In this episode, Cassandra Vieten explores the science of using imagination to change how you think and feel. She explains that imagination isn’t something reserved for creativity or daydreaming; we’re using it constantly to anticipate the future, interpret the present, and tell stories about the past. Cassandra shares how becoming more conscious of these patterns can help us recognize when our imagination is working against us, shift the stories that keep us stuck, and use this powerful capacity to approach challenges with greater flexibility, possibility, and hope. Her new book is Imagine That: Transform How You Think, Feel, and Live with the Science of Imagination
Feeling overwhelmed in your life?Check out Overwhelm is Optional — a 4-week email course that helps you feel calmer and more grounded without needing to do less. In under 10 minutes a day, you’ll learn simple mindset shifts (called “Still Points”) you can use right inside the life you already have. Sign up here for only $29!
Key Takeaways:
- Why we use imagination far more often than we realize
- How imagination shapes our thoughts, emotions, and behavior
- The difference between adaptive and maladaptive imagination
- How catastrophizing uses imagination against us
- Why imagining how you want to show up can be more useful than imagining perfect outcomes
- How your unique “imagination style” influences the way you think
- Why screens may be weakening our capacity to imagine
- How mental rehearsal can help us prepare for difficult situations
- Using your future self to clarify your values and priorities
- Why we can’t always think our way into lasting change
- How imagination can help regulate the nervous system
- Why generating hope is a skill we can practice
Cassandra Vieten, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychologist, clinical professor in the department of family medicine, and director of research at the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination at the University of California, San Diego. She also directs the Center for Mindfulness at UC San Diego and serves as clinical psychology director at the Center for Psychedelic Research. She is senior advisor at the John W. Brick Mental Health Foundation and a senior fellow at the Institute of Noetic Sciences. Her research has focused on imagination, spirituality and health, transformative experiences and practices, the development of mindfulness-based interventions for emotional well-being, and development of media technologies to inspire awe. She has authored three books, is a three-time TEDx speaker, has published numerous articles in scientific journals, and is an internationally recognized keynote speaker and workshop leader.
Connect with Cassandra Vieten: Website | Instagram | LinkedIn
If you enjoyed this conversation with Cassandra Vieten, check out these other episodes:
What’s Next? Our Future Stories with David Christian
The 12 Levers That Actually Help You Change Your Life | Spencer Greenberg
How to Craft a Meaningful Life with Emily Esfahani Smith
This episode is sponsored by:
Monarch: Take control of your finances with Monarch, the all-in-one personal finance app that helps you budget, track spending, monitor investments, and work toward your financial goals. Get 50% off your first year of Monarch Core, go to https://www.monarch.com/ and enter Promo Code: FEED
Talkiatry connects you with licensed psychiatrists for personalized, evidence-based mental health care, all online and covered by most major insurance plans. To get matched with an in-network psychiatrist in just a few minutes, visit Talkiatry.com/FEED.
Quince: Refresh your wardrobe with Quince by going to Quince.com/feed for free shipping and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too.
Pebl – an AI-powered platform that helps companies hire and manage global teams in 185+ countries. Get a free estimate at hipebl.ai
ZocDoc – Taking care of your health just got easier – start here with Zocdoc
Episode Transcript:
Cassandra Vieten 00:00:00 You can change the story you’re telling yourself about your past, and it really changes a lot about how you think, how you feel, how you show up in the world, the decisions you make, your behavior. And it also changes. Interestingly, your brain, your biochemistry, your brain doesn’t actually differentiate as much between what you imagine and what actually happens as you might think.
Chris Forbes 00:00:29 Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts. We have quotes like garbage in, garbage out or you are what you think ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts don’t strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don’t have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it’s not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.
Eric Zimmer 00:01:15 We may think imagination is only something we do when we are creative, but we are imagining all of the time things like planning out the next meeting, replaying the argument, imagining ourselves on a trip in the future. Cassandra Wheaton studies imagination at UC San Diego and just wrote a book titled Imagine That transform How You Think, feel, and Live with a Science of Imagination. She recommends that the first thing we do is learn to recognize all the times that we are imagining and become more conscious of it. And then secondly, we learn to tell whether our imagination is helping us or harming us. I’m Eric Zimmer and this is the one you feed. Hi, Cassandra, Welcome to the show.
Cassandra Vieten 00:02:00 It’s so good to be here. Thanks, Eric.
Eric Zimmer 00:02:02 Yeah, we’re going to be discussing your new book, which is called Imagine That: Transform How You Think, Feel, and Live with the Science of Imagination.
But before we get to that, we’ll start like we always do with the parable. And in the parable, there’s a grandparent who’s talking with their grandchild, and they say, in life there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and they think about it for a second. They look up at their grandparent and they say, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I’d like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.
Cassandra Vieten 00:02:56 Well, first of all, that story has made sense to me since I heard it. You know, such a simple way to just say, does this behavior, this decision, what I’m about to say, take me further toward where I want to be? Or does it take me further away from where I want to go? And you and I are both in recovery.
Cassandra Vieten 00:03:16 And when I first got into recovery, people would use that kind of litmus test as if you ever need to make a decision, just ask yourself, does this take me closer to a drink or further away from a drink? Or does this take me closer to God or further from God? So I think it’s kind of similar to those things, but in the context of imagination and what we’re going to talk about today, it’s very relevant because we have this incredible tool, this cognitive function that we use way more than most people think we do. We use it all day long. It’s not just when we’re making a painting or making a film or, you know, it’s not just kids all day long we are imagining stuff. And because we don’t always recognize that we’re doing it, we can have habitual ways of imagining. So on one hand, you can imagine, hey, as I move through life, everybody’s kind of doing their best. You know, we’re all just making our way through our lives, and I’m going to be as kind and compassionate to myself and others as I possibly can. But you could also have a story of life that’s like, everybody’s out to get me, and if I don’t fight for what I want, I’m going to get taken advantage of. And you may have the exact same life, but if you have one of those two, you’re going to experience it very differently and you’re going to act very differently.
