Development of imagination. Fantasy and its functions, how to develop fantasy

Our imagination can help us improve our lives and achieve our goals. With the help of special techniques, it can be developed and used for your own well-being.

Everyone can use imagination. This exceptional ability is directly related to many aspects of life. With the help of imagination, every person will be able to turn their fantasies into reality, sending an impulse to the brain for active action.

Why is imagination needed?

Using the principle of realism, we deprive ourselves of the opportunity to fantasize, thereby closing the paths of development in many areas. There are several reasons that will help you realize the need to develop your imagination.

1. The development of imagination helps train the brain, develop mental flexibility and makes thinking more productive. By developing your imagination, you become smarter, build logical chains faster and solve multi-step problems.

2. Imagination helps to extract knowledge from the subconscious. With the help of fantasies, a person accumulates his own energy, directing an impulse to the brain to realize creative ideas and ideas. Imagination builds the power for a successful and productive life through extraordinary solutions to the problems assigned to you.

3. With the help of imagination, you can achieve much greater heights in your career, because thinking capable of generating ideas gives you an advantage in developing your own business and demonstrating creative inclinations. A person with a good imagination is capable of creative, fresh solutions and ideas that help quality work.

How to develop your imagination

Psychologists are seriously concerned that modern children have virtually no imagination and poorly developed imagination. In many ways, they blame television programs and gadgets that do not provide the opportunity to develop mental flexibility. The method of presenting simple information does not provide food for thought, and this leads to an impoverishment of knowledge, preventing the opportunity to use those parts of the brain that are responsible for creativity. The same problems are observed in adults who, in favor of modern videos, have stopped using literature and straining their memory and brain to solve problems on their own.

In order to activate brain activity, follow simple rules, and soon you will notice positive changes that will improve your memory and intellectual capabilities.

1. One of the daily rules is mental simulation of life situations. Imagine the plots in all the smallest details, add new details. For example, imagine being in some place. Add in your imagination quiet musical accompaniment, aromas of dishes, the noise of the city or the sounds of nature. Such exercises will allow you to easily reproduce in your imagination many options for the development of events.

2. Don't forget to read. Reading develops your imagination and enriches your vocabulary. Frequently encountered literary devices that provoke you to read between the lines load the brain, allowing it to analyze the proposed text, see the characters of the work, and imagine them in the proposed situation. The brain is a muscle, and the more you use it, the more productive your life becomes.

3. Keep yourself a diary in which you will write down your thoughts, emotions and experiences. Thoughts expressed on paper make your brain work twice as hard, searching for the right words to describe what happened to you. This method will also help you increase your vocabulary and teach you how to express thoughts correctly.

4. Communicate with people who are literally bursting with ideas. Their rich imagination and energy will be transmitted to you. Having plunged into the world of fantasy and new ideas, you simply cannot refuse this exciting activity.

A good imagination is one of the best tools in the world for achieving success! The most successful people, as a rule, are creative individuals and imagination plays an important role in their lives. By imagining something, a person learns to do it faster. Do you also want to develop your imagination? Then just skip to step one!

Steps

Part 1

Dream. Daydreaming is a process that helps to build various logical connections and remember information without taking a lot of time. Daydreaming is far from a meaningless activity. In fact, it promotes a state of high concentration and engagement. While you are dreaming, a completely brilliant idea may suddenly come to your mind!

• Try not to be distracted by the computer/video games/Internet/cinema, etc. If you are constantly distracted by various little things, your brain will not be able to concentrate and perceive information.
• The best times to daydream are in the morning (right before you get out of bed) and at night (before you fall asleep). A regular walk without headphones with music and other distractions is also suitable for daydreaming.

1. Look for new experiences. Be open, don't be afraid to try new things. A new experience can bring a lot of emotions and become food for thought and fantasy. For example, while attending a cooking class, you already begin to dream about how you will spend your vacation visiting different cafes and eating different delicacies. New experiences always open up new possibilities and develop imagination.

   • Of course, you shouldn’t go to the other side of the world to do something and gain experience. Just the opposite! Take a closer look at your surroundings. You can always go to different lectures and clubs. Try to find a new hobby, take up gardening, or simply walk around places in your city that you have not yet visited.

