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Nick Oswald: hello, and welcome to the happy scientist podcast from bite sized bio if you want to become a happier healthier and more productive scientist, you are in the right place.

Nick Oswald: i'm gonna cause mold the founder of bite size bio.com and with me is the driving force of this podcast Mr Kenneth fault, my friend mentor and founder of the coaching company viewer curators.

Nick Oswald: today's episode is called how to foster imagination so let's bring in the man himself can, how are you today.

Kenneth Vogt: i'm doing great how are you.

Nick Oswald: i'm good.

Kenneth Vogt: So I wanted to start this off by pointing out to you folks have very fortunate, you are there are so many jobs out there so many careers out there.

Kenneth Vogt: Where imagination is not just unnecessary, it is frowned upon they don't want you being imaginative they don't want to think outside the box they don't want you being creative in any way, shape or form.

Kenneth Vogt: For instance, I know some folks who drive trains for the for the San Francisco Bay area rapid transit system.

Kenneth Vogt: At least, these trains are pretty complicated and and pretty impressive you know there's a is a big master computer system for this that that.

Kenneth Vogt: decides what trains are run our tracks and what which train is going where at all times and they're a good system, you know that their trains are on time, I mean it's not France but it's good you know.

Kenneth Vogt: But you just can't is a train operator you can't do anything yourself and, in fact, mostly that train is being run by the central computer.

Kenneth Vogt: Because you the train operators, almost a misnomer you're you're more like the occupants of the front of the front cabin that's about it.

Kenneth Vogt: And you can override things in the case of an emergency, but but not very easily.

Kenneth Vogt: And only in emergencies and there's no creativity about it it's you it follows the schedule, it follows it opens and closes doors it's.

Kenneth Vogt: It travels on tracks and it tells you what speed you're going to go, so you might want to get to the next station faster too bad the system says otherwise but that's not how it is for you, you get to be creative so.

Kenneth Vogt: that the other side of that then it's like oh you're required to be creative well how are you supposed to be creative where you got to have imagination.

Kenneth Vogt: and imagination is one of those things that the connects well with where we talked about in the last episode it often is in the realm of what you don't know you don't know so how am I supposed to be imaginative, how do I make this happen.

Kenneth Vogt: So that's what we're going to talk about today.

Kenneth Vogt: So, before I launch into this, I give you a chance to interject if you'd like niche.

Nick Oswald: I like that the way that you.

Nick Oswald: You segue from the last episode to this one.

Nick Oswald: How do you access what you what you don't know you don't know you do that through imagination and.

Nick Oswald: i'm interested to hear what you say about this.

Kenneth Vogt: yeah so.

Kenneth Vogt: I want to start off by pointing out that imagination is not the same is fantasy, and you know fantasies fun you just dream up all kinds of things Oh, if only it were like this.

Kenneth Vogt: that's fantasy imaginations a little bit different if you're going to make a statement like that in your imagination, if only were like this it's gonna be it's gonna be more like what if it's like this.

Kenneth Vogt: That you're you're going to consider it you're going to now you're gonna you're going to do more than just.

Kenneth Vogt: You know paint a fictional picture you're going to go well, if this were the case, what would have to be and what else would I need to know in in what else would be going on, so you gotta you gotta go past merely dreaming and dreaming fun and it's it's it can be stress relieving.

Kenneth Vogt: But dreaming doesn't get you very far you gotta you gotta up it in knowledge and imagination requires a little more engagement.

Kenneth Vogt: It means that you got to get involved with the ideas that that you come up with, and you gotta you gotta try and take them further and the thing about imagination is there's no guarantee.

Kenneth Vogt: That we're trying to imagine, something that you want to pursue and it's the data doesn't go anywhere.

Kenneth Vogt: And you got to be okay with that, because you know if you're going to get if you're going to get bummed out every time you come up with an idea that doesn't that doesn't work out.

Kenneth Vogt: you're going to stop coming up with ideas it it'll become too painful for you, so you get a it's got to be built into your approach to this that.

Kenneth Vogt: I have imagination, sometimes it comes true sometimes it doesn't sometimes it leads to the next thing and that's that's all fine doesn't matter which outcome, you get.

Kenneth Vogt: But I want to go back to something that we talked about.

