The opportunities we miss as a result of a failure to imagine

There are many artifacts, ideas, and beliefs in our lives that hang on to us with emotional hooks. Often these hooks remain securely fastened to our psyche even as the sense of their continued presence in our lives begins to wane. Recall how you would unhook a clothes hanger from your closet rack. The act of unhooking something requires one to first work against gravity to clear the hook from the object you want to move it away from. Some of us fail or wait an entire lifetime before that small, but perhaps uncomfortable step is taken. Others are lucky enough (or have the presence of mind) to recognise every opportunity to unhook themselves from old baggage as soon as these present themselves.

Travel light and shed unnecessary baggage along the way.

Every piece of dead weight baggage shed represents an embarkation on a new phase of our personal journeys with a renewed vigor fueled by a new-found lightness of being. Even outlook and perspective are inclined to change in a snap as soon as we are able to view the world undistracted by the effort of carrying around stuff we had recently discarded. We then wonder why we had not let go sooner and moved on faster. Things always seem clearer in retrospect.

The most tangible benefit comes in the form of a more robust appreciation of your true value in a way that is suddenly independent of this baggage you once thought was an essential component of your value proposition to society. To be able to find value in one's self and add value to others (or in a more general sense) without the overhead of unnecessary complication levied by all sorts of stuff is liberating to say the least.

It's as easy as focusing more on imagining the future.

What happens next after the initial heave to clear a hook from an object it is hanging from?

Perhaps we instead fixate upon the effort of that initial heave we need to take. That fixation is often caused by a failure to imagine the bigger world we are free to explore once unhooked.