How to Boost Your Imagination and Reap the Benefits

By Martha Michael

From childhood we’re told, “That’s just your imagination,” as if it’s a wasted, mythical practice, but dreams that come from open minds are often where reality begins. You don’t have to don a costume or form an improv group to activate your imagination. It has a role to play in everyday life that can boost your mental health and sometimes your level of success.

Benefits of an Active Imagination

Like the animal kingdom, where play behaviors contribute to both enjoyment and survival, humans also have a developmental need for an environment that invites casual interplay.

Imagination in Kids

An article on BetterHelp.com offers reasons to encourage the use of imagination, particularly for children.

Social skills - When kids are allowed to express themselves through role playing, they can learn about consequences for various forms of speech and behaviors. By pretending to be fictional characters they can create multiple situations and choose to emulate the ones that serve them best.

Cognitive development - By creating worlds where they activate their imagination, children can learn problem-solving skills and practice using language more effectively. They also learn how things work in real-life situations by changing the imagined setting -- from a castle to an office, for instance.

Physical exercise - The imaginative play designed by children is often physically active. From fending off pirates to building a fort, it can give kids the exercise they need while improving hand-eye coordination and boosting body image.

Imagination in Adults

If you know someone who seems a bit childish, they might just have an active imagination. Adults can become self-conscious and lose access to their creativity as they age, but giving yourself freedom to think in terms of the impossible can offer mental health benefits.

Everyone needs to escape reality at times, which is partly why we turn to various forms of entertainment. When you pull out a board game or play with dolls while watching the kids, it can bring back fond memories and give you a break from daily pressures.

An active imagination can sharpen your mind and energize you to perform necessary tasks or return to work with more passion. You can directly affect your future by applying your imagination to define your personal goals and visualize a favorable trajectory for your career.

Finding Success Through Daydreaming

Though daydreaming is often associated with laziness, spending time getting lost in thought can lead to tremendous success. Famous thinkers such as Albert Einstein and the Bronte sisters were known for having some of the most imaginative minds in history. Many people make their mark by carving out time to daydream.

An article by WebMD says that daydreaming is a useful tool for making decisions and meeting deadlines.

While it’s an involuntary act lasting a few seconds, an estimated one-third to one-half of waking hours are spent in daydream mode. It originates in an area of your brain known as the “default network” involving the medial prefrontal cortex, the posterior cingulate cortex, and the temporoparietal junction. These parts of your brain are activated when there’s a decrease in external stimuli.

Because of the stimulating, fast-paced lifestyle the average American leads, there is a high rate of burnout. Daydreaming provides a relaxing escape. Letting yourself get lost in thought inspires creativity and boosts problem-solving by creating new neuropathways. Creative thought involves a complex process of merging different forms of thinking, including:

• Insight
• Analytic problem-solving
• Selective encoding
• Restructuring of information

Getting distracted by your thoughts probably never felt so reaffirming.

How to Inspire Imaginative Thought

If you want to spark your imagination but don’t know where to begin, the website for Nine Billion Schools has a list of ideas:

• Set goals
• Find a new hobby
• Use role-playing at work
• Read a book
• Improvise rather than planning your day

Look no further than the playground to become more open to imaginative thinking. Children disregard such roadblocks as practicality, stress, and the judgment of others while playing and pretending. A change of perspective can begin by questioning your current routine. Ask yourself if doing things the same way is still serving you and whether or not you’ve learned all you can about your job, your interests, and your hobbies.

Dressing in a crazy costume on Halloween or taking a theatrical turn during a game of charades can make your most imaginative actions seem like a punchline. However, you can take your imagination more seriously and see if its benefits reach beyond sheer enjoyment. The spaceships and talking dolls of yesteryear may be pie charts and sunny beaches today, but they can still take you places.

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