THE American actor, politician and the 40th United States (US) President Ronald Reagan (1981-1989) once said, “There are no such things as limits to growth because there are no limits on the human capacity for intelligence, imagination and wonder.”
To imagine or visualise is to create mental pictures in your mind.
Imagination is a powerful form of thinking and what you persistently imagine, think about or visualise and mix with your belief and conviction you will create in your life.
Belief is a sense of certainty about something or knowing while conviction is a feeling that inspires you to take an action.
In other words, conviction is elevated belief.
You need both your belief and conviction to transform your thought into reality.
There are two types of imagination, synthetic imagination and creative imagination.
Synthetic imagination is taking two or more seemingly different things and make them become related in some extra-ordinary combination to gain, profit or overcome a challenge.
Products of synthetic imagination include a motor-bike, a combination of a bicycle and a motor engine; a speed-boat, a combination of a boat, a propeller and a motor engine; a hair-dryer, a combination of a heater and a fan; an electric vacuum cleaner, a combination of a fan and a bag to collect dust;  Rub-On-Deodorant dispensing mechanism was copied from the Ball-Point pen mechanism; In the Kalahari Desert in Botswana, the inhabitants put together a monkey, a fruit and salt to locate water especially during the dry season.
They catch the monkey at the termite mound and give it plenty of salt which it likes a lot and then they release it.
It immediately runs to the place of water to quench its thirsty and people follow it until they all locate water.
Monkeys are able to locate water because they are able to climb tall trees and see far; and a camera phone, a combination of a computer, a cell phone and a digital camera.
In 1923, the Polish Leo Gerstenzang saw his wife carefully wrap a piece of cotton around the end of a toothpick while cleaning the ears of her baby.
Inspired by this experience, Leo Gerstenzang went on to invent Q-tips for ear-care.
On the other hand, creative imagination or visualisation is using your subconscious mind or inner mind to give you answers to your questions and solutions to your challenges because your subconscious mind  is omnipotent (all powerful), omniscient (all knowing) and omnipresent (all present everywhere).
For instance, last year in 2015 after Al-jazeera television journalist, Peter Creste was released from an Egyptian prison, he addressed the media back in his home country of Australia and said: “This is the moment I had rehearsed in my mind 400 times over the past 400 days”.
In the 1920s, Canadian physician and researcher, Dr Frederick Banting while studying about diabetes for long, one night dreamed about extracting the residue from the degenerated pancreatic duct of dogs and this inspiration led him to discover insulin which has since helped millions of people worldwide.
The celebrated chemist Friedrich von Stradonitz had struggled for a long time to understand the chemical structure of the hydrocarbon called benzene.
This is a compound that contains six atoms of carbon and six atoms of hydrogen.
After trying so much to solve the riddle Friedrich von Stradonitz turned the matter over to his subconscious mind.
Shortly afterward, his subconscious mind gave him a sudden flash in which he saw the image of a snake biting its own tail and turning around like pinwheel.
This inspiration led him to discover the circular arrangement of atoms that is known as the Benzine ring.
Your mind works according to the mental principle that the subconscious or inner mind does not differentiate between what is real and what is imagined as long as it is mixed with your belief and conviction.
This was proven in an experiment in which a group of scientists asked their student volunteers to wear special eyeglasses that inverted the image and made everything to appear upside down.
During the first few days the students were stumbling around and bumping into desks, falling around and walking into corners as they changed classes.
After just a few days, the students began to accept their fictional, upside-down world as a real one.
At the end of one month, the students reported that their image-inverting eyeglasses no longer posed any problem at all.
The scientists then concluded that you will quickly adapt to your perceptions even if you are looking at the world through a lens that distorts reality.
Dr Phil McGraw observes that “Given enough time, we soon treat a profoundly faulty perception as normal. Pound people with enough data, enough input and you can convince almost anybody of almost anything”.
In other words, a lie accepted soon becomes the truth!
People who have had the courage to imagine the achievement of their goals have been prosperous in their lives.
For example, Bill Clinton who would later become the 42nd US President (1993-2001) had gone to Washington 30 years earlier in 1963 when he was 16 years old as a delegate of high school students from Hot Springs, Arkansas State to the American Legion’s Boys Nation program.
After meeting and shaking hands with the then US President John Kennedy (1961-1963), Clinton became so enchanted and inspired by the President that he made up his goal to become President of his country.
For 30 years, Bill Clinton imagined, with his strong belief and conviction, himself becoming a US President up until 1993 when he actually became US President after defeating George Bush senior.
Clinton, for his presidency, chose and promised to fix the economy which he did with flying colours.
When he left office in 1993 after serving two terms of office, the US economy had been significantly transformed into one of the best economies in the country during the post-world war USA.
Brian Tracy says that “All successful men and women are big dreamers.
They imagine what their future could be, ideal in every respect, and then they work every day toward their distant vision, that goal or purpose” and Mike Dooley advises that “When you are visualising, when you have got that picture playing out in your mind, always and only dwell upon the end result…The ‘hows’ are the domain of the universe.
It always knows the shortest, quickest, fastest, most harmonious way between you and your dreams”.
Remember that whatever you repeatedly think about or imagine all day long with your strong belief and conviction, you will ultimately create and become in your life.
This is because your subconscious or inner mind transforms your predominant thought mixed with your belief and conviction into its equivalent or corresponding physical reality.
For instance, if you always imagine or think about prosperity with your strong belief and conviction, you will ultimately create prosperity in your life and if you always imagine or think about poverty with your strong belief and conviction, you will ultimately create poverty in your life.
People prosper only when they have a positive imagination, thinking or visualisation mixed with their strong belief and conviction.
Therefore, repeatedly imagine, think about or visualise both synthetically and creatively whatever positive thing that you would want to be, do and have and mix that thought with your strong belief and conviction until you achieve it.
The author is a motivational mentor and consultant in positive mind-set change. Email: positivemindpower1511@yahoo.com.