“Mickey Mouse popped out of my mind onto a drawing pad 20 years ago on a train ride from Manhattan to Hollywood at a time when business fortunes of my brother Roy and myself were at lowest ebb and disaster seemed right around the corner,” penned Walt Disney in a 1948 essay.
However, Mickey wasn’t Disney’s first cartoon character. After returning from his service with the Red Cross in 1919, Walt began dabbling with animation. He started his own animation cartoon called Laugh-O-Grams with a friend. Despite the cartoon’s popularity, the company went bankrupt after a year.
Walt moved to California and started Disney Studios with his brother Roy. There he created a new character called Oswald the Rabbit, which would be distributed through Universal Pictures. The cartoon was well received and its success enabled Walt and Roy to hire more animators for their studio.
However, contract and character ownership issues with Universal Pictures and producers led Disney to cut ties with Oswald and the studio. Disney needed to come up with a new cartoon and the situation wasn’t made any easier since most of his animators had been poached by the studio.
On his train ride back from meeting with the studio in New York, Disney brainstormed ideas for a new cartoon. He then worked with Ub Iwerks, an animator who hadn’t jumped ship, to sketch out new character ideas. Disney recalled a tame mouse he saw while at Laugh-O-Gram Studio, which sparked an idea for his new character. Walt’s imagination led to the creation of the iconic character and mascot of Disney: Mickey Mouse.
Walt’s vision and imagination continued to fuel the growth and expansion of the magic of Disney for years to come, from the first full-length animated film to the birth of Disney’s iconic theme parks.
“If you can dream it, you can do it. Always remember that this whole thing was started with a dream and a mouse.” – Walt Disney
Unlocking Possibility
The power of imagination is in your ability to create a vision of something that doesn’t exist. Your mind is the key that enables you to unlock a world of possibility.
Imagination is creative power. Constructive imagination is the process of producing novel images, ideas, and sensations in your mind that do not exist. Imagination also plays an important role in developing empathy. Imagining yourself in the place of someone else can give you a better understanding of their perspective and how they see the world.
You may think you lack imagination but think about the last time you read a book or heard a story. While the actual events were not playing out in front of your eyes, your brain was able to take the language used to communicate the story and help you experience it by creating images and feelings in your mind. That is imagination at work, you just might not realize it.
Imagination isn’t a special gift reserved for certain people. Imagination is a skill that you can improve. Think of it like training a muscle; you just need to exercise it so it can grow stronger.
“Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last, you create what you will.” – George Bernard Shaw
The Power of Making Connections
When you use your imagination you can explore new ideas and come up with original solutions to problems. The key is to leverage your previous knowledge and experiences to make new connections. Think of generating new ideas as making a leap in your thinking that is framed in relation to your previous experiences and knowledge. This is the essence of synthetic imagination.
The saying, ‘you don’t know what you don’t know,’ contains a fundamental truth of imagination. It is difficult to imagine anything that you can’t make some connection to. Trying to imagine something you have no frame of reference to is like stumbling through pure darkness and hoping for a ray of light that illuminates some hidden knowledge.
The formation of newly created ideas, considered creative imagination, is less common than synthetic imagination. Where these ‘truly new’ ideas come from is harder to explain, they are thought to generate in your subconscious mind. However, from a practical standpoint, it is more useful to focus on what you have control over: synthetic imagination. (Future use of the word ‘imagination’ will be in reference to synthetic imagination).
When it comes to imagination, instead of trying to think bigger, think interconnectedly. Ideas aren’t created in a vacuum. They are the product of pieces of accumulated knowledge and experiences, combined in new and unique ways. Look for meaningful relationships and places where you can make new connections between pieces of information.
Learning to make connections and combine different pieces of information are essential sub-skills of imagination. Imagining ‘what could be’ is the first step to bringing an idea to life.
Once you have that vision, you can apply creative thinking and problem solving to get you from here to there. However, without imagination and a vision of the future, creative application won’t take you anywhere.
Expanding Your Imagination
Imagination is infinite. You can continue to stretch and expand your imagination forever. Even if you don’t think you have much imagination or you simply want to see how far your mind can take you, you can train yourself to improve your imagination like any other skill. Here are keys to expanding your imagination.
Don’t limit yourself – You need to remove constraints on your thinking and let your imagination run free. If you constantly hold back your imagination you hold yourself back from exploring new possibilities.
You’ll never know where one idea will take you if you don’t allow yourself to follow it down the rabbit hole. In a TEDx Talk on imagination, Jeff Bollow, a film industry veteran, said, “Ideas spark ideas.” Every idea you have can trigger a response that leads you someplace new.
In his talk, Bollow shares an exercise he does with his students to spark their flow of ideas. He has them try writing as fast as they can without stopping, rereading, or slowing down for a certain amount of time. They can write about anything. The purpose to see where their mind takes them.
There is only one rule with this activity. Do not label what you are writing as good or bad. If you start judging what you are writing you will stop the flow of ideas. Instead, think of what you are doing as either effective or ineffective, and let that drive you towards what effectively sparks ideas.
You can do this same exercise. Set a timer for 3 minutes (you can set it for longer if you like) and write without stopping. You’ll be amazed where your mind can take when each idea leads to another idea.
Expand your knowledge – Your imagination is only limited by your current frame of reference.
In other words, if you expand your frame of reference you can expand your imagination. It’s really that simple.
If you want to be able to make more connections and come up with new ideas you need to add more reference points in your mind. Each reference, whether it be knowledge or experience, provides more opportunities for you to make new connections. This is a simple way to think about expanding your imagination.
Through continuous learning, you can progress from ‘I don’t know what I don’t know’ to “I know what I don’t know.” This gives you a clearer path to learning and enables you to take your imagination further.
Here are some practical things you can do to expand your frame of reference and imagination:
- Read – The more you read the more ideas you can gain exposure to. Seek out diverse texts and let your curiosity guide you. It doesn’t have to be reading, the key is to find any way to expose yourself to new ideas.
- Listen to stories – Listening to stories is one of the best ways to practice your imagination skills. When you are listening to someone share a story, focus on creating a mental picture, and experiencing what they are describing in your mind. This is like training your imagination muscle.
- Reflect – Take some quiet time and give yourself permission to imagine. It is hard to imagine new things if you are busy and your attention is constantly demanded. Uninterrupted time to think is invaluable for exploring new ideas.
Imagination is the key to building anything you want. Being able to create a vision for a new idea is the first step to bringing your vision to life.
Where will your imagination take you?
Footnotes:
- Further reading on the history of Oswald the Rabbit from Collider
- Further reading on Mickey Mouse from Wikipedia
- Further reading on the differences between synthetic and creative imagination can be found in Napoleon Hill’s book: Think & Grow Rich.