You can harness your mind for creativity and dramatically increase your ability to succeed.

The key to harnessing your mind is to utilize it at times when you have often allowed it to wander unproductively. Those times are powerful moments for your conscious and unconscious minds to work together on solving a problem.

What do I mean? Think about it like this. How many times have you driven down the road, or been a passenger in a car, and you are just staring out at the scenery as it flows by, with no conscious thoughts in your mind? You might go 10 or 15 minutes – or more – without even being aware of what is going on inside or outside of the car.

These are creativity moments – if you can train your brain to use them.

Create a Picture of the Problem

Instead of allowing your mind to just wander aimlessly, give it something to crank on. Picture a problem you are working on and define it in as much detail as you can mentally. Don’t focus on what you’ve done to solve it, or tried to do. Just create a strong mental picture of the issue at hand.

Harness Your Mind

Now harness your mind for the creativity boost. Allow yourself to free associate various issues surrounding the problem. Don’t try to control the process. Just let your mind wander, gently pushing it back towards the problem if you wander off course. If your mind jumps on something that you haven’t considered before, try to relax and gradually allow that thought to come to the forefront.

You need to treat these ideas with care and gentleness. If you grasp too tightly, it will squirt out of your brain and run away. Just ease towards it like you are reaching for a butterfly – slowly, gently, carefully. And embrace the idea.

Building Your Ideas

Now comes the fun part. Build that idea into its own deep thought. Focus on it and again allow your mind to wander, savoring the idea, exploring it fully. But never pushing too hard.

If you have another aha! moment, start the process again. See if you can begin to build a tapestry of these ideas, finding interconnection points, trying to slide pieces together into a bigger picture. If something doesn’t fit, bring it to the forefront of your mind as a “problem issue” and apply your creative mind to it. Does it start to fit? Or is it too far outside the box?

Your mind is a powerful instrument, and you should harness its creative power and put it to work. Any time you are doing something that doesn’t require serious thought – driving, walking, cleaning house, washing dishes, taking a shower – you can shift your focus to something that needs your attention.

Thoughts, ideas, problems. Anything that needs gentle guidance to escape the trap of a boxed-in mind. Creativity is all about thinking outside the box and seeing patterns in seemingly unrelated things. Harness your mind and apply it to these issues, and you’ll have a powerful outside-the-box thinking and problem-solving tool.

Categories: Entrepreneur, General, Home Business, Online Marketing, Productivity
Tags: creativity, harness your mind, Productivity, think outside the box