One of our greatest powers is the power of imagination. Many of the greatest artistic, scientific, philosophical, and political achievements of human history flow from our ability to imagine, envision, and innovate, to create something from nothing. But the visionary can’t have a breakthrough unless they can imagine it first.
There are other reasons imagination matters, too. Setting aside world-changing epiphanies, imaginative powers also play a role in keeping the brain active and healthy. According to a study published in Neurology, the journal of the American Academy of Neurology, people who engage in artistic and imaginative activities in middle and old age are 73 percent less likely to suffer memory and thinking problems, such as mild cognitive impairment.
“Put simply, imagination increases neural activity because your mind is mapping unchartered territory,” according to Kendra Sand, writing for Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED). Continued proliferation of new neural connections keeps the mind sharp.
But can one’s imagination be improved? According to philosopher Amy Kind, the answer is yes. “Imagination is a skill,” she wrote in an article published in the British Journal of Aesthetics. “Some people are much better at it than others, but it is something that we can improve with practice.”
Improving imaginative abilities is more complex than improving other skills. You can’t just buy a course on imagination and level up through a series of lessons. But that doesn’t mean there are no methods to train, refine, and enhance the imagination. Here are a few.
Learning new skills forces the mind out of familiar grooves into unexplored territory. fizkes/Shutterstock
1. Seek Out New Experiences
Sticking to familiar activities keeps the mind in well-worn grooves. But growing imagination requires breaking out of expected patterns and exploring new territory. One of the best ways to do this is to seek out new activities and environments. “Experiencing or learning new things requires your mind to think (and neurons to connect) in new ways,” Sand explained. Taking up a new hobby or visiting a new town, city, or even country can help jumpstart the imagination. It also increases the store of knowledge, memory, and sense experience that the imagination will later draw from.
One way to think of the imagination is as a recombining tool. It takes mental concepts and images and combines them in unexpected ways, forming surprising connections. For example, we know what a tortoise is and we know what flying is; the imagination can stick these two things together in an unusual way, generating the idea of a flying tortoise. The more raw concepts and images available to the mind, the more possibility for recombination.
2. Respond to Writing Prompts
Creative writers thrive on writing prompts—little scenarios or suggestions that get the imaginative powers churning. Writer’s Digest has a list of 100 such prompts, and there are many more lists available online or in books. Responding to writing prompts forces the mind to generate the unknown based on the known; that is an imaginative act. It requires the writer to find or create meaning, pattern, and connections, to draw order out of chaos.Many of the prompts show the writer how to draw on memory and experience to spark the imagination. Here’s one of the prompts:
“Take a look around a museum or recall your favorite pieces in a museum. Imagine what the past lives of these artifacts look like. Alternatively, you may imagine what the everyday objects in our lives might look like in a museum and what stories future generations will tell about them.”
Making a habit of using writing prompts can sharpen your imagination over time.
3. Keep a Dream Journal
Of all the strange connections the mind can form, those found in dreams are probably the most bizarre. Our unconscious mind draws on our memory, emotions, and sense experiences, mixes them up, and creates wacky, interesting, and occasionally beautiful narratives. Dreams shuffle the deck of the mind. While a lot of what this random recombining process spits out is junk, some of it will be creative gold. Paying attention to your dreaming mind can help teach your waking mind the art of creative recombination. It’s important to write down dreams shortly after waking because they tend to fade from memory quickly.
Writing prompts push the imagination to generate ideas where none yet exist. PeopleImages/Shutterstock
4. Recreate a Scene From Memory
One exercise recommended by Sand involves playing a memory game. She advised looking out the window for 10 seconds, then looking away and writing down every detail you can recall. Afterwards, look outside again and assess how accurate your mental reconstruction of the scene was. This activity forces you to accurately recreate images from the real world in your mind—another important function of the imagination.5. Try Improv
Kind argues that dramatic improv can help train the imagination. “We can find similar imagination-stretching techniques in the kinds of games and warmups used in classes and workshops on improv comedy,” she said. “These kinds of activities help one to break out of a set mentality, to improve receptivity to new ideas, and to think quickly on one’s feet.”You can find a list of improv games here: TheatreFolk.com/blog/improv-games-for-collaboration
6. Read Great Literature and Poetry
If, as Kind suggested, “the productivity of imagination is tied to the vastness of one’s experiential reservoir,” then there’s no better place to find quality material for the imagination to work on than in the great classic works of literature and poetry. Oftentimes, one’s own imagination will be triggered by the imagination of another person. And who is better to look to than the great writers and artists of the past? In their works, you’ll find new imaginative worlds to explore, people to meet, and ideas to grapple with.7. Stargaze
Since the very beginning, humanity has been inspired the sparkling night sky. Aristotle went so far as to consider it the true origin of philosophy. In “Metaphysics,” he wrote:“It is through wonder that men now begin and originally began to philosophize; wondering in the first place at obvious perplexities, and then by gradual progression raising questions about the greater matters too, e.g. about the changes of the moon and of the sun, about the stars and about the origin of the universe. Now he who wonders and is perplexed feels that he is ignorant (thus the myth-lover is in a sense a philosopher, since myths are composed of wonders); therefore … it was to escape ignorance that men studied philosophy.”
The wonder of stargazing draws the mind outward, encouraging reflection, imagination, and discovery. AstroStar/Shutterstock
Because staring at the star-sprinkled sky draws us out of ourselves in admiration and wonder, it’s the perfect catalyst for the imagination. At least, the ancients found it so. We could do worse than imitate them. As stated on The Dark Sky Project, “Experiencing the night sky provides perspective, inspiration, and leads us to reflect on our humanity and place in the universe. The history of scientific discovery and even human curiosity itself is indebted to the natural night sky.”
Let your imagination be kindled by the fire of the stars.
