like that. And I always tell them, this is your life, this is your story. You get to write it. Not your parents. They had their chance, don’t live or do stuff for them. This is your chance. What do you want to do? I think a lot of older adults who are already on the track and rails don’t ever stop to say, “Why am I on these tracks and rails?”
Chapter Three
Visualize What You Want to Create
“Visualize this thing that you want, see it, feel it, believe in it. Make your mental blueprint, and begin to build.”
—Robert Collier, author
The power of visualization is the secret that artists, entrepreneurs, sports figures, and all creative freethinkers have used for centuries.
As just one example, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys fully visualized the sound of each instrument used on Pet Sounds, his breakthrough album. He first heard in his mind the sounds of a wide range of instruments, many of them had never even been thought to be used before in rock songs. This included such unlikely ones as sleigh bells, a trombone, accordion, ukulele, and even Coca-Cola bottles. With his vision resoundingly clear in his mind, he then went into the studio where he was able to direct musicians to play precisely what he had already heard, like a craftsman following a blueprint.1
As an artist, you use your imagination and skill to create work that will communicate effectively what you saw and even felt to your audience. This is inherent in the definition of art by Oxford Dictionary:
The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination…producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.
From this you can see that art applies to any creative skill using imagination. It is much broader than simply thinking of art as painting, drawing, sculpture, music, etc. Let’s view art in this wide sense and apply it to any part of life.
A common misconception is that one simply goes forth and works on their craft in the hope of somehow creating art that will be beautiful and have emotional impact. But this would be like a builder with no plans, simply grabbing wood and building materials and putting them in place in the hopes that they will come out fitting well and looking great.
The first and most important step of improving your creativity is learning the skill of “visualization.” It’s another way of saying, “using your ability to imagine or get a mental view of something.”
This term dates back to 1883 and according to the Oxford Dictionary means “the action or fact of visualizing; the power or process of forming a mental picture or vision of something not actually present to the sight; a picture thus formed.” It comes from a Latin word meaning “sight” and an earlier word meaning “to see.”
Keep in mind visualization doesn’t just apply to visual art, as in the case of Wilson’s ability to visualize sounds. A dancer does the same with her movements. A gardener with their design, a parent with an outing for their kids, etcetera.
Take a moment—can you remember a time when you visualized something you created before you set out to make it? It could be a birthday party for a friend, or redecorating a room, a presentation at work—any area of creativity. This is creating with definite purpose or intention, rather just letting it happen and hoping you’ll get what you want.
The Key to Creativity
With all of the steps of the creative cycle, why is visualization the central and most important part in the whole series? Because it guides every single step of the process, without which, as we’ve seen, it would be like trying to travel without a map or plans, or make a movie with no script, or sail a boat without charts. In all of these activities, you will end up wandering around and never achieving your goals, which would be wasteful and very frustrating.
I can’t emphasize strongly enough that the fastest way to elevate your creativity is to visualize the final result before you work your craft.
See with Your Mind’s Eye
Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) was known as the “father of modern photography” and was one of the most respected photographers of his day. He emphasized that his process was to see in his “mind’s eye” the photograph that he intended to create, in order to convey what he “saw and felt” at that moment. He said, “I have a vision of life, and I try to find equivalents for it in the form of photographs.”
Equivalent here means “something that is considered to be equal to or have the same effect, value, or meaning as something else,” according to Encarta College Dictionary. It comes from a Latin word meaning “be strong.” Thus, when you convey the equivalent of what you saw and felt, it can be very strong for the viewer.
Having a “vision of life,” of what you see and feel when you view a particular scene, is what sparks the whole creative process. You are conveying a message including emotions to your audience that they can connect with. This same process applies to writing, music, decorating, or any art form.
Electric Visualization
My first major visualization of a photograph had a rather strange beginning in the eighth grade: Peninsula School, the grade school that I attended from age two to twelve, valued creativity, adventure, and freethinking above all else, which is why I had such a strong beginning in these areas early on. So, by the eighth grade I already considered myself a photographer and brought my camera along on our class trip in May shortly before graduating. As was traditional, the upper classes would take weeklong trips in the fall and spring, often with a specific purpose. This was our spring trip with the goal of finding the extremely rare California Condors, which were nearly extinct by that point.
Our class only had about twenty students which caravanned down the central coast of California in a green VW bus, my teacher’s bright red Land Rover, and a tan Ford station wagon. Leaving from the San Francisco Peninsula, we wound our way south on Highway One through the artistic town of Carmel, then past the jagged cliffs on the coastal ribbon of a highway to the bohemian Big Sur, and then continuing south to the small sleepy fishing village of Morro Bay.
Arriving at the campground stiff and pent-up from the drive, to our pre-teen way of thinking, it seemed like the very best thing we could do was to get into a water fight, which many of us engaged in with fervor, resulting in soaked clothes, but now back in form for adventure. The wet clothes left me chilled and feeling oddly apprehensive.
My friend Bob and I took off to search the nearby area of our campground and came across two tall pines that were begging to be climbed. But we also had the wild notion of peeing off the tops when we reached them, each from our own tree: two boys intent on marking their territory like a couple of wolf cubs.
The tree I had chosen had its top cut off, but from my perspective I couldn’t see why. I soon discovered as I made haste up the tree: The limbs were lopped off because there were power lines cutting right over the top. But feeling no sense of danger, I secured my spot, shouted over to my friend, “Hey there’s power lines over here,” and unzipped and let the pee flow forth, arching widely and cascading down like a miniature waterfall. With the lines less than six inches away, I remember thinking as I climbed the rest of the way up,