Eric Zimmer 00:04:30 Yeah, it’s so relevant. And as I was thinking about this before our conversation, I was thinking about that how I do use imagination all of the time, right? I’m planning like, what am I going to talk with Cassandra about? What am I going to listen to on my drive? It’s just happening all of the time. What I love about the work that you’ve done is you’re saying, yes, that’s all happening all the time, however, and it’s happening at deeper levels than you even know all the time. The more we can raise that into awareness, the more we can shape it, the more we could use imagination for our benefit versus for ways in which imagination troubles us. And it clearly can do both.
Cassandra Vieten 00:05:18 Yeah, I like to say that the main point of this book is for people to use their imagination more consciously, to use it more frequently, and to use it more skillfully. And so it’s always going to start with consciously. Am I imagining all the time? I’m not like thinking about dragons and fairies all day long. What’s she talking about? Just like you said, we’re always gaming out what’s going to happen, and we use our imagination to do that. We also are always reflecting on the past, and it seems like those are just memories or just thoughts. But we know those are not accurate recordings. We’re telling a lot of stories about our past. We’re embellishing them and embroidering them. And so once you start to realize, oh, I’m telling a lot of stories on top of what actually happened, or I’m telling a lot of stories about the future on top of what’s going to happen, or even right now. I could tell myself a lot of stories about you, Eric, right now, just through assumptions and biases.
Cassandra Vieten 00:06:13 And so once.
Eric Zimmer 00:06:14 You figure out what lay them.
Cassandra Vieten 00:06:16 Right.
Eric Zimmer 00:06:16 What do you got.
Cassandra Vieten 00:06:17 Right? And so it’s like once we figure out we’re doing that, then we can be empowered to say, how do I want to imagine people? How do I want to imagine my day? You can even say, how do I want to imagine my past differently? You can change the story you’re telling yourself about your past, and it really changes a lot about how you think, how you feel, how you show up in the world, the decisions you make, your behavior. And it also changes. Interestingly, your brain, your biochemistry, like what you imagine your brain doesn’t actually differentiate as much between what you imagine and what actually happens is you might think, because when you imagine seeing something, your visual cortex lights up. When you imagine hearing something, your auditory cortex lights up. When you imagine moving, your motor cortex lights up, so everything you’re imagining actually becomes what you are practicing.
Eric Zimmer 00:07:11 I think that’s so true. I mentioned Pittsburgh, I’m going I’m giving a talk tomorrow in Pittsburgh. And part of the core of it is it comes from my book. And it’s very similar to what you’re saying, which is this what is the story I’m telling myself? And then what are other stories? And then for me, the key piece is which of those is most useful because I am making them up right? I am making meaning out of what happens, and we do it automatically and usually not very consciously.
Cassandra Vieten 00:07:41 Right. Yeah. And the intention here is not to say, well, you should just create a fantasy world out of your life. You know, if you’re in a difficult relationship, just imagine that it’s not. That’s not where we’re going, but where we are going is saying, okay, assess what you feel like you’re observing. That’s one side of how we experience the world, but then also assess what you’re imagining. So let’s say you are in a difficult or maybe even an untenable relationship. And you allow yourself to, number one, say, I keep imagining that this person is different than what they’re showing me.
Cassandra Vieten 00:08:14 I keep imagining they’re going to get better. They’re going to, you know, be nicer, get the job, be more responsible, whatever. You can say, okay, what actually is, what’s true about what’s happening. And then can I tell myself a different story about what’s possible? So you might be telling yourself, you know, this is all hard, but there’s no way I could ever leave or this is all difficult, but there’s no way that we would ever go to therapy or whatever it is. You can open up your aperture and say, actually, there’s like probably 10 or 15 possibilities here that I’m not even allowing myself to consider.
Eric Zimmer 00:08:48 So let’s back up a little bit and start with some of the core ideas. And I want to start with how do you define imagination?
Cassandra Vieten 00:09:01 Well, I’m at the Arthur C Clarke Center for Human Imagination at UC San Diego, and we spent quite a long time trying to figure out what the heck it is like. Even among scholars and philosophers and scientists, there are tons of definitions of imagination.
Cassandra Vieten 00:09:17 So the first thing we did is we got together as many articles as we could find that were published about imagination, what it is, how people measure it, what are the components of it. And we spent a couple of years actually sifting through all of these dimensions and domains and trying to put it on a map. I think what we came up with is that imagination is a way of simulating, reconfiguring, and even transcending reality, and that we do it through visualization. That’s the best, most common form of imagination that we know of, but there’s actually a lot of other types of imagination. There’s embodied imagination where you imagine how something would smell or taste or feel emotionally. There’s social and emotional imagination where you can imagine what other somebody else is going through or where they might be coming from. There’s cognitive narrative imagination, so people sometimes can’t really picture much. Or when they try to visualize things, they’re just kind of blurry and blocky and, you know, you’re in a group guided visualization and everyone else is telling you all the details of what they saw.
Cassandra Vieten 00:10:24 And you’re like, I just kind of saw a few weird shapes. Well, you may be more of a storyteller, more of a narrative imaginary. So we found out that imagination is simulating, reconfiguring, and transcending reality. It’s how we either try to copy what we’ve seen. So if you think about your house right now, you can kind of create a copy in your mind this mental working space and picture it. Most people can and then reconfigure is you could imagine. What would it look like if I painted the walls blue, or what would it look like if I added shutters on the outside, or could I change my garden? That’s reconfiguring what it is, not changing it too much, but you know, saying, hey, there could be some changes here. And then transcending is completely different. You know, that’s like, what if aliens landed on my lawn and walked up to my door and knocked on the door? What are the first three things I would tell them about what my life is about? Now that sounds like a fantasy, but if you did that exercise and said these aliens, all they want to know is tell me three things about who you are and what you care about.
Cassandra Vieten 00:11:28 You can imagine what you would tell them, and that might give you information about what you actually care about. Like what do you value? What are the three things you would say to aliens if you made first contact? So there’s these three uses of imagination, all of which are very helpful to us and used maladaptively, they can be very unhelpful to us.
Eric Zimmer 00:11:49 I think I’d start with don’t hurt me. I’d probably be where I’d start with you.
