Imaginable Quotes

“To be hopeful means to be uncertain about the future, to be tender toward possibilities, to be dedicated to change all the way down to the bottom of your heart. —Rebecca Solnit, historian and activist”
― Jane McGonigal, Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything—Even Things That Seem Impossible Today

“What matters is whether your brain perceives an abundance of time. So give it a try. Give yourself luxurious ten-year deadlines. You might be surprised at how much faster and more happily you do things you’d otherwise put off when you feel time-rich, and therefore more in control of your timeline.”
― Jane McGonigal, Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything—Even Things That Seem Impossible Today

“Studies have found that we also think more creatively and set higher, “maximal,” goals for ourselves when we’re in rooms with higher ceilings or outside in a wide-open environment.”
― Jane McGonigal, Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything—Even Things That Seem Impossible Today

“Any useful statement about the future should at first seem ridiculous.”
― Jane McGonigal, Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything—Even Things That Seem Impossible Today

“Professional game developers will tell you that if you want someone to stick with a game, you have to give them an opportunity to be successful in the first few minutes. A player who wanders around a new game without a clear sense of purpose is not going to have as much fun as someone with a goal. And a player with no idea what actions they can take in the game is not going to stick around very long. The same thing is true, I’ve found, for thinking about the future.”
― Jane McGonigal, Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything—Even Things That Seem Impossible Today

“Where exactly am I, in my future—who else is here, and what’s around me? What’s true in this version of reality that isn’t true today? What do I really want in this future moment, and how will I get it? How do I feel, now that I’m here?”
― Jane McGonigal, Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything—Even Things That Seem Impossible Today

“Strong opinions, lightly held.”
― Jane McGonigal, Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything—Even Things That Seem Impossible Today

“As the letter-tracing task suggests, a major benefit of switching from first person to third person is that it’s a huge empathy booster. In scientific language, we “reduce our egocentric biases” and become “less ego-identified”—which means we get out of our own heads and can start to see things the way someone else might. We’re better able to consider that others might have different wants, needs, values, or ideas than we do.”
― Jane McGonigal, Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything—Even Things That Seem Impossible Today

“When you take a mental time trip ten years into the future, your brain starts to think with a different point of view. This isn’t a metaphor—it’s a literal fact. Scientists describe this as switching your imagination from first-person to third-person perspective.”
― Jane McGonigal, Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything—Even Things That Seem Impossible Today

“This has to do with a psychological phenomenon known as time spaciousness. It’s the relaxing and empowering feeling that we have enough time to do what really matters—to consider our options, make a plan, and act more confidently to create the future we want. It is almost impossible to create a sense of time spaciousness when we’re thinking in a matter of days or weeks. But when thinking ahead ten years . . . ah, it’s so much time!”
― Jane McGonigal, Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything—Even Things That Seem Impossible Today

“In dealing with the future . . . it is more important to be imaginative and insightful than to be one hundred percent “right.”7”
― Jane McGonigal, Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything—Even Things That Seem Impossible Today

“Simulation participants kept telling me, in their own ways, that pre-feeling the future helped them pre-process the anxiety, the overwhelming uncertainty, and the sense of helplessness, so they could move more rapidly to adapt and act resiliently when the future actually arrived.”
― Jane McGonigal, Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything—Even Things That Seem Impossible Today

“the most important work of a future simulation is to prepare our minds and stretch our collective imagination, so we are more flexible, adaptable, agile, and resilient when the “unthinkable” happens.”
― Jane McGonigal, Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything—Even Things That Seem Impossible Today

“Growth is painful. Change is painful. But nothing is as painful as staying stuck where you don’t belong.”
― Jane McGonigal, Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything—Even Things That Seem Impossible Today

“You could think of Thank You Day as a kind of reconciliation process, intended to remind people, regardless of our political views, of our common values and the benefits we all receive from essential and frontline workers.”
― Jane McGonigal, Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything—Even Things That Seem Impossible Today

“Their most often cited reason: “I don’t expect to be here in ten years.” Even for professional futurists, it’s necessary to acknowledge that advanced age, illness, or dangerous conditions can make imagining a ten-year future feel pointless or distressing. If your life circumstances make ten years into the future feel like a bridge too far, I encourage you to imagine a future that still feels further out than you would ordinarily think about.”
― Jane McGonigal, Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything—Even Things That Seem Impossible Today

“ten years from the first iPhone release until a majority of people on the planet had smartphones, creating a new era of always-on communication (2007–2017)”
― Jane McGonigal, Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything—Even Things That Seem Impossible Today

“Urgent optimism is a balanced feeling. It’s recognizing that, yes, there are great challenges and risks ahead, while also staying realistically hopeful that you have something to contribute to how we solve those challenges and face those risks. Urgent optimism means you’re not staying awake all night worrying about what might happen. Instead, you’re leaping out of bed in the morning with a fire in your pants to do something about it. Urgent optimism is knowing that you have agency and the ability to use your unique talents, skills, and life experiences to create the world you want to live in.”
― Jane McGonigal, Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything—Even Things That Seem Impossible Today

“And then I’ll help you learn how to communicate your ideas for future change so that others are more likely to pay attention to them and feel inspired to act with you. If anything can increase your ability to influence how the future turns out, it’s this: planting seeds of imagination in the minds of tens or hundreds or thousands of other people who can help you make whatever changes you’re imagining.”
― Jane McGonigal, Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything—Even Things That Seem Impossible Today

“Shadow imagination asks the question: What’s something bad that could happen? It builds readiness to face future challenges”
― Jane McGonigal, Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything—Even Things That Seem Impossible Today

“Positive imagination asks the question: What’s something good that could happen? It builds confidence that the future will be better.”
― Jane McGonigal, Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything—Even Things That Seem Impossible Today

“memory problems, wouldn’t go away, no matter how much I rested. I developed panic attacks, severe depression, and even suicidal thoughts that lasted for months. At my lowest point, I decided to try to make a game to help myself heal. I used everything I knew about how games could increase motivation, optimism, attention, creativity, and collaboration to design some quests and challenges that might jump-start my brain back to a more hopeful and capable state.”
― Jane McGonigal, Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything—Even Things That Seem Impossible Today

“A deep immersion into a possible future creates lasting mental habits, especially when it comes to watching the real world for evidence that the simulated possibility is becoming more likely.”
― Jane McGonigal, Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything—Even Things That Seem Impossible Today