing the leaking right? Like I think I set a literally said that the beginning this podcast, that is how I approach anything. So people are like, you know, hey you do a lot of public speaking. You know what's a tip to get better and this is what I always say. I say, don't think about what you need to say. First start by imagining the reaction at the end. How are people going to feel and react at the end? You imagine the standing ovation. You imagine. I do this for example I
Ian when I teach my class on Zoom, this is like I teach a course. People pay a thousand dollars per person to get into this course and they show up in a zoom and I need to make this thing lit. Can't feel like a boring meeting. I don't worry about what words I'm going to say. I worry, I think about how do I want this to end? What do I want this to feel at the end here? And I what I always do, is I imagine the chat in a zoom chat, flooding, with comments, people being like, this was a 12 out of 10. Oh my God, so many nuggets of gold.
So glad I came, you know, I'm imagining these almost like King Kong congratulatory conversations that are happening at the end. I imagine the volume of chat, just flying through the screen of positive feedback that gets me in a certain type of mood, right? That gives me that confidence, that then I can just go and I can just operate naturally in the, who knows, the right words. Just happened to come out of my mouth then, because I'm operating from the right state of mind. So, what I'll do is I'll Make Scenes for my goals. So instead of saying, I want to lose 10 pounds,
I will imagine look at myself in the mirror and seeing what I see right now. Imagine the scene of looking at my body or even better, forget the body. I imagine that I just posted my before-and-after on Twitter and I'm seeing the replies flood in, right? So I'm using my own psychology to my advantage. My psychology wants to get bunch of likes and comments on social media. So I use that to my advantage. I imagine that scene going the way I want. If it's happens to be with finances or success, I imagine, you know,
Dean of that success. So I don't have to worry about how I get there. I just want to know what it feels like when I'm already there. And so, here's some tips in doing this, I have a scene. What I do is I have a scene for all the different things that matter to me in my life. I have a scene for, let's say, my family, for example, I don't really share this most people, but you know, family is super important to me. And so I imagine this scene of me walking into my house and, you know, like as a kid, you run up to your parent, you like, cling onto their leg like a little koala.
Ha. So I already imagined one kid on one leg. One other kid on the other leg, and then one kid a koala, hang on my arm, and then me leaning over to kiss my wife, right? That's the scene that implies a house full of love, right? So that is I sort of imagined the happy ending at the end. And that's my scene that I go to. That puts me in a certain mood, that gives me Clarity of what I want. And then once I have a great mood and great clarity of what I want, I tend to just make the right decisions along the way. Right. I'm operating from a place of abundance, instead of a place of feeling like
Lacking something. And then I make shitty decisions because my you never want to make decisions from Panic or fear or feeling desperate aurillac because you're going to make a certain type of decision. I want to make decisions from feeling good feeling confident, imagining all the possibilities, and I want to make decisions that will lead me into that into that outcome. Okay, so I'll leave you with a couple tips on if you actually want to go do this, take your goal that you've written down instead. Imagine it as a movie scene.
Like a like a movie scene, it's not just what you see. It's what you hear. It's the it's all your senses. Try to use as many of your senses as possible. So what do you hear? What do you see? How does it smell? How does it feel to be wearing? Those clothes to be sitting in that car to be sitting in that chair to be sleeping in that bed, right? Try to engage all five senses and makes it more Vivid for you. The other thing is make it comical, right? So I'll movie can be a horror movie at drama movie, I don't know. For me, I choose comedy. And so, when I imagine something I imagine almost the
Most extreme version of that because it makes me laugh at takes a lot of the weight off, my shoulders things feel really important and tight when you are kind of afraid of them, but once you play with the idea in your head, you play with that scene, it becomes lightweight, and then I like to operate from a place of something, being lightweight. And so that's how I do it. That's how I use my imagination on really a daily basis and it becomes a practice. And I want to practice my imagination more than I did as a kid.
When I used to make up, you know, little stories with my figurines, my toys, or, you know, when I used to draw and sketch and do things like that, I used to work that muscle out a lot back. Then what I realized is you got to do that as an adult to because your imagination is always running and it's just, what is it? Matt? What is it running on autopilot? By default, kind of going to imagine stressful possible negative outcomes that that tends to be where we go as adults. And I don't want to fall into that path, right? That's common, I'd like to go
Uncommon. And so the uncommon path is to actually train that muscle practice, imagining things that you want. That puts you in the right mood and that Lakes, let you make decisions from from a place of, you know, from a place of winning rather than fear of loosing. All right. So that's it. Hope that answers your question and I'll see you guys next
Friday. I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to put my all in it like a day's travel. Never look.
I'm back.
Alright, let's take a quick second to talk about our sponsor HubSpot. That's not wants me to tell you about inbound 2022. And I'm happy to do it because inbound is one of the cooler kind of marketing and customer Centric conferences that are out there, right? If you want, if you're building Community, you're selling to customers in both 2022, is going to have content for you. It's happening online and in person. So September, 6th through 9th. You can either go in person in Boston or you can browse for free online, if you just watch it a, you know, on the computer or on your phone.
And it's gonna have a bunch of things, right? They got presentations breakout sessions you know you're going to get to meet other leaders that are in Marketing sales operations. That's what you want to do. You want to be networking with the who's who of your industry so they have a bunch of different passes, you can get a starter pass, a Powerhouse pass, a VIP pass, whatever works for you and there's some new stages, you're always going to be on the podcast stage. There's a, what's next stage? And then there's of course, the main stage. So if you want to go network with, you know, leaders in your field and you want to learn
learn what's going on in The Cutting Edge, you should attend inbound 2020 to learn more and get your tickets at inbound.com that's inbound.com
