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EP 47 - Figment’s Five
7 Plays1 year ago
I recently returned from a family trip to Disney World. While I enjoyed the trip, it was overshadowed by the tragedies in Israel. I struggled with the juxtaposition between human joy and the knowledge that others elsewhere were suffering horrible atrocities.
These issues were on my mind while waiting in line at the Imaginarium at Epcot. While I waited to introduce the kids to Figment, there was a sign off to the side that struck me. The sign reiterated the core messages of Figment: That we should all Explore, Create, Dream, Imagine, and Inspire.
It’s a challenge to feel creative, to find joy and purpose during difficult times. And these five reminders from Figment struck me as vital ideals. By living them, despite our circumstances and surroundings, we can help create a better world. It’s a message I hope my children never get too jaded to forget.
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Transcript
Bridging the Gap with Wisdom
00:00:15
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Crystal Deal with it focuses on bridging the gap between where you're at now and where you'd like to be. We'll explore wisdom and techniques from a wide variety of domains and industries and apply them to your unique challenges. I love developing frameworks, processes, and storytelling metaphors that enable personal and business growth. Through actionable next steps, we'll build momentum and confidence. My goal is to help you clear roadblocks, do more with what you have, and realize the potential of yourself and your team. So throw your challenges my way in Crystal Deal.
Original Content Assurance
00:00:50
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First, an AI statement that all elements of this episode are products of the author, Chris Kreuter, and made without the use of any AI tools. I recently returned from my family trip to
Conflict & Enjoyment: A Personal Reflection
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Speaker
Disney World. While I enjoyed the trip, it was overshadowed by the tragedies in Israel. I struggled with this juxtaposition between human joy and the knowledge that others elsewhere were suffering horrible atrocities.
00:01:13
Speaker
These issues were on my mind while waiting in line at the Imaginearium at Epcot. While I was waiting to introduce the kids to Figment, there was a sign off to the side that struck
Inspiration from Disney Imaginearium
00:01:22
Speaker
me. The sign reiterated the core messages of Figment that we should all explore, create, dream, imagine, and inspire. It's a challenge to feel creative, to find joy and purpose during difficult times. And these five reminders from Figment struck me as vital ideals.
00:01:41
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By living them, despite our circumstances and surroundings, we can help create a better world, and it's a message I hope my children never get too jaded to forget. So let's break these down.
Exploration & Personal Inspiration
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Explore. The journey into imagination ride at the Imaginearium highlights the importance of sparks. By exploring, we expose ourselves to sparks of inspiration. All of our senses and environments are involved here, sound, light, smell, taste, and texture,
00:02:11
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can all spark our mind to moments of insight and discovery. And with each of us having a unique biology, history, and perspective, these senses and environments often create vastly different sparks within each of us. And it's these sparks that lead to imaginations which can lead us to the act of creation.
Creation from Tragedy
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So CREATE. Creation is a setting free of our inspirations, allowing them to make an impact on the world. So to illustrate this, the Epcot ride has a section focused on smell.
00:02:40
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It compares smelling a skunk and a rose, but that message can be applied to anything positive or negative, because both good and bad events have the power to spark our imaginations for better or worse. Even horrific events can become powerful sparks that ignite us to the action of creation. In a practical sense, it could be an increased awareness and preparedness for potential dangers near ourselves, but it could also implore us to create things that help counter the darkness of the human condition.
The Value of Dreaming
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Dream. Sadly, I feel many in our current society have devalued the power of dreaming. We certainly hear the message consistently enough, but do we truly value it as a vital virtue? This bombardment of information, tasks, entertainment options, it creates this constant cacophony which just overwhelms our senses. It's vital that we develop the ability to step outside all of that noise, to create an environment that's wholly our own, one that allows us to dream, to ponder what's possible.
00:03:38
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By cultivating the mental and physical time and space to dream, both consciously and subconsciously, we allow our minds a limitless playground. And it's in these playgrounds where sparks of inspiration synthesize with our knowledge, skills, assets, network, community, and potentially the entire world to forge new and deeper insights.
Transforming Dreams with Imagination
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Imagine. I consider imagination as a kind of conduit, one that allows dreams to become molded into creative work.
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Consider how many ideas, good and bad, come to us every day, and consider how many of those actually get acted upon. Through the act of active imagining, we're able to create what's dreamt. It's an act of discernment, actively choosing the who, what, where, why, and how that we manifest in the world. Imagining is manifesting a dream into forms that can interact with the world, or to put it another way, locating the heart within our songs.
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literature, paintings, dances, or inspiring podcast episodes. It's brainstorming, plotting, sketching, debating, ruminating, and similar activities. It's the sitting within our sparks, ideas, and dreams until they result in our creations. These acts of dreaming, imagining, and creating are by no means limited to artistic expression.
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All of Figment's five reminders are also vital to inventing new technologies, defining laws, delivering aid, creating social structures, and the dismantling of elements of human suffering.
Inspiration's Ripple Effect
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Lastly, inspire. Is it enough to explore, create, dream, and imagine? It can be enough if all these stop within ourselves, done purely for our own enjoyment.
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However, Figment implores us to not let our songs play merely in our own head, to keep our manuscripts and blueprints locked away in our drawers. We should set free our creative work so that our spark might create sparks in others. And the word here is inspire, not market. As much as possible, we should divorce the commercial returns on our work from the core purpose of setting our imaginations off into the world. Humanity is in constant conversation with itself.
00:05:49
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Who are we? Why are we here? What should we do? Where are we headed? How should we get there? Through the act of inspiring, we're influencing that conversation. We simply have no idea of all the impacts our sparks will go on to spark others. But regardless of the scale of our impact, it's the act itself that's central to humanity's imaginative spirit. After all, this whole episode exists because of a complex unfathomable stacking of explorations, creations,
00:06:18
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dreams, imaginations, inspirations, and of course, sparks that resulted in a sign on a wall that inspired me.
Encouragement to Engage
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We'll close out today's episode with one stanza from the song, Journey Into Imagination, which was written for the Disney ride by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman. One little spark of inspiration is at the heart of all creation. Right at the start of everything that's new, one little spark lights up for you. And with that, have a great day.
00:06:48
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If you feel that Chris dealt with it, I'd appreciate your support of the show by sharing it with someone who might benefit. Ratings and your favorite podcast player are also helpful in growing the audience. Visit chriscroiter.com for free downloadable PDFs, notes, and resources from today's episode. Sign up for the CDWY mailing list, or to send in your problems or requests for future shows, that's C-H-R-I-S-K-R-E-U-T-E-R.com, or use the link in the show notes. Thanks for listening to The Crystal Deal with me.