2. Watch people. In a cafe, subway, or on a park bench, watch people passing by. Make up stories and stories about these people, think about what could happen to them in life, use your imagination, empathize with them or be sincerely happy. Perhaps, by observing people, you will suddenly find the answer to a question that has long interested you.

3. Make art. It doesn't matter what type of art you decide to pursue. The main thing is that you should try to express yourself in it. Don't follow templates and stereotypes, do what you like best. For example, if you are drawing, then draw the sun not yellow, as we are used to seeing it in pictures, but green. Use your imagination to make your drawings unique.

   • You can try any other type of art, for example, writing poetry, sculpting with clay. Remember that you don't have to be a master at this. The point is to develop your imagination, not to become a world-class artist or sculptor.

4. Spend as little time as possible on the media. Movies, TV shows, the Internet, computer games - all this is very fun and interesting, but don’t get carried away, otherwise your creative potential will begin to noticeably decrease.

   • Nowadays, people, especially children, are turning into consumers rather than creators. They do not create anything, but only follow already invented patterns.
   • You should control yourself. For example, when you are bored, try not to turn on the computer or TV. Use this free time to sit in silence and calmly think and dream about something.

   Part 2

   Use your imagination

   1. Look for creative solutions! Once you have become a habit of using your imagination, it will be easy for you to come up with creative ways out of any situation. This means that a good imagination will help you go beyond limits and come up with new ways to solve any problem.

      • One of the problems that most people often face is limitation. In the sense that a person who has a less developed imagination will be able to come up with fewer solutions to a given issue, focusing his attention only on the proposed subject (situation) and without going beyond. In one experiment, people were given the following task: they had to touch two opposite walls with a rope hanging from the ceiling. The only additional item in the room is pliers. Most subjects could not find a solution, which was to tie the pliers to the rope (i.e., use the pliers as a weight) and why swing it by touching opposite walls.
      • Practice coming up with creative solutions by walking around your home. When you come across some obstacles, think about how you can get around them, come up with something non-standard. Take a closer look at different objects and try to imagine what you can do with them and where you can use them. Every thing has a set of functions that it performs, but that doesn't mean it can't be used for something else!

   2. Don't be afraid of failure and failure. Sometimes your imagination cannot help you, sometimes you simply cannot use it due to fatigue or inability. But there are a couple of tricks that will help spark your imagination so that you can use it at any time.

      • Ask yourself how you would solve this problem if there were no bad solutions. Think about what you could do if you knew there would be no consequences.
      • Think about what your first step would be if you could use any resources, sources, or items to solve the problem.
      • What would you do if you could ask anyone in the world for advice?
      • By answering these questions, you clear your mind of any possibility of failure, which in turn opens you up to any possible solution to the problem. Of course, everything won’t work out right away, and you won’t be able to find a creative approach to every situation, but by following these tips, you will significantly improve your imagination.

   3. Visualize! Use your imagination to imagine different situations that might happen in your life. For example, you might imagine yourself winning a competition and receiving a reward when you are just training to compete in the competition.

“Imagination is the ability to imagine, fantasize; mental representation."

We are familiar with the ability to imagine from childhood. She helped us play, explore the world, and study. As adults, we consciously resort to imagination, since it plays a huge role in our lives.

Our nervous system reacts automatically to information coming from our consciousness. What we imagine or think is as real to her as if it were actually happening.
Scientists involved in the study of consciousness have concluded that mental imagination and mental training can help achieve the desired results in any field of activity.

Dr. M. Moltz, in his book “I am Me, or How to Be Happy,” writes about the effect of mental training on improving skill in shooting basketball. Participants in the experiment, in addition to regular training, also spent 20 minutes. on the basketball court, mentally imagining that they are throwing the ball into the basket.
When summing up the results, it turned out that the athletes who did not participate in the experiment improved their results thanks to traditional training by 20 percent, and the athletes who also trained mentally improved their results by 23 percent.

