“What is now proved was once only imagined.” – William Blake
Training myself to think bigger.
After reading more about neuroscience this year, and developing greater intention with how I visualize my success, I discovered something crazy: I was used to thinking small.
This thought has driven me toward a long, winding road of daydreams, journaling prompts, and award-deserving mood boards.
It has all given me a great sense of excitement and enthusiasm for life, and it’s all rooted in one question:
So many of us go through our day-to-day lives accepting everything exactly as it is. Let’s start there.
What if you could make X better? What if you could read the book you’ve been meaning to start for 6 months? What if you didn’t have to feel Y or worry about Z?
This exercise goes beyond personal development though, and can even make for a fun creative exercise in other tasks.
Allow me to share some of the items on my own “what if” list now:
- What if I learned more about ethnobotany?
- What if I increased my time to action?
- What if I bought a bunch of land to turn it back into natural habitat?
- What if I bought e-waste and found a way to deconstruct it while preserving the quality of the materials?
The Enduring Power Of “What If”
#1: Deepen your understanding.
In adding items to my “what if” list, I have learned the skill of asking increasingly more obscure, random hypothetical questions.
Exploring their answers often reinforces fundamental concepts that are tangibly applicable in my life.
For example, in studying geochemistry, I got to thinking, “why isn’t there silicon-based life on earth?” Like carbon, silicon is what you would call tetravalent- it has just as many valence electrons as carbon, and thus, you would imagine, just as much opportunity to bond. In fact, most minerals on earth are silicon-based.
After asking around and exploring this idea, one of my peers shared some papers he wrote on the subject, which I got to enjoy reading.
In the end, asking a “stupid” question allowed me to make connect with others while deepening my own awareness of key concepts within geochemistry and evolutionary biology.
#2: Challenge your assumptions.
Let’s talk about “what if”’s favorite cousin, “why not”.
For most of my life, I believed the narrative of choosing one career and using that end goal to make all my decisions.
It was: if you want to be a doctor, read chemistry books. Wanna be a lawyer? Read about philosophy. And if you like both chemistry and philosophy, just pick one for crying out loud!
For a long time, it was tormenting to be the kid who simply liked everything. I was overwhelmed by the infinite paths I could take, and simultaneously saddened by the fact that they all seemed to lack the crazy diversity I dreamed about.
Then I asked a question: Why not cultivate my unique portfolio of skills and interests? Who says I can’t design a career perfectly suited to what I’m good at, interested in, and hoping to get out of life?
When I asked this question, I realized that the answer to this “why not” boiled down to two things: fear of uncertainty and not wanting to put in the effort to discover the life that would truly fulfill me.
Most of us do not realize how much we take for granted- intellectually, in our relationships, in the way we live our lives.
So start asking yourself “why not”, and you might be surprised by the answer.
#3: Realize your big dreams are attainable.
Here is some tough love: you’re not special.
Throughout the course of human history, millions of people have also faced heartbreak, loss, financial ruin, and uncertainty. Many of them have also come out of those things with the reinforced determination to have crazy amazing lives.
So what if there was a way to chart the path from exactly where you are to the amazing world, life, or career you envision?
What if you are not limited by your circumstances, but instead by your creativity?
We tell ourselves certain things are impossible for us, but when we ask “what if”, we realize an unsettling but reassuring fact. Actually, there is no real reason why someone else in your position could’ve gotten/done that thing and not you.
When I do this exercise for myself, it can be disheartening. I realize that the responsibility to create what I want is fully up to me, and in a lot of ways, I fail at it.
Yet after that stark realization, there is also a glimmer of hope- yes, it’s up to me, but also, I have every power to fix it. Why?
Well, why not?
What if it works?
Go and see for yourself.
Open a new “Note” on a note-taking app, and title it “What If List”.
Write one question. Make it crazy. Make it unhinged.
Thought to Action
- Start a “Future Self” Journal: Write one page from the perspective of your dream self—what are you building, learning, wearing, prioritizing? Use this to guide daily decisions.
- Identify Your Personal Design Criteria: What makes a task or project feel deeply worth it to you? Make a mini checklist. Use it to evaluate new commitments before saying yes.
- Create a “Someday Stack” of Ideas: Start a list of crazy, impractical, or ambitious project ideas that you don’t have time for yet. This becomes your personal innovation vault.
- Study Someone Whose Job Didn’t Exist 20 Years Ago: Look up someone in a role like climate designer, circularity strategist, or biofabrication artist—and reverse engineer how they got there.
- Fuel Up With Fiction That Thinks Ahead: Read a sci-fi or speculative fiction book this month. Start with something weird. It will stretch your imagination more than any TED Talk ever could.
Sources
No external sources were used for this post.
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