Imagining Your New Self

Re-Creating Your Self by Christopher Stone

People tell me I have a good imagination. In creating the Re-Creating Your Self process of personal transformation, I put my imagination to excellent use including Creative Daydreaming among the tools for personal change.

As a child, I was told that daydreaming was a waste of time and possibly dangerous.  Coming into adulthood, I read how Einstein used daydreaming in the formation of his Theory of Relatively, and how Thomas Edison, in daydreams, created the details of his many inventions, by contemplating electricity’s multitudinous possibilities. Consequently, I found ways to put daydreaming to work in improving my writing, as well as my life in general.

This is the third, and final, column that explores Creative Daydreaming as a method for becoming the person you want to be, living the life you desire.

MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR CREATIVE DAYDREAMS

Because Creative Daydreaming is a powerful tool for effecting personal change, I want you to make the most of this tool. Here’s how you can do so:

Practice Creative Daydreaming daily. Don’t take a hit and miss approach to this important tool for change. Make Creative Daydreaming a daily habit. As is the case with affirmations, Creative Daydreaming is most powerful when practiced just before you fall asleep at night or immediately upon awakening in the morning. In truth, your own schedule may mandate that you practice your Creative Daydreaming during a coffee break from work, or on a lunch hour. The time of the day you use this effective tool for change is not as important as making its practice an every day ritual.

As you do when affirming your new self, suspend disbelief during your Creative Daydreams. As the old pop song might put it, be a “Daydream Believer.” For the length of your daydream, believe that your goal has already been attained. In other words, believe that you already are that which you want to become. If suspending disbelief becomes impossible, and contradictory thoughts arise, please don’t struggle to suppress them. Trying too hard to suppress negative thoughts most commonly increases their hold on you. Instead, allow these thoughts to move through your mind at their own pace. When the unwanted thoughts have run their course naturally, then simply return to the positive theme of your Creative Daydream. Almost always, trying too hard to suppress something makes it stronger. It is always better to give vent to negative ideas that emerge during the Re-Creating Your Self process. I’m not encouraging you to dwell upon them; simply give them their due, let them pass, and then return to the positive beliefs that you’re trying to accept.

Patience is not only a virtue; it is frequently a necessity. Don’t expect the mental reality of your Creative Daydream to manifest itself physically overnight (although, occasionally, it happens almost that quickly. Patiently repeat the same daydream theme until your goal is accomplished, or until you change your goal.

Using Creative Daydreaming in tandem with meditation and self-hypnosis, two of Re-Creating Your Self’s other tools for personal change, will increase its effectiveness. In meditation, bring creative daydreaming into the examination and evaluation of your subject. In hypnosis, after you’ve finished repeating your suggestion, mentally “see” what you’ve suggested as already being present and real in your life.

IMAGINING YOUR NEW SELF

It’s time to test the power of Creative Daydreaming for your self. Have fun with the experience. If this is a first time experience, then don’t expect too much. Like life in general, with Creative Daydreaming, practice makes perfect - or, at least, practice makes better.

STEP 1: Return to your previously completed Blueprint for Personal Change. Review the new beliefs that you want to accept, then choose one that you feel will be relatively easy to embrace, or even one of your new beliefs that you’ve already accepted partially.

STEP 2: Following the previously given guidelines for Creative Daydreaming, make the belief you selected the theme of a Creative Daydream.

A Re-Creating Your Self Thought: You are not in this world to find or discover your self; you are here to create your self anew, daily. Re-Creating Your Self is one excellent way to succeed in that regard.

Coming March 1: Re-Create Your Self in Your Sleep.

Have a Re-Creating Your Self comment, observation, or a question? Please send them to me at recreatingyourself@mail2teacher.com

Copyright 2010 by Christopher Stone.