Kenneth Vogt: Can episode 14 the title of that was don't seek results asked questions and i'm going to tell you something that sounds like it might that it might.

Kenneth Vogt: argue with that i'm going to tell you to pick an objective rather than a method or a protocol when you're using imagination.

Kenneth Vogt: Now, the reason that's different than this notion of seeking results, the seeking a specific result.

Kenneth Vogt: Is you know that's your specific, but having an objective is a little it's a little more general you know it's your you i'm talking about pick the vicinity that you're headed toward.

Kenneth Vogt: Not that you know we need this test to come out this way, but rather we're seeking we're seeking a certain kind of result and not a specific result but.

Kenneth Vogt: You know something I want to get something out of this where this is going to be, you know what's what's an example, this is going to be more fireproof.

Kenneth Vogt: Something very you know not specific to what y'all do I like to think that most biology doesn't have to worry about being fireproof but.

Kenneth Vogt: You know there's nothing wrong with seeking that, as a general objective now if you're make if you're seeking in an experiment that this experiment must come out that this is more prep fireproof no no that's not what I mean I mean that you're seeking something and you're still looking.

Kenneth Vogt: you're not seeking something specific you're still looking for something more general you've got your eyes open your your open minded about it and it doesn't have to doesn't have to work out certain way you don't have to get there by a certain path.

Kenneth Vogt: And a lot of times your imagination won't be about the endpoint it'll be about how you get to the endpoint so.

Kenneth Vogt: Again this is how you know it's different from fantasy because fantasy you just dream that it works out but imagination here and how am I going to make a workout but I was just going to get done what i'm what am I trying to accomplish here, and so it involves.

Kenneth Vogt: It involves mental engagement and I and and involves intellectual engagement there's nothing about this, this is that is just oh i'm pony and rainbow you know yeah you're you're really engaging yourself.

Nick Oswald: it's quite interesting actually when you think about it as a in terms of being a professional scientist that a lot of times people jump to that idea of imagination as being a thing that.

Nick Oswald: Is kind of a rainbows and unicorns thing or it's not it's not rational thinking and so why you know kind of.

Nick Oswald: As don't play it a bit, but actually when you think about what imagination, rather than fantasizing actually as its as as the genesis of ideas and so actually being a scientist requires a lot of imagination you to imagine imagine the.

Nick Oswald: The design of an experiment before you can set up, you can examine, you need to imagine.

Nick Oswald: You know what are the possibilities for the mechanism, you know from mechanism that you're the different mechanisms you're studying what offer a mechanism you're studying, you have to imagine the different possible.

Nick Oswald: mechanisms that are you know the earth that could be could be what the final answers.

Nick Oswald: So that you have to allow yourself to explore that in your imagination before you can ever make it into an experiment and then translate that into a scientific fact.

Kenneth Vogt: Exactly and in effect and add on to what you're pointing out there.

Kenneth Vogt: Most of you out there you're actually fairly good at this already.

Kenneth Vogt: You wouldn't be where you are, if you hadn't already exhibited an affinity for this and, as I mentioned earlier you're quite fortunate that you.

Kenneth Vogt: Have a career where this is even among the possibilities, but don't sell yourself short, if you've gotten, to the point you're at right now.

Kenneth Vogt: If you're actually in the lab if you've actually got a PhD shoot if you got a master's degree you've already proven that you're good at this so so don't don't sell yourself short give yourself a chance to keep flowering with it.

Nick Oswald: So you're going to give us some some ways to supercharge that imagination, so that makes it a process I guess.

yeah.

Nick Oswald: To get better results too, so the results would be what to be better at coming up with new ideas and or what's, what are the benefits of your thinking.

Kenneth Vogt: yeah part of it will be giving yourself more sources for new ideas part of it will be coming up with better ideas and more engaged ideas, if I.

Kenneth Vogt: could put it that way, then it'll apply to what you're doing so, one of the things that has to start with is your your own outlook.

Nick Oswald: If.

Kenneth Vogt: If it really bothers you.

Kenneth Vogt: Other people.

Kenneth Vogt: shoot at your ideas you're gonna have a hard time you gotta steal up a little bit you gotta yet you've got to be willing to extend yourself and not take it personal and remember these ideas they're.

Kenneth Vogt: they're just ideas they are you they don't represent who you are and and here's an interesting little little experiment, we can do you know.

