Prime Your Brain
Have you ever wished that you could come up with more creative
ideas? Well you can, you just need to know how to prime the
creative portions of your brain and then once they are revved up
and creating great ideas, how to maintain that level of
production.
The method for this is simple as long as you remember that your
brain isn't a big computer. You can't just punch in something
and have it spit the answer back out. Like all organic things,
you have to nurture it for a bit before you see a result, and
then maintain it, or won't thrive. But the good news is that as
once you know the three step process for priming your creativity
and the maintenance technique, you can keep the process going
with very little effort on your part. Just try it, it's easy.
1. Figure out what kind of idea you are trying to come up with
and think really hard about it. Rack your brain for the idea,
but don't be discouraged if you come up with absolutely nothing
good. You are really only planting the seeds right now.
2. Let it rest and turn your attention to something else. Your
subconscious will continue to work on the problem while you go
about your business. In fact if you keep obsessing about the
matter, you will prevent the creative connections from being
made. You must chill out and have absolute faith that something
will come to you.
3. Periodically (once a day at least) mull the problem over, but
don't get yourself all worked up and don't obsess. Just check in
and see if you can think of something. What this last step does
is to remind your subconscious of what it's supposed to be
working on.
In using this technique, you will find that you start coming up
with all kinds of interesting ideas at odd times. You will
likely come up with great ideas for all the different areas in
your life. When each of these come to you, immediately write
them down before you lose them (it pays to keep a pen and paper
on you at all times, including next to the bed at night), then
when you have recorded your brainstorm, spend a few seconds
thinking about the original problem again to redirect your brain
back on track.
At some point the answer to the original problem will
crystallize for you, but don't let the process stop there. You
can keep the level of idea production up (and ramp it up even
higher), if you always take care to record each idea as it comes
to you and mentally ask yourself for more. It's all about supply
and demand. If you ever stop recording your ideas, or try to
just remember it and intend to write it down later, you will
shut down the creative process quickly. It's as if your brain
spends so much energy trying to retain it's previous ideas that
it has none left to create new. You must get the old ones out of
the way if you want new ones to occur.
So that's it in a nutshell. Prime your brain and get it working
at a high output, and then keep it producing at that level by
clearing out the old stuff to make way for the new. It's simple,
it's easy, and it works.