How To Keep Your Illusion Alive (being Realistic)

Can you measure the index of illusion that a person has? According to a study carried out by Cofidis, the factors to take into account are: the number of projects and motivations of the person, the importance given to each of them for their personal fulfillment and the level of confidence in achieving each project.

And it is that without a certain degree of optimism you cannot generate illusion. But what are the other ingredients that feed it and inspire us?

Keep the illusion … and be realistic

Noelia explained to me the moment when, at the age of six, a classmate had revealed to her, with some cruelty, that the Three Wise Men were the parents. She replied that he was not right, that what he was saying was not true, not at all! He wanted to hold onto the illusion that in this world everything was possible and there was someone capable of achieving anything.

When he got home, he asked his mother for confirmation that the Three Wise Men existed. Noelia’s mother looked at her in dismayed silence … and she hardly had to say anything else. At the age of six, Noelia stopped believing in the Magi, in magic and in their power to change things beyond reason. He lost the illusion.

And you? What illusions have you parked along the way since you were a child and stopped believing in the Three Kings or Santa Claus? Since when have you not allowed yourself to dream or imagine something different and new for your life?

The illusion guides us to start the path to a different, new and little visited place.

It is possible to recover some of the lost illusions while still being in touch with reality. Because it is the illusion that allows us to continue dreaming, starting projects and being creative.

Applying the illusion: creativity, play and transformation capacity

Despite what the saying goes, one does not live only by illusion. However, it is very necessary to find the momentum that helps us to undertake new projects. There is no project without illusion; a vision that guides us to start a path to a different, new and little-visited place. Etymologically, illusion is a word linked to the game, as well as to an unreal perception or idea.

In the book by Francesc Miralles 365 ideas to change your life (Planet) the study by John Byers, an expert in animal behavior, is collected , who has shown that playful activity helps us to sculpt our brain.

When we play, we can try new experiences without jeopardizing our physical or emotional well-being. Playing and fantasizing allows us to access a new world without taking risks. It is a testing ground that provides us with new creations. When we abandon this capacity, boredom and routine take over to the point of making us lose the desire to browse, to remain people who enjoy experiencing something different from the usual and known, and the learning that derives from it.

Open yourself to all possibilities

Imagine that all the limitations have disappeared, that you can break all the established rules.

Imagine that you go outside the parameters in which you usually move.

We suggest that you play at being crazy, reckless (it is important that you do not judge any idea as impossible, bad or crazy ).

We suggest you use illusion as the first step to open yourself up to creativity.

This is the first impulse that allows us to get out of comfort and achieve something that we do not have, transforming the present reality. Sometimes, through play, or just trying to keep an open mind, an inspiration comes to us from some unknown place that it takes root in us.

This openness offers us the possibility of creating an image different from what is usual in our life, an image that little by little takes shape and can be verbalized.

Do you allow yourself to fantasize?

What you are proposing is to imagine how you want your new house, how would you like your partner, how is the journey that would love to take you or the place where you want to live … How far you are allowing you to fantasize at this time in your life? What have been the illusions that you have parked since you were a child?

Our brain does not make any difference between images of reality and images of fantasy, which is why it is so important to allow yourself to fantasize and create realities. Only then will our brain know where we want to go. And you can’t go anywhere you haven’t fantasized about before. Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) ensures that “what we can dream of can be done”. Imagination is power.

Many times I play a game with my friends when they are single and fervently want to find one. I propose that we play at fantasizing what your ideal partner would be like.

Then they imagine those little things that would make them happy – for example, that person prepares breakfast for them in the morning and takes it to bed -, they see themselves doing activities that they would love to share with her, they fantasize about the type of relationship they will have –Sometimes very close and complicit, others more independent–, in how he is physically … The more details they are able to specify –age, profession, nationality–, the better.

It is also important that you decide what characteristics of that person are essential so that you can fall in love with her. It is not always easy to continue with this game: to realize what we need, we have to do a deep introspection, especially from the body and instinct rather than from the mind.

Finally, I ask you to come up with a very specific list that includes everything you want that person to have. Once they have written it and are clear about how they would like their partner to be, they imagine that they are already with her and that they share different moments with her.

When you see what you are excited about as something real, you are predisposed to make it possible.

The funny thing is that, after enjoying this game, several of my friends have found a relationship very similar to the one they had imagined playing illusions. And it is that what felt, even if it has been through fantasy, makes all our physiology set in motion to make it come true. We are not talking about something purely magical, but rather that when one contemplates as real what one is excited about and concretizes it, one is predisposed to make it possible and transform the real situation that one is living.

As the writer Elias Canetti said, “It is my childhood illusions that still make me say if I perceive a fissure in a man’s armor : all is not lost, it takes little to make that stopped heart beat.”