Nikola Tesla: Imagination and the Man That Invented the 20th Century

by Sean Patrick

While many theories were put forth, there was one common factor that researchers recognized in all great performers: they practiced so hard and intensely that it hurt.

Studies of people with extraordinary abilities, like Ted Williams, have given rise to what Swedish psychologist Dr. K Anders Ericsson called the “10,000 hour” rule. The rule’s premise is that, regardless of whether one has an innate aptitude for an activity or not, mastery of it takes around ten thousand hours of focused, intentional practice.

Opportunities are whispers, not foghorns.

If we can’t hear their soft rhythms—if we are too busy rushing about, waiting for thunderclaps of revelation, inspiration, and certainty—or if we can spot them but can’t nurture them into real advantages, then we might as well be blind to them.

suggested that genius is much more than high intelligence, innate talent, extraordinary work ethic, or uncanny luck, but rather a composite manifestation; a synthesis of very specific types of worldviews and behaviors. The more he looked at data through this lens, the more things started to make sense.

Well, as the preeminent mythologist Joseph Campbell said, deep down inside, we don’t seek the meaning of life, but the experience of being alive. And that’s what the nature of genius is ultimately about.

“Facts and ideas are dead in themselves and it is the imagination that gives life to them.”

In every field of human endeavor, the more visionary the work, the less likely it is to be quickly understood and embraced by lesser minds.

This is the beauty of imagination. An unexpected dead end in one journey is merely an opportunity to set a new course for another. Losing what we have can only do us real harm when we feel we can’t create it, or something equally valuable or compelling, again, and that ability resides squarely in our imagination.

Einstein said that “imagination is more important than knowledge,” because “knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

The more varied your knowledge and experiences are, the more likely you are to be able to create new associations and fresh ideas.

Your mind has an incredible ability to cross-pollinate—that is, to connect disparate things to solve problems in unique ways or envision new creations.

“A single ray of light from a distant star falling upon the eye of a tyrant in bygone times may have altered the course of his life, may have changed the destiny of nations, may have transformed the surface of the globe; so intricate, so inconceivably complex are the processes in Nature.”

It takes curiosity to find your call to adventure, it takes courage to venture into the unknown, and it takes imagination to create your path. And to, like Tesla did, create it exactly as you envision it, no matter how much work it takes, or how many people try to stop you.