Your power of imagination can help resolve anxiety

One of your greatest powers is the power of imagination.

The cool thing about playing with your imagination is that as long as you’re dreaming about being calm and confident or anything your heart desires, the subconscious mind has no concept of time and it thinks it must be happening now.

Why is that relevant?
Because the subconscious mind is running the show about 90% of the time! If it thinks what you’re visualising is happening right now, it releases specific brain signals called neuropeptides for each of the emotions you’re feeling and then every cell in your body is affected.

• Every imagining that leads to you feeling cool, calm, connected, loving, grateful, compassionate, confident, fulfilled, inspired, joyful, content and at peace is like medicine for your body, triggering life enhancing responses.
• However, the chemicals released with anxiety, worry, fear, panic etc will trigger off the stress response in the body, and may lead to adrenal fatigue, inflammation and degeneration if the stress response gets activated on a regular basis.

Imagination really is your superpower and harnessing it is very important – not just for your peace of mind, but also for the health of your body.

Why is training your imagination so important?

If you suffer anxiety, then you already know how powerful your imagination can be. In fact, you’re probably already quite practised in using your imagination, it’s just that you’ve trained your imagination to think and expect the worst.

Let’s use a Star Wars analogy. (I’m a Star Wars fan.)

When it comes to anxiety and panic, training your imagination is like a Jedi knight-in-training. You’re learning to master your loving thoughts over your fearful ones. I use that analogy because anxiety and panic often does feel like the dark side, doesn’t it?

We need to train our imagination through regular visualisations. The reason this is beneficial is due to something called the reticular activating system (RAS). It’s the part of the brain that helps to sort through all of the data our sensors receive and then focus on what it thinks is relevant to you.

So, if you use your imagination on a regular basis to visualise your dreams and goals coming true, the RAS will try to find proof of it throughout your day. It’s like when you decide to buy a new car and then you suddenly see that car everywhere on the road!

All your positive thoughts, beliefs and emotions stimulated during focused visualisation help to create new filters and new positive biases for the reticular activating system.

You’ll then start to expect that you’ll have emotional resilience, feel calm and confident, own your power, speak your truth and be authentic – all with positive outcomes.

How do I harness my power of imagination?

You may be thinking: Great, I kind of know that or get that. But how do I do it?

Well, when I work with people, I take them through a process where we set an intention for how they’d like their life to be.

They do it by tapping into their heart-based imagination because your heart always knows the next best step to bring out the greatest version of you.

So here are a number of things I’d ask you to do to tap into your heart-based imagination:

Firstly: “Are you open, ready and willing to use your imagination right now?”
And of course, you need to be a 100 percent ‘yes.’

Then I’ll say something like:

1. Imagine I’m the fairy godmother and I can wave my magic wand and give you anything your heart desires…
2. Imagine you’re in your best childlike, Walt Disney or Pixar imagination right now…
3. Imagine you have a blank canvas and can paint a masterpiece of your life…

You’ll start to imagine this and become more playful inside.

Now imagine there is a menu of infinite possibilities in your heart… How would it feel to be living your perfect day based on your heart’s true desires?

Your heart will generally answer quite strongly with, for example, loving, joyful, fulfilled, content, amazing, connected, content, at peace, excited, etc.

Sometimes the strength and speed of the answer surprises people, but that’s because you do always know what’s best for you and what your heart truly desires.

Tapping into your power of imagination helps you to connect to your inner wisdom and truth. And here’s the best part: your imagination cannot tap into a personal quality or feeling unless you’ve already had an experience of it.

So, when you imagine living your best life and connect to the positive emotions associated with that, then you know that at some level, it already exists within you and is closer than you think!

Fun tip to re-connect to the power of imagination

I invite and encourage you to spend some time playing with your kids or your inner child in a way that starts to use your imagination again.

Try playing a game where you tell a story about your family going on a holiday or some other activity you’d love to do together and then after a few minutes, ask your kids or inner child what they’d like to experience on the holiday or activity too.

And as one last tip, make sure you discuss how it would feel to be on your holiday or doing the activity together. Your emotions are the energy in motion and that’s where the magic happens.

Our imagination is highly creative. If you leave it on autopilot and you’ve been having anxious or panic-based thoughts, you will end up creating more situations and relationships that will leave you feeling anxious or panicked.

Remember your reticular activating system is filtering your life experiences based on your thoughts and beliefs. You want to train it through imagination to help empower you, rather than limit you.

Get back in the driver’s seat and start to guide your imagination in the direction of your heart’s true desires.