Kenneth Vogt: We all have thoughts right thoughts come into our head all day long all day long there's this chatter going on in your head well that's That is where imagination, will take place now, a lot of that chatter maybe the same old same old same old same old.

Kenneth Vogt: So you got to get apart the quiet down a little bit so you can hear other things, but notice the way i'm putting that you have to hear them.

Kenneth Vogt: We like to think that we think up our thoughts, but that's that particularly true in fact most thoughts that come into our head we didn't have any idea, they were going to arrive there until they arrived.

Kenneth Vogt: thoughts are things that we hear.

Kenneth Vogt: We think our brain is creating thoughts know our brain is receiving thoughts it's more like a radio transmitter Well, I can transmit also but you know.

Kenneth Vogt: When it comes to these thoughts there for the most part, just wandering and by and we've all had that experience we've had a hunch about something that just something just popped into our head you like, where did that come from.

Kenneth Vogt: Well, it just came from us being open to hearing it so so realize that if you just give yourself a moment.

Kenneth Vogt: You can get all kinds of great ideas and the inputs will keep coming and they'll come from all over the place now part of that you can direct so you know, for instance.

Kenneth Vogt: there's nothing wrong with you know reading a new paper or or you know, a journal in your field.

Kenneth Vogt: To to get ideas that that's that's a great idea this that that's a great thought it'll it'll help you get inputs.

Kenneth Vogt: Often, you can get input from unrelated sources, and I would I would recommend you that you broaden your interest because you'd be surprised, where you will find.

Kenneth Vogt: Things that will then apply to what you do at the bench in the lab you know you might realize something when you're in the kitchen.

Kenneth Vogt: And cooking using a cookbook and go wow you know what I could use I could use this technique or there reminds me of something that I can do, back in the lab it might be, it might be something else you might be.

Kenneth Vogt: Listening to some music, you might be working on your car, you might be cutting your grass, you know you might be folding laundry you might be reading a novel yeah it can be any number of things.

Kenneth Vogt: don't structure yourself in such a way that everything has to be the only thing that I apply here at work is that are the things that are apply here at work, because that's that's just not how life works, we get ideas from all over the place.

Nick Oswald: and try some sort of couple of observations on that, from my personal experience.

Nick Oswald: And I think I guess most people listen to this will have experienced the first one, and that is that one way to get really inspired for ideas and things is to go to a conference, because when you see what other people are doing.

Nick Oswald: You know, in your field, and so on, that are feed into your idea, you know feed into your imagination and you'll come away with tons of ideas and just allow that to happen that's a great thing, because then you go back not only inspired, but you have different viewpoints.

Nick Oswald: and so on, and also in my kind of technical career, I was lucky enough to work in two different environments that were really inspiring.

Nick Oswald: One was where I was working with an A in a company, so I was a biologist and I was working in a company, where the team can included engineers and computer scientists and so on.

Nick Oswald: And it was really inspiring to see it was really fertile, for you know for ideas to speak to work with those people who have a completely different approaches to.

Nick Oswald: To the same problem, you know that the way that an engineer thanks is completely different from the way that a biologist thinks.

Kenneth Vogt: Oh, and as a tourist.

Nick Oswald: But when you put them both together that's really quite it's all really quite an amazing experience and the same another company or watching it was biologists and chemists and again the way that those two sets of scientists think is really different and.

Nick Oswald: And I find it really good for my not only on my purse my professional development, but just my personal development to realize that.

Nick Oswald: being stuck in one mode of thinking is quite restrictive and to open yourself up to other modes of thinking is a great thing to do.

Kenneth Vogt: Right in from from the outside, in you know i'm.

Kenneth Vogt: As i've stated many times i'm not a scientist, you know computer scientist if i'm going to go that far, but.

Kenneth Vogt: For those of us over here on our side of this looking at y'all.

Kenneth Vogt: chemist and biologist it's just another scientist us we don't even realize the difference.

Kenneth Vogt: And, of course, you know there's a vast difference and so take advantage of those differences, you know recognize that there's something there's another way to see the world everything we're doing is through perspective.

Kenneth Vogt: And our perspective is has been honed and in schooled and especially for somebody who gets to a high level of education they've been very path into a particular perspective.