Cassandra Vieten 00:11:53 Don’t hurt me.
Eric Zimmer 00:11:55 Look, I believe in kindness. I hope you do, too.
Cassandra Vieten 00:11:58 Right, right. Yeah, yeah.
Eric Zimmer 00:12:00 I am in the don’t see things camp to a certain degree. I know the term is now Avantasia, and it’s been written about recently. And when I read about it, I was like, oh, that’s me right. So you came up with a definition of what imagination is, but you talk about how it was hard to figure out what it’s not, because imagination threads itself through so much of our cognitive apparatus.
Cassandra Vieten 00:12:31 Yeah, yeah, we kept trying to place it as different from creativity, or different from memory or different from planning and thinking.
Cassandra Vieten 00:12:38 And we finally realized, actually, one of my students, Julie Watson, said, what if it’s like an octopus and it just has tentacles into everything? And so as we went down that path, it became probably the closest thing to the truth. And some neuroscience seems to support it, that it is kind of like a utility infielder or like a Swiss Army knife, like all these different parts of your cognition use imagination when they need to make them better. So we use imagination when we’re planning. We use imagination when we’re remembering. We use it when we’re creating, inventing, problem solving, decision making, trying to empathize with someone. It’s really kind of throughout everything.
Eric Zimmer 00:13:18 So one of the things I think about a lot is animals, what it’s like to be an animal. Is there enough neuro correlates in humans that you see that you could then somebody could then look at those neuro correlates in an animal and perhaps tell whether they have imagination.
Cassandra Vieten 00:13:35 They probably could. And I’m glad you brought this up, because a lot of people have been asking me lately, how is humanity differentiated from AI? Like if AI is better at everything than what is our job? And one of the things we like to talk about is human imagination is perhaps one of our major differentiators because by definition, AI is summarizing and synthesizing. And yeah, it can do a search in the blink of an eye, but it’s always going to be derivative, because it’s always going to be putting together whatever we put into the internet. Whereas human imagination can come up with completely new ideas and much more generative ideas. And so when we talk about animals, I always feel uncomfortable calling it human imagination because I think, well, it’s probably conscious beings imagination. You know, that doesn’t sound quite as good. But when you see your dog, for example, sleeping and you see their little paws moving and you hear those little tiny barks, they are obviously dreaming about running through a field or chasing a raccoon or whatever it is. So the fact that they can dream tells me that they could daydream, but I don’t know if anyone’s done a lot of research on it yet.
Eric Zimmer 00:14:46 Yeah. I mean, people very cavalierly say the difference between us and animals is that we are conscious of being conscious, which probably is true, but we don’t really know what it is to be an animal.
Eric Zimmer 00:14:58 And as time goes on, we more and more see a lot of what we thought was a human thing is in animals. And it all makes sense that, you know, brains are just an evolution. They continue to evolve. There aren’t these like cut off points or it’s like all of a sudden now you have X. It’s always so much more of a gradient. And I.
Cassandra Vieten 00:15:19 Absolutely.
Eric Zimmer 00:15:19 You know, and I know with you working with the Institute of Noetic Sciences, you’ve thought a lot about this. Like just how far down does consciousness go? And is imagination a fundamental piece of consciousness, or was there a certain point at which it evolved?
Cassandra Vieten 00:15:37 Well, you know, I like to think that it and again, there’s some evidence for this that it evolved quite early. You know, some people might think about imagination as the luxury item, the cherry on top of the sundae. Like after we figured everything else out. Then we started to be able to imagine different stuff. But it’s very likely that our predecessors way back in the, you know, small furry animal days, that there was an evolutionary advantage for being able to think, wait a minute, what might be around that corner that we’re about to go up to? Instead of waiting to see if you got eaten by a saber toothed tiger.
Cassandra Vieten 00:16:10 So the little ones that could imagine that could game things out, that could say, well, what if I notice that after I eat an apple and the seeds fall to the ground, then next year, somehow an apple tree grows up. Maybe we could actually plant those seeds. Maybe we could see what would happen so that what if I like to call it moving from what is to what if was probably a big evolutionary leap, and it was probably pretty early in our evolution. And you do see the types of structures that are activated when people imagine in an fMRI machine or something like that. They’re middle brain structures. They’re not always like the very frontal cortex. And in fact, that kind of frontal and, you know, you could call it your ego, let’s say, in the subjective sense tends to dampen your imagination. We have this very powerful system, cognitive efficiency inside of us that says, all right, I’m going to decide what’s possible. I’m going to sort everything into categories. And that’s pretty much it.
Cassandra Vieten 00:17:10 We’re going to go with it. But what we know is those categories are highly influenced by your upbringing, your conditioning, your programming, your genetics. And it makes it really hard for us to break out of those categories. And so that’s what imagination does, is say, hey, if I’ve been trying to figure something out for a long time by just thinking and thinking and thinking and thinking, I’m not getting anywhere, maybe I need to delve into deeper parts of my psyche. Maybe I need to delve into deeper parts of my soul and that territory of being speaks a different language. It doesn’t talk in linear, logical words. It’s often symbols and metaphors and parables, just like you used, you know, all the great spiritual teachers and most of the great teachers in general know that if you tell someone to do something, it’s much less effective than telling them a story about how it works. And when people hear that story, they’re much more likely to learn. It’s because they’re learning at a different level.
Eric Zimmer 00:18:11 Yeah, it does seem to be something that is fairly deep down in us. So I want to talk a little bit about imagination. And you’ve you’ve you’ve alluded to this, how it really shapes our body, our mind, our mental health for both better and worse. One of the key things you say is the most important distinction we need to make with imagination. Is it adaptive or maladaptive? Tell me about that.
Cassandra Vieten 00:18:40 Yeah. Yeah, well, you know, this was another thing that theoretically, it took a long time to get to because at first I thought, oh, there’s positive imagination and negative imagination. And if you just look at everything positively, then that’s going to give your brain and your body the signals that it’s more likely that something good is going to happen. So we’re all rowing in the same direction. You’re showing up in a way that expects that something good is going to happen. So therefore your behavior is kind of giving everyone in the room the safety signal. Like there’s all lots of good reasons to imagine positive, but there’s also sometimes good reasons to imagine the negative.