You can mentally train to improve your performance in any area. Concert pianist Arthur Schnabel said that he was tired of practicing for many hours at the instrument, but he continued to play mentally, improving his technique.

If others can do it, then so can we. You can use this technique to improve the quality of your own life. To get rid of timidity and shyness, it is useful to imagine yourself in different roles - a seller, a buyer, a skilled speaker, a teacher, a student confidently answering an exam.

Before a job interview, you need to mentally imagine the entire conversation, imagine what questions they might ask us, and how we confidently and calmly answer them.

In general, in any problematic situation, it is advisable to mentally think through it, to vividly and colorfully imagine that events are happening in the way we need. Without a doubt, the mental rehearsals carried out will benefit us, give us self-confidence, and make us calmer.

“All the world is a stage, and the people in it are actors,” wrote Shakespeare. And since in real life we ​​always play some kind of role, it is better and more useful to choose the role of a confident, successful person and try to play it as best as possible.

It is important that the pictures of the imagination are as vivid as possible and are accompanied by emotions, experiences and the participation of all senses. We must see colors, hear sounds, smell, touch shapes.

There are many examples in history of the use of imagination and mental training by great people. For example, Napoleon mentally trained himself in military affairs long before he began to participate in real battles.

A person who knows how to purposefully imagine begins to believe that this is possible. And faith, together with active actions aimed at achieving our cherished goal, will lead us to it faster and more effectively. The key words here are “faith” and “action.”

On the other hand, if we imagine difficulties, experiences, problems, failures, grievances and illnesses, then what do you think we will get?

Vadim Zeland, author of the book “Transurfing of Reality,” claims, for example, that a worried mother, vividly and fearfully imagining her little son running on the street getting hit by a car, is able to “jinx” her child worse than a “gypsy.”

Isn't it better to use your imagination to improve your life?
I use my imagination by practicing the Mind Movie method. I can say with confidence that it really “works”. It is better to use it before going to bed, in a relaxed state or in the morning.

Imagine that you are in a movie theater and you are sitting alone in the theater. On the screen is a film showing the current situation happening in your life. And you don't like this situation. You would like things to go in a different direction. You observe events from the outside, detached. You can, if desired, stop the film and repeat the fragment.

After watching the first part to the end, change the cassette. Now watch a bright stereo film showing the situation with the desired end result. Show emotions, empathize, rejoice. Feel like the main character of this film. Use all your senses - sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste. Experience emotions of satisfaction, inspiration, joy from the desired end result. All. Programming is complete.

Such sessions can be repeated regularly. But now you only need to watch the second part with the desired end result. The more emotion and imagination you show, the more effective programming the desired result will be.

And very often in the morning or during the next day we receive tips and ideas on how to practically realize the desired result. No wonder people say: "You become what's in your head".

Use your imagination to attract an interesting and joyful life!

Traditionally, thinking is considered the most important mental cognitive process, and imagination is inextricably linked with it, but rather an auxiliary ability, necessary for creativity and design. Only about ten years ago, ideas appeared in the public consciousness that it was the magical world of imagination, and not any other mental process, that could significantly change the life of any person for the better.

Recently it has become widely used (including by practicing psychologists) visualization method, based on the creation and management of visual images in the imagination. By correctly imagining the desired event, you can “attract” it into your life, that is, increase the likelihood that it will become a reality.

The question of whether thought is material is a long-standing, philosophical and rhetorical one. But increasingly, scientists are finding evidence that thoughts (or rather, mental images) can be realized in the outside world. It has been scientifically proven that dreams, fantasies and reveries are not empty and not just pleasant, but a useful and productive pastime.

You can debate for a long time how productive imagination is, or you can test the theory in practice and experiment with your own imagination.

Today there is no common understanding and definition of the concept of “imagination”, this is due to the fact that it is difficult to evaluate or measure in any way, it is too abstract, ephemeral, subjective, multifaceted and has many characteristics.

Imagination- This:

• mental cognitive process, transforming, anticipating, building options for action and behavior;
• universal ability to construct new images of reality;
• form representation and display of existing reality;
• way mastering a person’s desired future, helping to set goals and make plans;
• psychological the basis of creativity;
• universal property of consciousness.