Kenneth Vogt: And and i'm sure you know, people like that that i've taken a they take a certain view of the field and they just can't break out of it yeah.

Nick Oswald: I think it's just as valuable I would suspect there are a lot of people listening to this we don't realize.

Nick Oswald: The biologists and chemists think differently, because they don't realize that well because they because they've worked with biologists all of their lives and until you're exposed to that, I mean.

Nick Oswald: The chaos that I started working with of surprise that that we biologists thought it's it's just two different approaches to the same problem.

Nick Oswald: And unless you expose yourself to the other side you probably don't even know how restrictive your own mindset as sure and it's just been taught it's not a bad thing it's just it's.

Nick Oswald: A mode of thinking.

Nick Oswald: And it's to get yourself exposed to other ones as a really valuable thing to do, whether that's through doing a course I find myself when I was working with chemists.

Nick Oswald: Doing online or listening to chemistry lectures online and stuff so that you could you could get into that way of thinking, and you know so that was another way to do it, I just think whatever you can do to to soften up your.

Nick Oswald: Your thought processes and and just look at things from as many different angles, as possible as a good thing.

Kenneth Vogt: Absolutely, so I want to go back to something you said earlier.

Nick Oswald: You talked about.

Kenneth Vogt: The value of going to conferences, because.

Kenneth Vogt: Again, that gets you rubbing shoulders with other people who have other that are doing other thinking, but it's sometimes the getting out of the lab is what it is, it isn't even it doesn't even matter what it is to in, for instance.

Kenneth Vogt: In the years of work with Nick something that I have, I have i've noted over and over again when Nick goes on vacation he comes back with a lot of ideas.

Kenneth Vogt: And it has happened over and over again, and to the point where I practically have to steal myself for when he returns because Oh, my goodness the floodgates will have open so give yourself a chance, sometimes to remove all the inputs don't don't.

Kenneth Vogt: Listen to anything or.

Kenneth Vogt: Anybody just let your mind be silent for a minute and see what wanders interview, and you may get fascinating ideas.

Kenneth Vogt: So I wanna I want to point to something very specific about this and you know and our reference an old book written in the 1930s, but it's a it's a seminal work it's it's the greatest self help book by sales ever it's called thinking grow rich.

By Napoleon hill.

Kenneth Vogt: Now I realized this may not be everybody's cup of tea, but but bear with me for a minute and hear me out on this Napoleon hill he went and he interviewed.

Kenneth Vogt: All of the the most successful industrialists of his time you know men like Andrew Carnegie.

Kenneth Vogt: And, once he got access to one he had access to the rest so.

Kenneth Vogt: Hello.

Nick Oswald: yep.

Kenneth Vogt: Okay, I just got a message that said I signed out of something Internet you have it was.

Nick Oswald: you're still here.

Kenneth Vogt: Okay okay i'm glad i'm still here so anyway.

They didn't read.

Kenneth Vogt: You get a chance to talk to all these these very successful people, and I know, and I say successful I mean.

Kenneth Vogt: In terms of you know they made a lot of money and in new build big companies and things like that I realized success can be measured in many ways, but.

Kenneth Vogt: But you know they were they were unique and remarkable people who had accomplished big things, but he started to see patterns in what they did, and he interviewed.

Kenneth Vogt: Also, Thomas Edison and Just to give you an idea, the kind of people do you went after but he found that there are patterns of things that people did.

Kenneth Vogt: In one of the things they did was visualization and we've all heard of the idea of visualize things.

Kenneth Vogt: So you know if you visualize your your experiment coming up properly, that is, you know that the experiment will fail, not that it gets a certain result.

Kenneth Vogt: If you do that visual as you often can head off problems or you can often see opportunities to improve things just by thinking about it just by.

Kenneth Vogt: By visualizing how it would work, so a certain people that he interviewed had some very specific ways of doing visualizations and some of them had had add remarkable visualizations that came from just from dreams and i'm not telling you that to you know.

Kenneth Vogt: That you should be dissecting your dreams i'm talking about dreams that they don't need to be.

Kenneth Vogt: Translated i'm talking about things that they realized in a dream and they work on oh that's a good idea for instance the guy that invented invented the electric sewing machine His name was Elias house.

Kenneth Vogt: And he had a dream, where he'd been captured by cannibals and had been putting up in a boiling cauldron.

