Written by: Corey Jahnke, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
I was sitting in the outdoor hot tub at Disney’s Grand Floridian resort looking out at the midnight sky and enjoying the warm weather, when an angry gentleman plopped into the water beside me and started complaining about how much everything costs at “The Happiest Place On Earth”.
After he ranted and raved for seven or eight minutes, I had become annoyed at his intrusion on my moment, so I asked him straight out: “What do you see when you think of vacationing here?”
“All I can see is the dollars flying out of my wallet and the hours I will have to work to get them back” he growled out sharply.
Ironically, his lousy answer made me feel sorry for him.
I couldn’t help but notice the lack of “magic” in his eyes, and I wanted to help him avoid one of the biggest mistakes a young father can make, so I replied confidently, “Well, that is ONE way to look at it. Can I ask you why you came here in the first place?”
He thought for a moment and said, “I guess I was trying to give my boys an experience they will remember all of their lives.”
“Right?” I agreed with a slow and thoughtful nod, followed by a bit of tough love.
“My friend, I GUARANTEE that you are creating something your family will never forget, BUT, I am guessing you are inadvertently generating the WRONG kind of memories.”
“You don’t even know me, what the hell are you talking about?”
“I am imagining a 20-year-old dude who looks like you, hanging out with his college buddies. He is holding a piece of pizza and he is talking about how ‘the old man dragged us all the way to Florida’ and then wrecked the whole thing because all he did was bitch about money and make us feel guilty as hell for being there.”
I waited for him to throttle me, but to my surprise, he just sat there.
It was a long time before he said anything, and when he did it was barely audible.
“You know, I’m always doing that. I hate it. My old man always complained about money, and I resented the hell out of him for it. But God, how do you change who are?”
“By changing the pictures in your head.”
He just looked at me kind of dumbfounded and after lifting his enormous hand in the air and turning it over, blurted out “Wait, WHAT?”
I remember being kind of excited, because as a reinvention coach, my favorite thing in the world is helping people change the pictures in their heads, thus helping them change their lives.
“Let’s imagine that same kid telling his college friends a different kind of story, what is his name?” I asked him anxiously.
“Joey” he said cautiously, “But he is getting to the age when he wants to be called just Joe”.
“So, let’s imagine Joey hanging out with the same friends, but this time he has captured the entire room with the light in his eyes and the kind of enthusiasm your grandfather would have had when talking about seeing Mickey Mantle play for the Yankees.”
“What’s he talking about now?” the fellow asked as he leaned forward as if he was starting to come alive.
“My dad was the coolest guy ever.” I replied with fire in my voice.
“When he took us on vacation, all he cared about was making sure we had an amazing time. It wasn’t like he was made of money, but he did everything he could with what he had to work with.”
“I just got chills”, he said with his wide, now glowing, brown eyes completely fixated on my face.
“How did you do that?” he asked with genuine enthusiasm.
“Well, the first time I came here, I was feeling that same pressure you are feeling. I mean, look, its tough being a parent. I remember wishing I was still a kid, you know, when MY dad navigated all of this.”
“And then I had a wild thought, ‘What if, for just that week I was a kid, and my dad had given me all the money I needed to have the time of my life while I was here?’ and in my mind I imagined my 12 year old self here at Disney, and I tried to look at with a childlike awe and wonder.”
“And what did you see?” he asked with a genuine interest in his voice.
“I saw that all of this, was created out of thin air, for you and me to enjoy and to share” I said holding my arms out wide as if to say “Look at the magic all around us”.
“How do you mean?” he asked with a confused look in his eyes.
“If you and I were standing in this very spot 100 years ago, what do you think you would see?”
“Nothing, I guess. I mean maybe farm fields or swamps or something, but nothing like this.”
“Exactly, so I started asking myself, how did all of this get here? I mean, this is really something. So how do you create something out of nothing? I became obsessed with that question. So, for the rest of the week, I looked for and focused on as many of the details as I possibly could. Walt Disney called them ‘Plusses or Hidden Mickeys’ ”.
He was just staring at me now.
“As I looked around, I began to visualize the Disney artists who designed this place and wondered about their creative process, I mean, how do you create the impossible?”
“I’m not very creative” he said in a quiet sort of dry voice. “It seems like all I can ever imagine is the next bill coming in the mail, or my boss dragging me into the office to chew my butt.” He groaned with a sorry looking frown on his face.
“I was like that once too, but what I discovered when I dug deeper on this, was the creative process that Disney and other imagineers use to create, well, whatever they create.”
“Creative process?”
“Yep” I said with a smile, “It turns out that imagination and creative thinking are LEARNABLE SKILLS and really are available to anyone with the courage to build them”.
“Can you teach me? I would love to be able to see my son in college the way you did”.
I smiled and shared with him what I like to call “The 7 Habits Of Highly Imaginative People”:
Habit One-Highly Imaginative People Paint With All The Colors Of The Wind
“Its all in the details” I told him. “Remember when I talked about your son holding a slice of pizza? That silly suggestion brought you into the story. It was something you could visualize.
Maybe you saw it bending in the middle, or a long string of cheese pulling away as he took a bite. Imaginative people think in images and feelings.
They add as many layers and colors to the story as they can. They literally try to immerse themselves and their audience into the picture so that they can manipulate time and space in ways that truly illicit powerful emotions in themselves and others. In effect, they try to put you in that college dorm with your son and hand you a slice of pepperoni.
Habit Two-Highly Imaginative People Whistle While They Work
Negative thoughts and negative thinking drastically shrink our creative awareness and cause us to close down our imaginative capabilities. When we are worried or stressed, our brain becomes left-sided and goes into problem-solving mode. Highly imaginative people stay purposely optimistic and commit to finding right-sided solutions.