Cassandra Vieten 00:19:15 When you look at some of the, gosh, like The Hunger Games for these dystopian futures that are out there that people imagine, those are ways that humanity plays with what would happen if we got super lost. Like what would happen if society went down a very bad road? We already know this from history, but it helps to play with some of those negative ideas. And I read a lot of Stephen King when I was a young person, and it was like, why do I want to read that stuff? Well, we’re playing with issues of death and fear and loss, and why am I so scared and that kind of stuff, and that actually helps people. So we changed it to adaptive and maladaptive. And what we mean by that is adaptive imagination is something that helps me. It results in me being more in flow, kinder, more compassionate, making more skillful decisions, being more constructive, instead of being the person who tears people down or things down. And then maladaptive, often unconscious, unfortunately, is the way that we imagine that doesn’t help us, that hurts us.
Cassandra Vieten 00:20:23 So when I talked about being in recovery, for example, and I got to a place when I was having trouble stopping drinking and it was really starting to impact my life and my family in very negative ways. I had a maladaptive imagination pattern going, which is if I tell anybody about this because I was trying my hardest to keep it a secret, I’ll have a black mark on my record forever. No one will ever trust me again. They’ll think less of me forever. It’ll just be the worst thing that could possibly happen is if I asked for help and told someone about this. You know, after a while, of course, I got to such a difficult place that I finally called a colleague and said, I’m not okay. I can’t stop drinking. I’m hurting everyone. And they were like, I’ll be right over. And I was like, well, I can’t not work. And they were like, oh no, you’re already off work for the next 60 days. You’re good. Go take care of yourself.
Cassandra Vieten 00:21:16 Come back. We’re all behind you. Did I imagine that for one second that that would be what they said? No. I thought they’d be like, you’re disgusting. You know you’re fired and don’t ever come back. So that was a maladaptive imagination pattern. And boy, I have a lot of clients now who are suffering from these maladaptive patterns of imagining things. The imagining people hate them, imagining that they don’t have anything coming for them in their future and even in the medical setting. I have a doctor friend who will see patients who are in a very difficult health challenge pain, not sleeping. You know, maybe disease. And they’ll say, look, I can see you in the future, recovered from this illness and doing very well and thriving in life. I know you can’t see that right now, but I can see it. And I’m going to hold that vision for you, and we’re going to walk toward it together, and I’m going to help you get there. What an amazing way to talk to somebody.
Eric Zimmer 00:22:39 Eight years ago, I was completely overwhelmed. My life was full with good things. A challenging career, two teenage boys, a growing podcast, and a mother who needed care. But I had a persistent feeling of I can’t keep doing this, but I valued everything I was doing and I wasn’t willing to let any of them go. And the advice to do less only made me more overwhelmed. That’s when I stumbled into something I now call this still point method, a way of using small moments throughout my day to change not how much I had to do, but how I felt while I was doing it. And so I wanted to build something I wish I’d had eight years ago. So you don’t have to stumble towards an answer that something is now here and it’s called overwhelm is optional tools for when you can’t do less. It’s an email course that fits into moments you already have. Taking less than ten minutes total a day, it isn’t about doing less, it’s about relating differently to what you do. I think it’s the most useful tool we’ve ever built. The launch price is $29. If life is too full, but you still need relief from overwhelm, check out overwhelm is optional. Go to oneyoufeed.net/overwhelm. That’s oneyoufeed.net/overwhelm.
I do think there’s so much of that idea of, we don’t want to tell ourselves things that aren’t true, right? We don’t want to live in non reality. And yet we very much do argue for our limitations, and we very much do often put the worst spin on what’s happening. I’ve been talking about this in some newsletters recently, but I have restless leg syndrome and it’s been bad lately. I’ve treated over the years, but it’s been back and it’s not ideal. And when I’m not careful, my brain gets to like. Well, you’re not sleeping well, which means you’re not going to do good at work. You’re not going to have the energy to do the things you need. The business is at a critical point.
Eric Zimmer 00:24:48 Oh, and by the way, we know that not sleeping is what causes dementia. So dementia is and I mean all of that. And that’s all imagination catastrophizing. But it’s a maladaptive imagination, right.
Cassandra Vieten 00:25:02 Yeah.
Eric Zimmer 00:25:03 And a version of imagination that at least has some hope. And it tends to be better for me. Now, one of the things that I’m not generally good at is like trying to go too far to the positive.
Cassandra Vieten 00:25:17 Yeah.
Eric Zimmer 00:25:18 And so I am often, you know, looking for a more neutral interpretation. But I know that with imagination, you would argue that at times it’s good to go places that aren’t. Quote unquote reality. Yeah. Talk to me about, you know, working with all these things. The stories were telling ourselves, ones that are more adaptive, but yet that we don’t immediately go, oh, that’s never going to happen. Like, how do we work with that part of ourselves?
Cassandra Vieten 00:25:46 Yeah. Yeah. Well, first of all, it kind of goes back to the simulate, reconfigure and transcend. So one thing that you can do as a daily practice is if you meditate in the morning, if you do yoga, if you do whatever you do, take about five minutes of that time and imagine what the rest of your day might be like. I’m going to get in my car. I’m going to go to work. These meetings I’m going to have you’re going to hold it kind of loosely because you can’t predict exactly what’s going to happen, but you have a pretty clear sense. And what I say is, instead of imagining how you want things to go, imagine how you want to show up. What do you want to bring to this day? Or what is this day calling for? You know, I have a very difficult meeting. I know it’s going to be hard from 2 to 3 today, so I’m going to need to bring my authenticity, genuineness, compassion, groundedness, or I need to bring some fierceness and boundaries. You can even imagine a time recently that you had those things that you felt emotionally balanced, that you felt in flow, that you felt creative.