In childhood a person has not yet learned to think logically and stereotypically, so he imagines a lot. Through physical activity and using their thinking to find ways to solve practical problems, children think creatively. Imagination develops best and fastest in play. And children's lies are often just a form of imagination. Children come up with a lot because it makes life more interesting.

Imagination under construction on the picture of the world existing in the mind and on personal emotional, intellectual, sensory, and practical experience. The process of imagination is impossible without the participation of perception, attention, memory, creative or divergent thinking.

Both thinking and imagination are activated at the moment of uncertainty, problematic situation or mental task. But imagination, unlike thinking, does not need the entirety of knowledge in order to know something.

Imagination does not analyze, but transforms information coming from outside. In addition, imagination is always accompanied by emotions: either the imaginary image provokes them, or the emotion “turns on” the imagination.

Imagination allows you to gain the experience of experiencing an event that did not happen, does not exist and, perhaps, will not happen.

Varieties of Imagination

Imagination is involved in all types of human activity, but most often in creativity. Developed imagination, creativity and imaginative thinking are simply necessary for people in creative professions. But even people whose specific activity is far from free imagination have to deal with a considerable number of its types and forms every day, without noticing it.

Kinds imagination:

1. According to the results of the process:

• productive or creative, when the product of the imagination is a relative or absolute innovation;
• reproductive, when an object already existing in the world is recreated.

1. By degree of activity:

• active, involving some effort of will;
• passive or involuntary, when the creative product is produced unintentionally and unpredictably.

1. Depending on the mechanism of imagination:

• schematization - identifying similarities and smoothing out differences;
• agglutination - the connection in the mind of objects that are incompatible at first glance;
• hyperbolization – reduction or enlargement of an object or its parts;
• typification - identifying the main and recurring element in homogeneous phenomena.

Forms imagination:

1. A dream is a vision of the future, the time of which is not precisely defined.
2. Fantasy is a largely modified reflection of reality.
3. Dreams are a representation of the unattainable and unrealizable.
4. Hallucinations are images that appear in the mind without an external stimulus.
5. Dreams are a form of unconscious visualization.

Interesting fact! Scientists were able to experimentally prove that in the process of imagining a certain event, all the same areas in the human brain are activated that are involved when the action is actually performed and not imagined. It turns out that for the brain there is no difference between the imaginary and the real.

How to develop your imagination

Developing your imagination is necessary in order to become a more successful and happy person, and you don’t have to wait for inspiration to do this. The development of imagination is a much less labor-intensive activity than the development of another mental process, ability, or personality quality.

It all starts with a dream! To develop imagination, you need to study dream. Some adult and serious person will probably say: “Why should I waste time on dreams and fantasies when I need to deal with pressing matters?!” And a person who decides to work on his character and personality will most likely begin to develop thinking, memory, speech, but is unlikely to consider it necessary to develop the ability to dream.

However, dreaming- not an empty activity, it develops logical thinking, memory, concentration and creates passion, that is, it increases the motivation for achievements. During the free flight of imagination, brilliant ideas, answers to long-standing questions, and options for solving problems may unexpectedly come to mind.

Such flashes of insight are called “insight” in psychology. Insight- this is a sudden and not logically deduced from past experience awareness of the essence and correct solution of a mental problem; it is a direct, intuitive comprehension of the truth.

Another way to develop imagination that promotes self-realization is visualization- the presentation of a certain, desired, specific, extremely accurate down to the smallest detail image of a glorified goal.

The goal (desired event or object) is visualized, and not just pleasant situations. Task: repeatedly (up to several times a day) imagine that the desired goal has already been achieved, successfully, and in exactly the way and within the time frame that were determined during goal setting.

The events being visualized should feel like they are happening in the present time. For example, if you dream of your own house, you need to visualize your presence in this house at the present time: take a shower, cook in the kitchen, water the flowers on the windowsill in this house and feel the joy of achieving the goal.

Reading also perfectly develops imagination. Imagining the characters and the events that happen to them, the reader “immerses” in the book and turns on his imagination, creating an entire virtual world in his mind.

