Each intelligence has a core set of capacities which are involved in its actual functioning. These are almost like “sub-intelligences”. If you are wanting to improve, enhance, or otherwise strengthen an intelligence, you must work at the level of developing the full range of its capacities.

Study these capacities and think about how you use them in your life and you’ll gain a fuller sense and understanding of your own ImageSmart.

The first task for more fully understanding and enhancing your ImageSmart capacities is learning to speak the unique language of this intelligence; that is, learning to decipher its special jargon, to understand its vernacular, and being willing to immerse yourself in its various operating modalities.

The language and operating modality of ImageSmart is that of colors, shapes, designs, texture, patterns, images, pictures, and visual symbols.

Once you understand the different dimensions and aspects of ImageSmart it is important that you focus on using them on a fairly regular basis. As with any capacity we have developed in our life, regular, consistent practice makes perfect.

Following is a description of each capacity and a place for you to type your reflections on how each of the capacities tend to show up in your daily life, AND what you can do to exercise it or use is more.

(Just type your thoughts in the boxes provided. At the bottom is a "print button" so you can save your work.)

ACTIVE IMAGINATION

Remember when you were a kid and you would lie on your back and look up at the clouds and find animals, faces, object, and different scenes? This capacity is called active imagination. You can use your active imagination in many situations with or without lying on your back and looking at clouds!

FORMING MENTAL IMAGES

This capacity allows you to picture things inside your head. You use this when you are trying to remember where you parked your car, where you last used your glasses when you can’t seem to find them, or when you are reading a novel and you create mental images of what is on the written page.

FINDING YOUR WAY IN SPACE

How good are you at following directions for getting from one place to another? Some people are never lost! Others are never found! The capacity is part of the spatial side of ImageSmart capacities.

GRAPHIC REPRESENTATION

This is the capacity to create visual illustrations to enhance communication of an idea, concept, emotion, process, or intuition. This includes such things as photography, sculpture, drawing, painting, videos, flow charts, and collages.

RECOGNIZING RELATIONSHIPS OF OBJECTS IN SPACE

Another spatial capacity of ImageSmart is understanding relationships of objects in space. How good are you at parallel parking a car? Can you “sink” a basket ball into the the hoop more times than not? When playing chess or checkers, can you see the whole board and plan your next move in light of this?

MENTAL MANIPULATION OF IMAGES

When you are looking at an “optical illusion” such as the classic two faces that are also a vase, or the old woman who is also a beautiful princess, can you mentally make these images shift back and forth? Can you see the 3-D images in the various “Magic Eye®” type pictures?

ACCURATE PERCEPTION FROM DIFFERENT ANGLES

Have you ever noticed how, if you show a very young child an object from several different angles or perspectives, they will sometimes think you have shown them different objects? This capacity is the very complex, often taken-for-granted, ability to recognize similarities and differences between objects from very different vantage points.