Friday, January 4, 2013

Imagination Will Take You Everywhere!

Albert Einstein, said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge" and  "Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere... It is the preview of life's coming attractions." 

In Don't Seek Success - Be Happi I wrote about how my niece, years ago turned a large box that contained a Christmas gift into a playhouse. She had more fun with that box than her actual gifts. 

A few days ago, I was reminded again of how incredible our imaginations are as children. A friend sent me a photo of her 2 year old granddaughter, McKenna was  riding in the car with her baby doll on her lap, apparently the doll was hungry, so McKenna decided to use the only thing she could find that resembled a baby bottle - a tube of Neosporin!


Indeed, a child’s imagination is a wonderful thing to behold. Yet, in today’s modern age, former hedge fund analyst Sal Khan, founder of the Khan Academy, a non-profit with a mission to create a "free world-class education for anyone anywhere" which now has an online library of over 3,400 videos covering K-12 math, biology, chemistry, physics in "digestible chunks" about ten minutes long, suggests that we may be at risk of limiting our children’s creativity and imaginations. 

In a recent article, Mr. Kahn believes parents are doing "too much" and over-scheduling their children. "Let the students invent some stuff, create some stuff, because otherwise they're just going to create these students who are really good at performing but not that good at creating," said Kahn.

I agree.

If imagination is important to our long term success and happiness, and it is, we must not only lean to maintain or recapture our childlike imaginations as adults, we must also be careful to not hinder the wonderful imaginations of our children with over-scheduling and the like. We need to make time to let kids be kids.

What do you think? Do you agree with Mr. Kahn and me?  Post your comments below.


To learn more about how to recapture your childlike imagination to attract the life we want, see Don't Seek Success - Be Happi


Be Great!

MB



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