Of course, any creativity helps to develop imagination. You don't have to be an outstanding artist to paint“Scribbles-scribbles” in your free time. It is especially good to draw not realistic pictures, but abstract, fantastic, surreal ones. Draw “from the heart” - just pick up a pencil, relax, let go of all thoughts and worries and draw as you please and whatever you want.

They also develop imagination classes So:

• interesting communication,
• acquiring new experiences,
• observation of nature and people,
• photographing,
• role-playing games,
• games that develop imagination.

To develop imagination, it is enough to begin to “include” it in conscious activity and observe how the perception of the world changes as a result. And the imaginary desired life will certainly begin to manifest itself in reality through the power of imagination.

Do you often daydream and/or visualize your goals?

7 exercises for " Development of imagination" from the book by Boreev G. "Conscious exits from the body. Nine practical methods. (Techniques for achieving physical immortality)."

Developing imagination - First exercise

Select an object at eye level at a distance of 1 - 3 meters. The item to start with should be very simple: a book, a pen, a matchbox. Close your eyes and imagine a white, empty, glowing space. Keep a clear image of it in your mind's eye for 3 to 5 minutes. Then open your eyes and contemplate the object for 3 - 5 minutes. At the same time, do not think about it, but simply look through it, as if you were looking into the distance, trying to take in the subject as a whole. Close your eyes and imagine this object in your mind, placing it in a white luminous space for 3 - 5 minutes. The exercise needs to be done 5-8 times, trying to do it calmly, without straining, without any effort of will.

Developing Imagination - Second Exercise

While lying in bed, before going to sleep, close your eyes and imagine a black letter “A” on a white background. Hold the image of the letter in your mind for several minutes. The letter can change in shape, float away, shrink - calmly return it to its original place in its original form. The next day, imagine the letter “B” in the same way. Hold the letter in your imagination until the image is clearly captured. At the next stage of this exercise, hold the combinations of the letters “AB”, then “VG” and so on. Then hold three letters in your imagination. Some people immediately manage to keep 5 or more letters on their mental screen. Work further, bring the number of letters held in your imagination to ten. Exercise helps develop concentration, expand the scope of perception, and improve memory.

Developing Imagination - Third Exercise

Imagine a small red square, fix it in your imagination. Now imagine that the square increases in size, diverging its edges to infinity. Now there is a red space in front of you, contemplate it. The next day, do the same experiment with the orange space. Then with yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Once you have mastered this, move on to more complex things. Imagine first the color red, smoothly turning into orange, orange turning into yellow and so on until purple. Then you need to go back from purple. Then imagine red-skinned people walking through a green forest. People's skin gradually becomes orange, yellow - and so on until purple. Then it gradually turns red again.

Development of imagination - Fourth exercise

Imagine an apple. Start rotating it clockwise in space. Imagine how it flies out of your head and flies around the room. Place the apple opposite the bridge of your nose and look at it. Carefully try to mentally enter into it, feel yourself in its size and shape. Then fly one meter up from your body in an apple and look at the world from this point. You should see your body below, the walls of the room, the furniture, the close ceiling. This exercise should be done while sitting in a chair or lying on a bed, as involuntary access to the astral world is possible. It is extremely important not to lose control of yourself during the exercise. If you sense something is wrong, open your eyes immediately.

Development of imagination - Fifth exercise

Look carefully at any object. Close your eyes, try to see the same object in the same place. Open your eyes, compare the imaginary object with the real one. Close your eyes again. Open. Achieve maximum identity between the physical and the imaginary. As you progress in your studies, the subjects covered should become increasingly difficult. Then start looking at animals and people this way. After fully mastering this exercise, you will be able to look at a person with your eyes closed and see the aura and internal organs of his body.

Development of imagination - Sixth exercise

Learn to create some mental image in space with your eyes open. For example, imagine that you have a vase with different flowers on your table. Try to see her there.

Development of imagination - Seventh exercise

Take mental trips. Imagine how you walked around the room, hall, kitchen, went out into the corridor, and returned. Imagine how you leave your house, walk down the street, get on a bus, go to the forest, to the river, swim, and so on.