From Thought Into Deed
George Bernard Shaw famously wrote that “Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will,” and never has his thoughtfully phrased aphorism been more true. Perhaps it almost seems like magical thinking, that what we imagine can become real, but it is nothing of the sort. The idea that what we dream of and desire can become a solid reality is a concept that has shaped our world since the beginning of it.
In today’s world, nothing is simple but yet we are more powerful than we ever were before. We have the tools at our disposal to attain greatness but now we must visualize where we go and what we need. No matter what business or industry that we are in, a certain amount of visualization is necessary when attempting to move forward. We cannot move forward without a goal in mind, even if it is a lofty one that might not be instantly attainable.
Visualization is only the start, though, as Shaw cautions us. After we have the picture of our ideal in our minds, after that, we must put our formidable wills to to the task and we must strive to make this picture into reality. We must shape the world to our desires and when we do that, we are imposing our will on the world we live in. Whether we are working on a new project or getting more people interested in our businesses, we are creating the world we want to live in.
From the start of the process when we first think about what we want the world to look like, to the end when we hold the finished product in our hands, you can see that there a strong link between our imaginations and what we eventually produce. It can be a very straightforward journey, or it can be more convoluted, but when we have imagination and we add our wills to back it up and reinforce it, we are changing the world in the way that we see fit.
To Shaw, it was obvious that nothing can be done without a combination of imagination and will. Everything that we do, everything that we strive for hinge on these two things, and he knows, as do all successful people, that without imagination and will, there is nothing.
