We often envy those who can, without wasting time on a long analysis of the situation, to find a way out of it. Such people seem to possess an incredibly developed intuition, because all subsequent calculations only confirm the correctness of the decision they made. Perhaps its role is played by intuition, and perhaps the whole point is that they have developed imaginative thinking. What it is and how to become such a virtuoso of thought, we now talk.
An imaginative type of thinking and its varieties
Human thinking is very multifaceted, because we all have to solve very different tasks every day. But nevertheless there is a division into types, however, classifications are different. Some schools divide thought into practical and theoretical, others talk about stereotyped and unconventional thinking, while others classify thinking on the use of various substitutes for reality - a word, an object or an image. That is, according to the latter classification, the object-effective, visual-figurative and verbal-logical thinking are distinguished.
We are interested in figurative (visual-figurative, figurative-associative or spatial-figurative) thinking. It is believed that this type of thinking was the next stage after the development of the subject-effective. Visual thinking allows you to see the whole situation, without relying on clear logical chains. If no verbal response is needed, then the conclusion is not formulated. The word in this type of thinking is only a means of expressing transformations performed through images. Some tend to view the imagination as a form of figurative thinking, but this is not true. Imagination recreates the desired image from imaginative memory, and imaginative thinking is based on real objects.
Formation of figurative thinking occurs gradually, as all mental processes develop and the accumulation of life experience. Some people, due to their individual characteristics, it is difficult to operate with mental images, they necessarily need a visual basis. But as it turns out, to develop imaginative thinking is possible, of course, if you spend time and make proper efforts.
How to develop imaginative thinking?
There are many exercises for the development of visual-figurative thinking, let's consider the most common of them.
- Very various riddles on the development of figurative thinking are very popular. It's funny that children often cope with them, but their parents find it difficult to decide. For example, here is such a mystery: what do all people on Earth do at the same time? The answer to it is getting older.
- To train the imaginative thinking the following exercise will help. Remember all the people you talked with on this day. Imagine in all the details how they looked - the color of the eyes and hair, height, age, clothing. Try to imagine their manners, habits. Do the same with people you saw yesterday, on weekends, on your last vacation, at your birthday.
- Imagine any positive emotion, just do not tie it to any object or memory. Try to reproduce different emotions. How well do you get it?
- The development of visual-shaped thinking will help geometry, or rather geometric shapes. Imagine each of the following bodies: a sphere, a cube, a prism, a pyramid, a tetrahedron, an icosahedron, a dodecahedron, an octahedron. Do not rush to immediately reproduce the image, first imagine the location of the faces, mentally study the objects from the outside and from the inside, try to feel the bulk of each figure.
- If you really represent existing objects, create a mental image of what you never
seen. Imagine fabulous characters and animals, imagine the vehicles of the future, clothes and jewelry that will be worn by the great grandchildren of our grandchildren. - In addition to the images of certain things, one must train in the presentation of pure ideas that are not tied to any particular object. Imagine the idea of beauty, energy, peace, harmony, illusion and reality.
Perhaps, at first the images will not be as bright as we would like. To fix this, try to just look, feel, but do not describe your feelings in words.