Kenneth Vogt: And he when he tried to get out they kept stopping him by spheres that we're going up and down and they had a whole and in the end of the sphere.

Kenneth Vogt: Now, if any of you had a mother like I did, who did a lot of sewing had a sewing machine, you know that that a needle that you use by hand has a whole.

Kenneth Vogt: Another foreign from the pointy end of the Nice, but the needles Anna sewing machine, the whole is near the point.

Kenneth Vogt: And that was what he saw in his dream and he woke up with that realization goes that's that's the solution to my problem and that's how he was able to.

Kenneth Vogt: to invent sewing machine, you know, and that was a critical factor that that is still present in sewing machines today now in his case.

Kenneth Vogt: This is just he just happened to you know, have a dream and think of that but Thomas Edison would go out of his way he would literally take NAPs so that he could dream, so he would have a problem in mind that he couldn't come up with a solution to so he would go take a nap.

Kenneth Vogt: And by the way, I can really recommend NAPs they're they're very useful for all kinds of purposes and I realized that it may not be possible when you're at the lab but.

Kenneth Vogt: There are other there are other times, maybe it is but set yourself up you know if you're gonna you know a lot of times people they can't sleep because of their thoughts, what if.

Kenneth Vogt: When you're trying to go to sleep you go, you know what I need to go to sleep, because when I sleep, maybe i'll come up with an idea here.

Kenneth Vogt: So you give yourself permission to go to sleep, then, and maybe you do come up with an idea and so it's just an interesting way of going about doing visualization.

Kenneth Vogt: Now all of this stuff everything we pretty much talked about up till now can be pretty private you don't have to tell anybody you're doing it.

Kenneth Vogt: Because if you're worried that people are going to think i'm nuts, that I did i'm taking a nap to get an idea, you know pull fine don't engage them in that.

Kenneth Vogt: you're going to have to involve other people in this, you know how to get other people's permission or their approval or any of the rest of it.

Kenneth Vogt: However, sometimes it is a good idea to get other people involved, and if you you, especially if you have a.

Kenneth Vogt: You know, a really big problem that you're trying to overcome, and maybe it's not just you maybe to your whole group is trying to overcome it's a good idea to come together and it's good idea to brainstorm and brainstorming.

Kenneth Vogt: It again everybody probably think so I know what brainstorming is man, maybe you do, maybe you know.

Kenneth Vogt: The idea of brainstorming in a group is getting people together.

Kenneth Vogt: And having them give each other ideas to trigger them to things so you've got to create an environment where there's no rules where anything can be done.

Kenneth Vogt: Where there are no bad ideas, everything is on the table and and so you're they asked me rules to stop people from badmouthing somebody's idea.

Kenneth Vogt: So somebody says something you know I got this crazy idea what if we did this and somebody goes that's stupid no you can't have that because it stifles people that it stops them.

Kenneth Vogt: Let people say whatever and see what it triggers and often it isn't the what they bring up that matters it's what the next person brings up.

Kenneth Vogt: So that thing that is stupid triggers something that isn't stupid, so you got to give it a chance and It made me think of the movie Apollo 13 with Tom Hanks which was really a great movie I think.

Kenneth Vogt: Going across Apollo 13 years is the the flight that really went bad where they were trying to go to the moon, but they but.

Kenneth Vogt: But something went wrong on the craft and they barely made it back alive, but they somehow did and at one point, a problem they were having.

Kenneth Vogt: was that there was too much carbon dioxide being expelled by the astronauts into their own atmosphere, and so they were starting to have some real problems, and it was going to kill them if they didn't do something about it and so back at NASA.

Kenneth Vogt: One of the same number of scientists got together one of them, took a box and dumped it out on the table and says, these are the things that are available on the craft that we can work with, we need to make a CO2 scrubber and it was you know some tubes and some some.

Kenneth Vogt: You know, some some netting and you know, whatever whatever it was, but just a pile of stuff.

Kenneth Vogt: And that was a brainstorming session here's what we got what are we going to do with it and and they figured it out.

Kenneth Vogt: And yeah I mean that's a real life story and that's you want to talk about science, it has to be done on the fly I mean these.

Kenneth Vogt: These guys are about to die, they had to do something now and they got it done, you know really was was an amazing thing.

