That we are drawn by the future rather than just driven by the past is extremely important and directly contrary to the heritage of social science and the history of psychology. It is, nevertheless, a basic and implicit premise of positive psychology.
Martin Seligman, Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being
When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.
Albert Einstein
Another simple way to boost your positivity is to dream more frequently about your future. Conjure up the best possible outcomes for yourself. Visualize your future successes in great detail. People who are assigned at random to carry out such an exercise show reliable increases in their positivity relative to those who carry out more mundane self-reflections.
Barbara Fredrickson, Positivity: Groundbreaking Research Reveals How to Embrace the Hidden Strength of Positive Emotions
Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. Your vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil… dreams are the seedlings of realities.
James Allen, As a Man Thinketh
Your body speaks imagery. Imagery is the language that will lodge the vision deep within the core of your being, so that it pulls you, day after day, relentlessly toward itself. Seeing yourself on a daily basis making a difference, getting in touch with your goals, achieving and celebrating milestones brings precision to the day-to-day process of incorporating vision into your world.
Peter Jensen, The Inside Edge: High Performance Through Mental Fitness
Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.
Mark Twain
Nurturing a fantasy is the first step in the neural process of achieving success in the world. It begins with creative imagination, a process that takes place in the frontal lobe, the area in your brain that has the unrelenting capacity to dream up virtually anything. If you can’t imagine a specific goal, you won’t make it to second base, which is figuring out how to make your dream come true.
Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman, How God Changes our Brain: Breakthrough Findings from a Leading Neuroscientist
See yourself and what you see, you will become.
Aristotle
Within the parameters of physical possibilities, you receive what you ‘want with your whole soul’ — whether inner truth, a personal accomplishment, relationships, whatever it is. Excluding some great countervailing force, and for either ill or good, the one thing that you want above all else is what you get…the true yearnings of our soul are not only the best predictor of where we’ll go in life, but the primary means of getting us there.
Mitch Horowitz, One Simple Idea: How Positive Thinking Reshaped Modern Life
No one has yet computed how many imaginary triumphs are silently celebrated by people each year to keep up their courage.
Athenaeus, Greek rhetorician and grammarian
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