Cassandra Vieten 00:26:51 Remember every single thing about what that was like and then bring it into this day. So that’s a way to just use imagination on a daily basis. It’s very real, very grounded. Then you can use a completely different form of imagination. And I don’t remember who said this first, but several people have said there are some truths that can only be found in fiction. Yeah. And how can that even be? It sounds so paradoxical, but one of the things that has helped a lot of my clients is to identify parts of themselves that they give a name to. They give a personality to. They can draw it sometimes and they can say, okay, I’ve got my little jealousy monster inside there. And today I’m feeling jealous. I’m feeling like I wish I was happy for that person, but dang, they’re getting everything that I thought of first. Then you can say, well, all right, jealous self, come on in, sit on my lap. It’s cool. I get that you’re jealous.
Cassandra Vieten 00:27:50 It’s a natural human emotion. We all have it. But today I’m going to take care of you. And I’m going to drive the car. The part of me that says I actually do want to lift people up. I am happy about their successes. And the more enthusiastic I can be about someone else succeeding, the more we all are lifted up by it. But I’m going to acknowledge this smaller, younger, jealous part of me and say, it’s all right, I got you, I got you. I know it feels that way. So just that imagination, some people call it parts work or back in Gestalt days, you know, they called it empty chair work. And now they call it internal family systems. Whatever you call it, imagining parts of you can be helpful. You can also imagine, and I know this is going to sound a little frou frou, but you can imagine an ally. You can say, what kind of energy do I need today? Like I need Lion Energy.
Cassandra Vieten 00:28:44 And so, you know, you hang out in your meditation, you think about the coming day and you think, you know what? I need someone to join me in that meeting. I’m terrified to talk to my boss about the raise I want to ask for. I’m going to have a lion behind me that’s just with me, or I’m going to have somebody that loves me and is always behind me. And I’m just going to imagine that they’re going into this with me. Surprisingly, that ends up being really helpful. And one of the key practices that sometimes we use is that we will help someone visualize or imagine their future self, let’s say five, ten years, 15 years into the future. And they imagine that this future self has embodied the characteristics that they really want to have in their future life. I mean, you can put a mansion in a jaguar that’s kind of like, you know, the secret and manifestation and all that stuff. But I will say it’s much better to imagine your future self being the way that you want to be feeling the way that you want to feel, embodying the values that you want to embody, and being the kind of person that you want to be.
Cassandra Vieten 00:29:55 And get into that with as much detail as you possibly can. You can even imagine knocking on your future self’s door and they open it. And where are they living and how do they look? And what kind of energy do you feel from them? What do they say to you? What do they say about how they got there? And then you can kind of make an ally of that future self where every time you’re going into a hard situation or you got to make a hard decision, you write, all right, future self, what do you got for me? How should I approach this? If I were on my way to becoming you, how should I approach this? And it becomes a really cool exercise for people.
Eric Zimmer 00:30:52 It reminds me of another recovery thing that I learned from the very beginning, which is this idea of playing the tape all the way through. Yeah, right. Which is an imaginative exercise. Right. I’m focused on, like, it would feel really good to have a drink right now, and I just stopped there.
Eric Zimmer 00:31:10 That’s as far as I go. The thing that’s helpful is we keep the story going. Right. Well, okay, if I did that, then what would happen? Yeah. Oh, well, in my case, the fear and the despair would come rushing right back in. Yeah. And try and feel that. And then. Well, what after that? Well, I would just want to drink even more. And what’s that feel like? And that exercise, the more we imagine it, the better. So I want to go back to people with some degree of aphantasia, though, because I traditionally find this stuff difficult because I don’t see things well. Now what I don’t know, and I don’t know how you would ever know this. I guess you would just try and develop it. And if it didn’t develop is do I have a visual imagination that is very atrophied? Or am I someone who really doesn’t see in pictures? I guess I don’t know. I used to live in a vivid fantasy world when I was younger, but I can’t think back to know if I ever saw it or if I was just telling the story of it.
Cassandra Vieten 00:32:20 Right, right. And I think both things are true. One of the things that we have, we’re working with in our lab at the Arthur C Clarke Center for Human Imagination, and I talk a lot about in the book is the neurodiversity of imagination, that everybody has a unique imagining style, kind of like your fingerprint. And we’ve identified like 18 different dimensions of imagination. Some people have super vivid imaginations, whereas other people have extremely practical imaginations. Like they can actually see exactly how a room is going to be set up if you put the furniture into it. And we need both kinds. We need all kinds of imaginations. Craig Venter was a faculty member at UC San Diego, and he was one of the people who figured out how to sequence the human genome, and he was a total a fantasia. And he said, I don’t have any images in my mind. But he actually attributes his ability to help sequence the human genome by the fact that he couldn’t see pictures. So he had to figure out a different way of imagining, which was kind of this diagrammatic Imagination.
Cassandra Vieten 00:33:26 And so I guess what I’d ask you, Eric, is do you feel like maybe you’re a good storyteller? Like, does it come out in words and narratives, in thoughts more than pictures?
Eric Zimmer 00:33:39 Well, I’m not sure I would say. Am I good at being the storyteller? But certainly it is more. The way my brain works with imagination is certainly much more usually words with very vague images I think about, like reading a book. Like if I read a book, I sort of see it.
Cassandra Vieten 00:33:57 A little bit.
Eric Zimmer 00:33:58 Yeah, but not in any kind of clarity. But if I see a movie of that book, I know very clearly, like that’s not what I imagined.
Cassandra Vieten 00:34:06 That’s not how you imagined it.
Eric Zimmer 00:34:07 Right. And so it’s a strange thing, like if you asked me, can you imagine a room in your house? I can, but I wouldn’t say it’s a picture. It’s almost like I know it in some other way.
Cassandra Vieten 00:34:19 I know it in some other way, which I love the way you just said that. Because I think that’s what we’re really talking about. Can you know things? Can you learn things? Can your imagination be a source of information for you that is different than linear, logical thinking? Like when we go see art in a museum, or we go see a film or we read an amazing story. Part of it is just distraction and aesthetics and enjoyment and play. But some of it is because the painting or the image or the sculpture or the myth or the film holds truth that just can’t be said any other way. Poetry is a way to talk about true things, about what it means to be human in the realm of imagination. And so I am a proponent of saying that, yes, we can get information in the external world and through logical linear thinking and science, very, very important. I’m a scientist, but we can also get information from this different inner world. From what? At the Institute of Noetic Sciences. You know, we would call noetic understanding.
