SUCCEED BY IMAGINING.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 2414, 6 April 1922, Page 4

SUCCEED BY IMAGINING.

PICTURE YOURSELF AS PROSPEROUS—AND YOU WILL GET. ON.

(By H. Ernest Hunt.) Imagination is our power of building pictures in our mind. There was a picture' of the chair you sit on in the mind of the man who planned it, just as there must have been a picture of St. Paul s Cathedral in Wren’s imagination.

The pictures we build in mind can be either copies of someone else’s pictures, or original. We can read a book and picture the characters and action described by the author, and thus make copies in our mind of the pictures in his. This power of making copies by imagination is very valuable, but far more.important is the ability to imagine new pictures of our own. Millions of people can copy, but comparatively few can do original work. That is why few lead and the many follow. When we say that something is “purely imaginary,” what do we mean? We mean that il does not actually exist. But that imaginary picture is really the first step towards its existence, THINK BIG THOUGHTS. People not so very long ago couldn’t “imagine” anyone flying but a few enterprising minds kepi that picture in 'viqjv, and hammered away at the difficulties, and now the fact is a commonplace.

It ft not right that a man should be so satisfied with his job that he never thinks of anything better. That attitude .leads to stagnation and the stoppage.of all progress. A man who took a little shop, and only thought round and round in that little shop, would remain there. But a man who started in a small way and kept his imagination always on the alert to find new openings and extensions, who pictured himself growing more and more successful till he had the next door shop, and the next, and the next, would be far more likely to end by owning a big establishment than the little man with small ideas. So the mother might have her private day-dreams of the fine men and women into which her children will one day grow. To have this vision can only help, it can never do harm. “HOW WE GET “IDEAS.”

Back up imagination by real solid work and elf oft, and never let any number of disappointments obscure your mental picture of winning through finally and making your dreams oorne true.

An idea is formed by using the memory material in the mind, and combining it together in various wavs.

We take a simple idea, “Horses eat,” then coupling up the two elements backwards we get “Eat horses.” Quite a different idea. So when we put this material together in a novel fashion we have an original idea, a new mental picture.

Now the world is packed full of material for new ideas, and only the very tiniest portion of this has been used.

Draw up a list of the virtues you admire in other people, then place each one in conjunction with yourself.

SEND YOUR IMAGINATION AHEAD.

Good temper —myself. Me? Good tempered? Upon .my word, I had never thought of it. It is a fact that many people do go through life bad-tempered because their imagination had never been ef|ual to picturing good temper,

Make another list of all the things you can do, tlTen take a trades and professional directory and place each word, in the first list against every trade and profession, and see what possibility the combination suggests. The number of new ideas will surprise you, and it only takes one to make an opening. Every city and every hamlet is full of opportunities if only your imagination can picture them. You are only tied down so long as you can’t get out of your mental rut. Send your imagination on ahead, to the land of Belter Days, and advance messenger to say you are coming—and leave behind your whole picture gallery of feeble and worn-out thinking.