I stepped into a business context today that I’d been a bit hesitant about; not sure that I’d have what was required. I was wrong. I am competent. I am capable. I am up for the job. But it got me to wondering why I thought anything different on the front end. It got me to wondering about imaginary insecurities.
I have a lot of them, I fear: things I worry about, projects or concepts at which I think I will fail, places/relationships where I’m afraid to get hurt, dreams I am hesitant to express or live because disappointment is so much easier to anticipate. This is me, today, now, at 48 years old! I’m a relatively confident, strong, self-assured, assertive, and comfortable-in-my-own-skin woman.
Old habits die hard. If I were to describe myself at 12, 16, 20, or even 30, I would not use the same words. Instead, I would have said that the insecurities were hardly imaginary: they were my day-to-day reality!
But now I wonder…What would it have been like if I’d understood them, way back when, as figments of my imagination; tricks of my mind to keep me feeling insecure, small, silent, less-than, and “safe?” As I look at Emma, age 12, and Abby, age 10, I wonder…What will I do to help them understand themselves as confident, strong, self-assured, assertive, and comfortable-in-their-own skin? It’s a daunting job. But, as just as I discovered in my other “job” today, I’m apparently up for it!
There’s nothing wrong with imagination. It’s the insecurities that become the problem. I don’t want to imagine anything that makes me feel insecure, small, silent, less-than, or safe. Instead, I want to live each day knowing, believing, and even shouting that I am secure, larger-than-life, and maybe even extremely dangerous (doesn’t that sound great?!?). Further, I want two daughters who know and live the same.
Imagination is a good thing – a vehicle that enables us to create what does not yet exist. “…[to] carry us to worlds that never were” (Carl Sagan). It’s hugely important to our dreams, hopes, desires, passions. Steven Covey said, “Live out of your imagination, not your history.” I’m there. My history has crafted an imagination that has been far too small, far too harmful, and far too filled with my own crazy-making. My present and my future (as well as those of my girls) can be imagined – and lived – in far different, far more beautiful, far more secure and strong ways. How great is that?
Some stories are true that never happened. (Elie Wiesel)
There is a boundary to men’s passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination. (Edmund Burke)
To imagine is everything, to know is nothing at all. (Anatole France)
Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures. (Jessamyn West)
I believe in the imagination. What I cannot see is infinitely more important than what I can see. (Duane Michals)
Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning. (Gloria Steinem)
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