Cassandra Vieten 00:35:29 It’s a Greek word for the inner form of knowing. And that form of knowing. Sometimes will come in images and metaphors and symbols. And so I think it’s a useful and well, it’s a necessary form of knowing. So you asked about atrophy versus kind of genetics, I guess, you know. Did you just come in with it? I think both are true. So one is that you can go to our website. It’s imagination.ucsd.edu/profile to take a quiz. And number one, you’ll be helping us with the science of imagination. But second, you can get back a sort of report on your own imagination and where you tend to go in your imagination. Then you can decide. I’m either going to capitalize on my strengths, leverage what kind of imaginary I am. But you can also practice forms of imagination. And I do think that in society our imagination has been somewhat atrophied, especially with all of the screens. You call it the great flattening, where we are constantly looking at a flat screen and receiving information.
Cassandra Vieten 00:36:35 Of course, sometimes that really expands our imagination. When I was a kid, you could find out things from the library or the encyclopedia. That’s what we had. That was all the information that we had access to. Now I can get absolutely any information from my iPhone, but there’s a negative side effect of that. Being able to receive anything at any time. And that’s that. You don’t have to make it up. You don’t have to practice your imagination. So if you wanted a more visual imagination, you could practice visualizing every single morning. And just like every other part of your brain, as you imagine, you build the capacity to imagine as you practice it. There’s also some cool exercises you can do. I don’t know if you work out or you’re an athlete, but some of the really powerful research on mental rehearsal for athletes is as you move towards playing tennis or playing soccer like I do, and you spend some time imagining what it’s going to be like to be on the field, how you’re going to kick the ball if it’s going to go into the net.
Cassandra Vieten 00:37:38 Billie Jean King, the tennis great, would say every night she fell asleep just imagining what angle a tennis ball was going to come and how she was going to hit it. That mental rehearsal enhances performance. It’s very, very clear not only that, there’s some interesting evidence that when you’re working on a muscle, if you imagine the muscle getting stronger as you’re working it, you actually get about 30% more muscle strength than you would if you weren’t imagining it.
Eric Zimmer 00:38:04 I have a question about that one, because I’ve heard that study several times, but I’ve not heard that it happens while you’re working out. I’ve heard that people say you can build a muscle by imagining a muscle. Are you saying that it’s when you’re actually training them.
Cassandra Vieten 00:38:22 When you’re doing.
Eric Zimmer 00:38:23 It. You enhance.
Cassandra Vieten 00:38:24 It. No, I wish I mean, I wish I could imagine my workout every day and get benefit from it. But no, it’s when you’re doing it, when you add it to when you’re doing it. Imagination of practicing golf, let’s say, will make you better, but it will make you way better if you imagine it and you practice in the real world.
Eric Zimmer 00:38:42 With imagination, I’ve noticed something that I’ve noticed in meditation, which is that I start it and then I’m off somewhere else. So in your experience, is developing imagination similar to the way we develop meditation, which is we start imagining, then the mind goes and does whatever it always does, and then we bring it back to the imagination. And that process mirrors what we do in meditation.
Cassandra Vieten 00:39:10 Sure, sure. I think it mirrors any other skill that you want to practice. That’s an internal skill, like being able to watch your thoughts as they go by. If you’re someone who’s taken meditation classes, you know that we often use these metaphors of, okay, you’re sitting by a river, and every leaf that goes down the river is a thought. And you can either let them pass right by, or you can pick up one and look at it. It’s just a way of using your ability to experience things even when they’re not happening in physical reality. And you can train your brain. Now, we could take everybody out to a river and try to pour leaves into it and, you know, try to make it happen in physical reality.
Cassandra Vieten 00:39:51 But for most people, they can practice that in their imagination. The other thing we have been working on is creating virtual reality as sort of a scaffolding for imagination. So when people have a really hard time imagining something, or when the threat level is so high that it’s just impossible for them to get themselves to focus or to keep that imagination in their minds, we’ll give them a virtual reality environment. We’ll put them in the headset. And even when the images in the VR headset are a little bit cartoon like, it’s incredibly powerful in terms of the illusion that it gives your brain, and your brain is pretty much experiencing it almost as though it were happening. And so one thing we do about that, let’s say negative train of thought that you get caught up in rumination and what we’ll have people do. We’re developing this right now where you put thoughts on rail cars. So you have a big train, you put your thoughts on the rail cars and then at first the train is going by you very loud, like you can hear it in your ears. It’s wah wah.
Cassandra Vieten 00:40:57 You know. And then the train is getting further and further away. This is all in virtual reality. You’re backing up, backing up, backing up, backing up until you see the train going along in the distance with a little puff of smoke like the bottom of the Grand Canyon or something. But you’re seeing a much bigger reality. It’s something that we want people to have that metaphorical experience so that then when they’re out in their real lives and their thoughts are driving them crazy, they can be like, wait, wait, I know how to do this. I’m going to back away from those thoughts. I’m going to let them play like a radio and pay attention to my body sensations, or the present moment, or the person I’m with. There are hundreds of applications of virtual reality that can give you those training wheels so that first you experience it in virtual reality, but then you can learn to experience it in your own life.
Eric Zimmer 00:41:49 Yeah, I see so much possibility there in virtual reality. So it’s like I’m going tomorrow. I keep talking about Pittsburgh. I’m giving you a speech there, and I’d love to visualize myself giving that speech well, but again, my my visualization isn’t that strong, but I would love to be able to see some version of me doing it. Like, I feel like that would be really beneficial. Like as a.
Cassandra Vieten 00:42:15 Feel it though instead like instead of forcing yourself to visualize it. Can you put yourself in your body on the stage and how it might feel?
