Stretch of the Imagination

Transcript

I was thinking about a lot of things as I normally do.

My mind a labyrinth, a wonderful artists studio.

The other day I was playing pool with my buddy Chris. We’re still learning to play pool but I like to do practice shots and stuff.

We were playing a game and it came up where I said “Ok, I can see what’s going on here.”

The thing is if I just go directly for this ball and hit it in the corner pocket it’s going to be a difficult decision because then the q ball will be in the place where the next ball is really difficult to get.”

So what I decided to do was hit it off the cushion, knock the first ball in the right position to get the second ball in.

In retrospect, in hindsight it’s kind of an obvious shot.

But at the time I was thinking “How can I go one step beyond, how can I go a little further?”

I said to Chris “I got the eye of the tiger, I’m gonna do some crazy moves because I’m gonna do what it takes to win.”

We were kind of ribbing eachother I guess but the point is that I was willing to imagine a better shot, something else, something maybe I had never done before.

As Paul Newman says in the Hustler, make shots that nobody has ever made before.

And I wonder about my life sometimes. I wonder, have I seen further?

You might know that quote, have I seen further?

Because you stood on the shoulders of giants.

That’s not what I’m getting at.

Have I seen further?

It is because of sitting on the shoulders of giants but also I imagined further.

So I wonder, how far does that imagination go? What if you could push it right out?

What if you didn’t put limits on yourself and you said “I’m going to do something just wonderful, just fantastic, just amazing.

Something that astounds even me.

Sometimes I write my vision in my daily goals book and I write “I want to be a fully realized being.”

Healthy detachment from every aspect of my life so I’m not negatively emotionally effect by any aspect of it. Fully realized, fully actualized, enlightened if you will.

And I might set that as something to aspire to. Or say with my podcast, I think about what if people were to come up to me at a convention and they said to me “Listen, your podcast has changed my life. I’m a better person because of it.”

And I would say I inspired you but you put in the effort, you made it real.

Thank you for taking what I’ve made and run with it.

It sounds a little egotistical, maybe it is but in a good way I would say because it’s like “How good can I be, what if I’m not just a little good. What if I’m not just going out of my way to lead a blind man out of the train station? What if it goes beyond that, much much beyond that.”

What if I have this vision for my podcast like what I really want is when people listen to this that it blows their ever bleeding minds.

They feel something they’ve never felt before. Like a muscle that was so tense for so many years finally released.

That was their mind, their brain cells now aligned. Their spirit in perfect harmony, that’s what it is to listen to my podcast.

That’s a little out there but if you imagine things that are a little out there then the things that are just big goals suddenly don’t seem like a big deal.

It’s what it means to stretch your imagination, cognitive flexibility.

If your goals are that big, if your dreams are that big. Stellar, galactic universal dreams and you tell someone at a party this is my dream, these are my goals. This is what I’m working actively towards day by day in my life.

And they say “I don’t know if I buy that, seems like a stretch of the imagination.”

And you say “Yes, that’s exactly what it is and I am glad you said that it’s so big that it is a stretch of the imagination.”

Thank you for listening and have a wonderful day.