The more we convert to the habit of letting our imagination go into a state of free-flowing positive streaming, answers and solutions present themselves in ways we have never considered. For example, when I spend money here at Disney, I visualize it funding the next Guardians Of The Galaxy Ride and I picture my future grandchildren screaming in delight as the come into contact with teenage Groot or dodge blue-headed Yondu’s magic arrows.
Expanding awareness requires immense energy and staying positive gives your creative consciousness an astro-blast into the completely incredible.
Habit Three-Highly Imaginative People Add A Spoonful Of Sugar
Obviously, building something from nothing and figuring out how to pay for it, comes with challenges and difficulties. What Imagineers do is look for ways to find seeds of opportunity in every difficulty.
The more you practice the habit of seeking the upside in a downturn, the stronger “the force” becomes within you and the better you become at innovation and problem-solving. These are major life skills that pay highly in the real world. Practice asking, “What’s great about this?” or “What can I learn from this?” and you will start to pick up insights that weren’t obvious before.
For instance, when I pay the street vendor for theme park priced food, I imagine them putting the food on their own table for their own children and the pride they feel because they earned the kind of income that supports a family. For me, that is rewarding AND inspiring. It is a win-win scenario.
Habit Four-Highly Imaginative People Believe In As Many As Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast
As Alice says in “Through The Looking Glass” the only way to achieve the impossible is to believe that it IS possible. Average people begin by trying to define what is and what isn’t possible.
Highly imaginative people already know that they are surrounded by the impossible. Life itself is impossible, and yet, here we are. Thus, instead of thinking “What if it doesn’t work?”, highly imaginative people ask themselves, “What if it does?”
When George Lucas created “Star Wars”, he was told that the technology needed to achieve his vision was impossible, so he created it himself. He believed in the impossible and it made him mega-wealthy and super famous.
Highly imaginative people think in terms of degrees of possibility and are always pushing the boundaries until they find their breakthrough.
When do they find it?
Usually when they least expect it and after a more “rational” person would have given up.
Habit Five-Highly Imaginative People Celebrate “Unbirthdays”
It is critical to understand that all versions of conventional thinking are simply mental constructs created by human beings and are subject to change given new information. Highly imaginative people challenge those constructs and as a result, learn to see things multi-dimensionally.
They no longer concern themselves with what is, or what should be, they adopt the habit of asking “What COULD be?”. In effect, their minds become “The Heffalumps And Woosels Montage” from “The Many Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh” which was created in someone’s imagination and now is a tangible piece of our current reality.
Lewis Carroll essentially asked the question: “If we can agree upon the mental construct of a birthday, why is an UNbirthday abnormal?” Imagineers have no answer for that.
Habit Six-Highly Imaginative People Ask Questions Like “Why Is A Raven Like A Writing Desk?”
Why IS a raven like a writing desk? Maybe the answer is obvious, maybe there is no answer. Highly imaginative people constantly and consistently ask questions and (this is the difference maker) they never settle for just one answer.
Average people cling to their need for certainty. They want facts.
Imagineers know that all facts are subject to change. The lens that they view the world through knows that the world was flat, until it wasn’t. The Earth didn’t change, what did change was the questions people were asking.
Imagineers love to ask the question: “What else could be going on here?” That, is the crack that opens the door to new insights, new understanding, and occasionally a bit of magic.
Habit Seven-Highly Imaginative People Always Add “A Little Bit Of Pixie Dust”
When Peter Pan tries to teach the Darling children to fly, their feet remain on the ground until he adds a little bit of Tinkerbell’s magic. When we become adults, the seriousness of life sneaks up on us.
Responsibility, real-world problems, and expenses cause us to lose that childlike wonder and awe that kept us awake on Christmas Eve and the like. Sometimes, we lose the ability to have any fun at all.
To imagineers, fun is SERIOUS business.
Highly imaginative people resolve to recapture some of their youthful magic and look for ways that they can “plus” their own experiences and those of their customers. No matter what your business, the more fun you make it, the more people will want to do business with you.
At the end of the day, everyone wants to pop through a chalk pavement picture, pass the second star to the right, and travel to infinity and beyond. The more we help our customers and families reconnect with the magic, the more we can help them reinvent their approach to life.
“Imagine THAT”, I said laughing at my own pun as the gentleman and I shared a parting handshake.
Leaving Neverland
At the end of the day, we all have to grow up and leave the nursery, but it really IS up to us if we want to regain the fun and recreate the magic we left behind as children.
These 7 Habits Of Highly Imaginative People create a doorway to enchantment.
For each of us, that door leads to a different place. I think today I’ll walk through the door and hang out with Miguel from “Coco”. I love the music and colors in that movie.
Where will YOU go?
Corey Jahnke, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Over the course of his highly successful healthcare career, Corey Jahnke has gone from getting killed to killing it. If you've ever felt like you were stuck, drowning in the day to day firefighting and being micromanaged, Corey can relate to you. After 30 years in healthcare, he finally found his way out of the doldrum experienced by so many; now, Corey helps others get reengaged much faster than he did.
Typically, the people Corey meets in the corporate environment are right where he was – lost and, to some degree, disenchanted with their industries. But, here's what Corey found and teaches in his book, "The Successful Thinker":
You can have peace of mind.
You can keep your integrity
You can spend time with your family and still be successful
You can achieve spiritual and vocational life fulfillment
You can make a meaningful contribution
You can develop your creative imagination and make life FUN again
If you're stuck in the corporate hamster wheel and your life sounds like Corey's did, Corey would love to have a virtual cup of coffee and help you get to your dream life.
Corey@CoreyJahnke.com
715-651-6908
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