Eric Zimmer 00:42:26 A little bit, but not well
Cassandra Vieten 00:42:27 yeah. So that just takes practice. And one thing that I actually recommend to people who have any kind of performance things that they’re doing. I remember I used to try to visualize myself like nailing the talk, like I’m going to be so smart and so engaging and so emotional, and it’s going to be great. Instead of forcing that, what I’ll say is, when was the last time I felt completely in flow and present and authentic and genuine and the kind of person I want to be on stage.
Cassandra Vieten 00:42:59 And in one situation it was like, well, I last felt that when I was playing a soccer game. So I’m in the wings on stage and I’m imagining putting on my soccer cleats, getting ready for the soccer game. Like getting ready to go out and kick the ball, and then I go out on stage and give the talk because I’m kind of bringing that energy like just go out and put the ball in the net. Don’t worry about it. And that really helped more than me trying to be like, all right, go be the perfect speaker.
Eric Zimmer 00:43:23 So we’ve talked a little bit about one simple thing to do is to, at the beginning of your day, spend a couple of minutes visualizing your day. And I love that idea. I talk about it a lot. Like, who do I want to be in this situation? And imagining and visualizing that you lead a workshop and you talk a lot about using our imagination to imagine a better future for ourselves. So talk me through the basics of that. What are the steps? What would someone go through? What are you teaching in that workshop?
Cassandra Vieten 00:43:58 Yeah, so I teach this workshop called The Next You The Art of Future Making with a couple of colleagues, Bristol born and Mike Shapiro and Fabrice Guerriero, who’s an amazing world builder. We’ve put together a model where rather than thinking of sort of the traditional vision board, which I love. You know, that’s a great exercise to think about. What world do I want to build in my future and in the world of fantasy fiction and science fiction and filmmaking, when somebody is creating a world, the Star Trek world, the Star Wars world, the Game of Thrones or Lord of the rings or whatever Narnia, they have to create multiple things to make that world. They have to decide what language is going to be spoken, what is the energy source, what’s the currency like? How do things work in that world? So what we do is have people use it in their own lives. Okay, imagine your future world.
Cassandra Vieten 00:44:57 What is the thing that’s most valuable in your future world? Is it money? Is it gold or is it time with your kids? Is it unstructured time? Is it time in nature that’s actually the most valuable thing to you. So great. That’s the most valuable thing to you. And how are you going to get closer to that? Instead of making all of your life about making the money that you think is going to bring you closer to that? What language do you want to use in your future world? And I don’t mean French or English or Spanish. I mean, how do you want to talk to yourself? How do you want to talk to other people? Do you want to be someone who speaks in a way that’s empowering and uplifting? Or do you want to be someone who gossips and tears things down? What language do you want to speak? And so we go through lots of those, like.
Eric Zimmer 00:45:47 Only swear words in my world.
Cassandra Vieten 00:45:49 Yeah, right.
Eric Zimmer 00:45:50 That’s it. Yeah. Swear words and nothing else.
Cassandra Vieten 00:45:53 Yeah, you can do it however you want, right? The most important thing to me in my future world is vitality and unstructured time. So is everything I’m doing now leading me to vitality. Well, they told me if I made tons of money and I did all the productivity stuff, then I would have vitality. Why is it resulting in burnout and exhaustion instead. You know, they told me that if I do all the right things, then I could take vacations and have time with my family. How about if I had time with my family every day and I set up a world that made that happen? These kinds of exercises can really shift your compass. They can shift your direction, and you can start using them as decision making tools. Like, is that really going to get me more time with my kids? Is that going to get me more vitality? Am I moving in the direction of the kind of person I want to be? Another really profound visualization that we use as a cliche sometimes is Will you, on your deathbed, be happy that you did this? You know, when you’re looking back ten, 20, 30, 40, 50 years from now and you’re nearing death and you look back at your life, are you going to be happy that you did these things? Or are you going to say, boy, do I wish I had spent less time beating myself up or less time on the freeway commuting or less time scrolling through my phone. You know, this gives you a perspective shift using your imagination that can be very profound in shifting your priorities.
Eric Zimmer 00:47:21 So let me ask you a question about that, because to me, there is an imaginative aspect of that, which is I guess what I’m doing is considering what I would want the future to look like. But some of that seems to me to be thinking normal, just thinking. Thinking right. Like so for me, you were given the example there. Like I’ve spent time to figure out, like, okay, here are the core things that I value. And they can act as a compass, right? It’s this decision. How does it stack up against those things? Tell me how. Using imagination, I could make that process better.
Cassandra Vieten 00:48:06 Yeah. So what I believe is that thinking is limited in its ability to give you the kind of worldview shift that you need to actually create sustained and lasting change. What do I mean by that? It’s very hard to just think your way through a situation, you know? If you can think of a difficult situation in your life right now, you’ve probably thought about it a lot. And you’re thinking your normal thinking mind is caught in kind of the constraints and limitations that are both real and that you have decided are real. Right. Or that you’ve been taught or real. And so if you were to think about how do I want my future to be, I’m going to list out all the things that would be one way to move forward. But doing the exercise where you go, you get into a slightly altered state. Use breathing, use drumming, use music, use whatever it is that gets you into sort of a more open minded state and lets your ego take a break for a little while. Your thinking mind you’re judging critical editing mind. Take a break for a little while and you go visit your future self at the house they’re living in and you go in and smell what you smell. Sense what you sense. Examine what they look like. What’s the feeling you’re getting from them. You sit down and have a conversation with them, or you write it back and forth. If you’re not a great visualizer that gives you information that is different than you just thinking, I should do that.
Cassandra Vieten 00:49:41 So all of these imagination exercises can give you a deeper part of the information that speaks more to your subconscious mind and your subconscious mind, your non-conscious mind, or the deeper parts of you are really where these shifts happen. Like you could try all day long to force yourself to do all the things on your to do list, or all the things that you should be changing in your life, you’re going to actually do better if you can shift your internal view of the world, sometimes based on something that you learned in your imagination. I guess it’s adding the sensory, the visual. It’s kind of like that virtual reality thing. If you can give your whole being the sense that you are there talking to your future self and she or he is speaking back to you, and they have given you an interesting piece of information that was unable to come through that thinking mind. That’s what we’re talking about.