Kenneth Vogt: And I imagine and correct me if i'm wrong here in this Nick but you know being biologists you deal with living things in in really does matter.

Kenneth Vogt: How quickly you do things there, there are times when, if you don't get something done in a certain timeframe things that so would that be a correct way of assessing things.

Nick Oswald: Sure by guests that then that's going to be in a plant protocol, I would have said okay i'm so it's not there's not there's no life saving.

Nick Oswald: scenario there.

Kenneth Vogt: that's hardening is it takes a little pressure off y'all.

Nick Oswald: But one thing that is interesting, though, is that, from what you were saying is you know you're talking about these ideas of visual visualization and so on.

Nick Oswald: And I used to think of that as being quite we're quite you know well, if you visualize then you're you know it's somehow.

Nick Oswald: You know you're trying to magic something to happen, because you imagine that it's not that at all it's just taking your brain through the motions, you know, and you know my a few.

Nick Oswald: you'd sports be here port sports people doing it all the time, where they'll just run through their routine, for whatever as they do, and they just run it over and over and over again until the brain becomes used to that.

Nick Oswald: That pathway and just and just you know just follows it and it's the same here all you're doing is you're running through your what how you imagine the experiment could go.

Nick Oswald: or or whatever our how the talk could go, you know you're doing a presentation, or whatever, and you get your brain literally used to that scenario or immersed in that scenario, so that it can come up with ideas or develop a habit, or whatever you need for that situation.

Kenneth Vogt: Here watching.

Kenneth Vogt: This one well known account that that had to do with a man named Jim Thorpe who was an Olympic athlete who, as any American team and was was that the last Olympics that were held in Germany right before World War Two and.

Kenneth Vogt: As at that time to get to Europe, you talk about you know the they were sailing over so he's sailing over with a bunch of.

Kenneth Vogt: Olympic athletes and they're all on deck and near exercising and doing what they do, for whatever their field is.

Kenneth Vogt: use a year in the decathlon so he did a lot of different things, but he was always just sitting there in a deck chair.

Kenneth Vogt: And people are like why aren't you exercising why aren't you aren't you working out, you know he is, I am in my mind, and he was playing through in his mind.

Kenneth Vogt: He was each of his events and he went to went to Munich and he was you know he he won over and over and over again, he was he was very, very successful.

Kenneth Vogt: And you might think well that doesn't even make sense, I mean your body's got to be involved in this, yes to know your mind is to be involved too.

Kenneth Vogt: And we do have that we are aware that it's we have not just the conscious mind but it's subconscious mind.

Kenneth Vogt: Well, if you can engage your subconscious mind that's where all these ideas are going to pop into you're going to you're going to.

Kenneth Vogt: connect with them there now i've got another link that will be in the show notes here and it, it talks about a specific technique that Napoleon hill talked about and think and grow rich and it's it's basically to create an imaginary Council so imagine you could have.

Kenneth Vogt: The best counselors in human history or even beyond human history, they can be fictional people, you can choose to have them as counselors so imagine you assemble a Council that that's you know got whoever you want it's got Aristotle and it's it's it's got you know.

Kenneth Vogt: Think of somebody it's got Superman you know it can be anything you want.

Kenneth Vogt: and

Kenneth Vogt: where you can you can have a conversation with them and get answers to things, and it is shockingly effective.

Kenneth Vogt: And so i've got another link to something that's the that's entitled tap into the power of the subconscious mind with visualization.

Kenneth Vogt: And it will show you exactly how to do that, according to the protocol that that Napoleon hill came up with which he got from people like Thomas Edison Andrew Carnegie and others so.

Kenneth Vogt: it's a long, long, long time tested method and i've used it myself for many years and I and it's morphed over time, you know.

Kenneth Vogt: i've changed out counselors over time, because you know what applies in a certain circumstance, you know, maybe right now i'd be better off with.

Kenneth Vogt: You know, with Francis Crick then then mohandas Gandhi, you know, whatever I want to do you know it it's all open season it's just it's all your own imagination, so you get to play with it as far as you want to.

Kenneth Vogt: And if you think about some of the people that we think of in life is being very imaginative like Henry Ford or Walt Disney.

Kenneth Vogt: They created amazing things now and I will openly grant you that they those two people are as an example, were very flawed characters.

