You know when you're a child and your imagination is limitless

“You know when you're a child and your imagination is limitless and you really believe in magic? I thought I had super powers,” said Michelle Phan, the pioneer of digital artistry and a dreamer who built an empire from creativity and vision. Her words echo with the innocent music of youth, yet they also conceal a profound truth about the power of imagination and the loss of wonder that too often comes with growing older. In her reflection lies the longing of every soul that has once believed in magic — that radiant state where the world feels infinite and every breath holds possibility.

When Phan recalls her childhood belief that she possessed super powers, she is not confessing foolishness but revealing the divine spark that glows within all children — the natural conviction that life is more than what the eyes can see. To the child, the world is a realm of enchantment: the wind whispers secrets, the stars sing, and the heart holds no boundary between the real and the impossible. This limitless imagination is not naivety; it is the soul’s most ancient wisdom. For before reason narrows the mind, imagination opens it wide, showing us that faith, creativity, and courage are themselves forms of magic.

The ancients understood this well. The philosopher Plato taught that before a man can build a city, he must first imagine it; before a hero can act, he must believe he is capable of greatness. Every invention, every poem, every revolution began as a child’s dream. And so, when Michelle Phan speaks of magic and super powers, she is also speaking of the divine capacity to create, to shape the world through vision. What she once called “super powers” as a child became, in truth, her creative gifts — the ability to transform art, technology, and storytelling into new worlds of beauty.

Consider the story of Walt Disney, who, as a boy in Missouri, would sit on a hillside sketching animals and imagining entire worlds within his mind. His teachers scolded him for daydreaming, for believing in what was “unreal.” Yet those same dreams would one day give birth to a kingdom of imagination visited by millions. Like Phan, Disney refused to let the world strip away the childlike belief in magic. He carried it into adulthood, turning imagination into reality, and wonder into legacy.

Phan’s words also carry a lament — for as we age, society teaches us to abandon the magical, to trade our wings for the weight of reason. We are told to “grow up,” to stop pretending, to be practical. Yet in doing so, many forget how to dream. The limitless imagination that once made us feel powerful becomes locked away, dismissed as childish fantasy. But the wise know that this imagination never dies; it only sleeps, waiting for those brave enough to awaken it again. To believe in magic as an adult is not to be foolish — it is to remember what the soul has always known: that creation begins in belief.

Thus, the teaching of this quote is both gentle and profound: do not lose the child within you. The child who believes in super powers is the same one who grows into the artist, the inventor, the visionary. Nurture your imagination; let it run wild as it once did. Do not be ashamed to dream beyond reason or to see beauty where others see nothing. For it is imagination that reveals unseen paths and gives courage to the heart. The world belongs not to the cynical, but to the imaginative — those who can still see magic even in the ordinary.

And so, dear listener, remember Michelle Phan’s wisdom: that within you still lives the child who believed in the impossible. Feed that wonder, and you will rediscover your own super powers — the strength to create, to endure, to transform. The imagination you once wielded in play is the same force that moves mountains and shapes destinies. Guard it well, and let it guide you. For those who keep their imagination alive do not merely live in the world — they reimagine it.