Eric Zimmer 00:50:42 Another way of using imagination that I’ve worked with, with coaching clients before, is often imagining what we do want to say or think. What happens is, we know. I don’t want to think about that. I don’t want to come across as X, Y, and z in a conversation, which is useful, except then we don’t see what do we want to do? And I found for myself imagining that to be a really powerful thing. Like imagining the conversation with someone. Yeah. You know, allow it to feed back into actual words.
Cassandra Vieten 00:51:21 Yeah. When you imagine something, especially over and over, you are giving your brain and your neurotransmitters and your hormones and your nervous system the message that this is how I want you to proceed. I’m giving you the message that I don’t want to encounter. Let’s say this interview with Eric. I don’t want to encounter this interview with Eric as a threat as, oh my gosh, what if I make a fool of myself? Or what if he asked me a question that I don’t know the answer to? What I want to do is like, imagine. I bet Eric’s a pretty cool guy, you know, and we’re going to have this interesting conversation.
Cassandra Vieten 00:51:58 We have a lot in common, and let’s explore this together. I can imagine that several times before our interview, and I will show up in a very different way than if I had gone in with like, oh man, you know what’s going to happen? So you can do that, giving your nervous system that. So in fact, your brain is giving the message to your body of safety, like go into parasympathetic nervous system mode where rest and digest. You could even imagine love like, hey, you’re a fellow person in recovery. I already love you. So my brain is going like, oh wow, we’re safe. Like oxytocin. Like, let’s release some of the dopamine and serotonin here. Whereas if I was looking at it the other way, my brain would be like, all right, you need cortisol. You need fight or flight. Like, you better get your heart beating faster. You better get yourself warm because something bad could happen and you better prevent against that. It’s just not the way I want to show up.
Eric Zimmer 00:52:52 I want to read something that you wrote as a way of kind of taking us out here, and you say essentially, that the antidote to despair isn’t just hope, it’s the skill to generate hope.
Cassandra Vieten 00:53:07 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I think one of the disservice we can do to our family, to ourselves, to our family members, to our friends, to our clients is to say, just look on the bright side. You’re doing fine. It’s going to get better. Don’t worry. That is not helpful. What could be helpful would be to say, I want to sit with you here. We’re going to do an exercise together, and I want us to go visit our future selves together. And this future self is one who has embodied all of the characteristics and qualities that you’re hoping to embody in the future, or even now that you wish you were embodying. Now let’s go do that. Let’s listen to a guided visualization or I’ll help you through it. And then I want to share what we found together.
Cassandra Vieten 00:53:56 Or let’s say you’re at a dinner table with your kids and you say, how was your day? And they’re teenagers and they’re like, fine. You’re like, okay, well, did you get your homework assignment in? Yeah. Well, was it on time? What did your teacher say? Like, that’s the conversation that we’re all having with our kids. What if instead you said, all right, everybody, we’re doing our five minutes of imagination at dinner? If today was a weather pattern or a force of nature, what would it have been? You know. Was it a tornado? Was it a hurricane? Was it clear skies? Was it a rainstorm? Was it foggy? Was it a waterfall? Was it a lightning strike? You know, your kids are going to be like, oh my God, this is so lame. But if you do it for a while, they’re going to be like, all right, today was a tornado day because this today was a hurricane day. Because this I had a clear, sunny day because of this. You’re getting information from them that is so much higher quality than you get through the interrogation method.
Cassandra Vieten 00:54:52 And so the same thing with yourself. You know, if you ask yourself what is wrong with you, why are you eating this way? You know that you committed to wanting to lose weight. Why didn’t you work out today instead? You could be like, all right, what are the five conditions that would make it almost impossible for me to not do what I’m hoping to do? What could I do to set the perfect conditions for myself, to make it most likely that I would succeed at this goal? I could tell you one it’s not yelling at yourself about it. In fact, that’s probably keeping you from doing it more than helping you do it.
Eric Zimmer 00:55:26 Agreed.
Cassandra Vieten 00:55:27 You know, do I join the gym that I actually wanted to join instead of the cheap one that I decided to settle for? Do I pick up my favorite meal on the way into work so I don’t get a cheeseburger? There’s just ways that you can kind of open up the possibilities.
Cassandra Vieten 00:55:41 And then one thing that we’ve been using, which is a very interesting tool that we talk about in the book, is paradoxical thinking or thought experiments. So when you’re in a situation that’s not going well and it’s really stressing you out, write down 5 to 10 ways that you could make it worse 5 to 10 ways that you could make this situation worse. Well, I could start yelling instead of just sitting and rolling my eyes. I could get violent. I could decide, I’m gonna, you know, whatever it is, right? These things would make it worse. Then in the next column, you’re just going to write down the complete opposite of those things, but all the way opposite. So not only am I not going to be yelling, I’m actually going to do a mindfulness moment every morning before I go into work. So without thinking of how you could make it worse, it’s hard for your brain to think about how you could make it better. So instead, you go all the way to the worst, and then you flip it, and then you’ve got a list of like, oh, here’s some things that I could actually do to make this better.
Eric Zimmer 00:56:45 Well, I think that is a beautiful place to wrap up. I’ve really enjoyed this conversation. You and I are going to continue in a post-show conversation where you’re going to lead us through a visualization exercise about understanding what’s underneath our desires and finding different ways to meet and get what we really want. Listeners, if you’d like access to this post-show conversation in that wonderful exercise as well as ad free episodes, and you want to support a show that is independent and really needs your support, you can go to oneyoufeed.net/join. Cassandra, thank you so much. It’s been a real pleasure..
Cassandra Vieten 00:57:23 Great to be here with you. Eric. Thank you.
Eric Zimmer 00:57:25 Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you found this conversation helpful, inspiring, or thought provoking, I’d love for you to share it with a friend. Share it from one person to another is the lifeblood of what we do. We don’t have a big budget, and I’m certainly not a celebrity, but we have something even better. And that’s you just hit the share button on your podcast app, or send a quick text with the episode link to someone who might enjoy it. Your support means the world, and together we can spread wisdom. One episode at a time. Thank you for being part of the one You Feed community.