Kenneth Vogt: As far as you know where they were personally but it just goes to show you don't have to be perfect, you can be kind of a regular human being and still succeed at this.

Kenneth Vogt: So you know there's a lot of opportunity there for you to come up with with all kinds of new ideas to really have some imagination to go beyond just I wish you were better I wish the laws of physics were different, you know to wait a minute I got an idea.

Kenneth Vogt: And you're having Eureka moments on a regular basis, if you want to talk about an endorphin rush man it's the way to go.

Nick Oswald: yeah definitely not a book that you talked about thinking grow rich.

Nick Oswald: it's an interesting one, because.

Nick Oswald: I as far as I understand it anyway it's not about just it's not about just the becoming financially rich.

Kenneth Vogt: Good point.

Nick Oswald: it's actually about you know being rich and ideas and success.

Kenneth Vogt: or successes assign ritual or.

Nick Oswald: Whatever you want and it's about using as a boat as quite a read actually um but it's a it's a boat different different ways to harness your.

Nick Oswald: Your imagination to open up possibilities for yourself, I would say yeah.

Kenneth Vogt: yeah that is a very good point, this is not a book about money, although it could be applied to that if that.

Kenneth Vogt: motivates you if that's what.

Kenneth Vogt: yeah whatever it is the youth feel makes life rich This applies and what's interesting about it's an easy read you know and it's it's very.

Kenneth Vogt: it's very quaint in its language you know written in the 1930s it's got a certain voice to it, so it again it that it's just another way of realizing he looked the world quite a bit different than the way we look at the world today it's it's pretty interesting.

Nick Oswald: that's The interesting thing what I think about books like that is that it might not be your cup of tea, but it's like going and working with.

Nick Oswald: engineers for a while, your head you're getting into the brain of someone who an insight into the brain of someone who's looking at the world in a different way from you, and so, even if you only take one.

Nick Oswald: One idea from it, or one improvement and viewpoint, or something like that from it that's worth it doesn't have to be that you.

Nick Oswald: Completely take on board the whole thing and follow as he does he suggests adjust layers on an idea that you can then use to or some ideas that you can then use or not use depending on on what you think of them.

Kenneth Vogt: yeah indeed and there's a lot of ideas in that book it's not just the visualization thing you really he's got a lot of concepts that he wants to get across but what's interesting about this, this is not.

Kenneth Vogt: You know this is not the devil's Bible, you know that.

Kenneth Vogt: kind of thing, where you go I can't read that that just flies in the face of everything I believe in well it's not like that.

Kenneth Vogt: And, in fact, a lot of the things that we recommend in this channel, I mean it might be podcasts I might be books yeah they're they're a little far afield from what you're used to.

Kenneth Vogt: But, believe me, they can still they can still dovetailing just fine and and there's so much to be gained by having another perspective.

Kenneth Vogt: And you don't have to totally change your view of the world here, but to just open your mind up a little bit so you know, there is a different view of the world is very useful yeah definitely.

Nick Oswald: and getting as many of those different viewpoints, as you can is really useful yeah.

Kenneth Vogt: Right well that's about all i've got for today and acting anything else you'd like to add.

Nick Oswald: I know just the usual housekeeping stuff that if you want to do you have anything in the show notes of interested, they can.

Nick Oswald: watch this stuff and send you.

Kenneth Vogt: The link to thinking or rich the link to tap into the power of the subconscious mind and visualization.

Kenneth Vogt: that's a it's a short read and a little video, if you want to watch that it's really useful.

Kenneth Vogt: And then i'll remind you to go back to episode 14 don't seek results asked questions to hear a little different perspective on this.

Nick Oswald: very nice somebody that's that's taken every half of my job, the okay so.

Nick Oswald: So if you want to see those show notes you go to bite sized bo.com forward slash the happy scientist and go to episode 33 how to foster imagination and you'll find the show notes right there.

Nick Oswald: You can also find us on facebook.com forward slash the happy scientist club and remember that if you've not done so already go back and listen to episode one tonight of this podcast if you haven't done that already then and you and you.

Nick Oswald: You find this material interesting I episodes one two name contains some stuff that you might find very interesting for your foundational development.

Nick Oswald: And I think that's a wrap for today, Ken so again, thank you for imagining this episode.

Kenneth Vogt: Thank you.

Nick Oswald: And we'll see you all next time.