When I was introduced to Mind Mapping about ten years ago, I discovered a tool that increased my creativity and productivity by leaps and bounds.
Like many people, I just started using what I thought was mind mapping software without even looking at the manual. A course I attended with Andrew Wilcox on Mind Jet’s Mind Manager opened my eyes incredibly.
Mind Mapping had so many applications. Not only could it be used to sort your To Do lists but there are a plethora of business applications like taking meeting minutes, project planning, Six Sigma and even writing a whole book or building a web site.
While this course opened my eyes it was only when I trained with Tony Buzan and became an iMindmap Licensed Instructor that my mind was opened. I learned about the power of freely associative Mind Mapping and how to really use them in the creative process. I discovered how they get the left and right brain working on the same task in harmony – I learned the power of Whole Brain Thinking.
I also learned the power of a good map using just pencil and paper and how to use them to great effect in my creative writing courses and one to one mentoring with authors.
I started then to research the psychology of Mind Mapping and how they trigger our neurology and get stored in it. Along the way though working with my clients removing creative blocks, I discovered something remarkable.
As amazing as Mind Maps are, nearly all the software tools and training programmes out there seem to promote the mapping of the brain only. That is, they help map the conscious mind processes in the outer cortex of our two brain hemispheres.
They take no account of the other active mind centres in our body like the gut and heart minds, now recognised by some more open minded neuroscientists as active centres of consciousness. No account either was made for the collective mind ’outside’ our bodies.
“Most so-called Mind Maps are merely ‘Brain Maps’!! They miss huge amounts of data from the whole gamut of our sensory inputs.”
Start Living Timefully to find more resources and templates for Whole Mind Mapping and loads of other mind transforming tools
If you read and acted on the last post in this series, Seven Ways to Block Light Bulb Moments, well done – you’ve set up the conditions whereby light bulb moments to come your way.
Rather than waiting for them to come in randomly though, there’s a few things you can do to stir them up and encourage them to occur.
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1. Environment
There is clutter and clutter. A completely sterile and clinically clean environment might look nice but will not stimulate the brain. On the flip side, a desk with piles of unfinished business piling up in an In Tray or covered in Post It Notes of things to do, can have a negative effect. A balance is recommended which implies a buzz is happening with positive results and sales wins are clear for all to see. Fill your office with creative resources such as white boards and a book library and ensure a room or space is available for people to meet and be inspiring.
2. Celebrate Success
In our busy days, we sometimes forget to take time out to pat ourselves on the back. This doesn’t mean you have to take the whole team down the pub every time you get a sale in. Have a stack of Mar Bars or a pile of iTunes or Amazon vouchers and dish them out appropriately.
3. Map your Minds
Mind Mapping is one of the most powerful and coolest tools for stirring up creativity. They can either be used for free association or to get your thoughts in order, plan a project or design a product or service. See Mapping your Mind for more on this. They become especially powerful when you work on them collectively and collaboratively. The maxim two heads are better than one grows exponentially when more heads get involved.
4. Appreciative Review
We can spend a fair amount of time analysing what went wrong. The culture of public enquiries and tendency of the press to report everything that’s bad just serves to fuel this type of negativity. When something ‘goes right’, there is much to be gained from working out what you did that was so good and then applying that wisdom to other processes in the business. Different parts of the brain get involved with this process and you will be amazed at the results.
5. Breathing
Breathing is something we all have to do, yet most people breathe very shallowly. Our neurons don’t store oxygen yet need it to function so learning to breathe properly and to pump prime your brain has great benefits to both creativity, health and well-being. Listen to this Getting in the Zone visualisation for 11 minutes – and why not play it at the start of your next creative meeting.
6. Meditation
Many people think it’s impossible to meditate and make their minds go quiet. In our busy days, the idea of wasting 10-20 minutes meditating sounds horrendous. I can testify personally that the days that I don’t meditate don’t flow so well and that when I meditate my days seem to be full of good luck, chance encounters and clients that seem to find me ‘by accident’. Listen to How to Quieten Your Mind to experience the meditative state.
7. Trust your Gut
The most successful business people pride themselves on trusting their gut. It is now known by neuroscientists that our gut has more neurons than a cat’s brain and works about 5 to 10 seconds ahead of our conscious awareness. Using a combination of right breathing and meditation, you can tune into your gut mind and communicate ‘consciously’ with it. The results you get from learning this technique are simply mind blowing.
When I trained as an iMindmap Instructor a few years ago, I was introduced to the concept of limiting each branch of the map to a single word. At first, I didn’t go along with this idea as I thought the application of any ‘rule’ might limit the creative flow. Once I learned, however, to see it as a discipline as opposed to a draconian rule, the benefits and reasoning behind it became crystal clear.
A year or so ago, I was stuck on chapter 9 of of my book on Light Bulb Moments. It wasn’t flowing so I used Tony Buzan’s technique of free association Mind Mapping on the words “light”, “bulb” and “moment”. Now had I mapped using the phrase “light bulb moment”, my mind might have been lead to “Edison” and then “phonograph” or “Topsy the Elephant” (Google it) or to “Eureka”, “Archimedes” and “bath water”.
Instead, as you can see on the map below, “Bulb” took me to “tulip” and to “Amsterdam”. The word “Moment” in isolation made me realise we have a moment in time and the moment of a lever around a fulcrum. As a result, I started a series of podcasts called “Moments of Light” in which people talk about how they had a light bulb moment and did something with it.
The word “light” as you might imagine provided a deep and wide source of metaphor and association. Light of course can be split into a spectrum of component colours. It made me realise that quantum physicists ascribe many attributes like spin, colour and flavour to exotic particles like quarks. Then a light bulb moment came in.
Is it possible that thought itself has properties like colour or flavours?
At that point, the writer’s block vapourised and the result was a chapter called “Flavours of Thought” which I didn’t plan to write. This led to writing a whole book of the same name a month later that I didn’t plan to write either.
As chefs use a mix of flavours in their concoctions, I also combined the flavours of thought into various recipes too. As a result, about a year later a membership site appeared on the scene called “Recipes for Fresh Thinking” that I didn’t plan to build. I started training “Master Chefs of the Mind” to solve many common mind-based issues prevalent in every day life.
I then came across some esoteric material on something called the Cube of Space. I found I could map my Flavours on to the Cube. As a result, I found I had from nowhere created an amazing tool for personal evolution and advancement. This in turn lead to a new practitioner programme called the Cube of Karma that I had no plan in developing. I see it now as a gastronomic recipe of all the flavours of thought.
None of this was planned, none of it was foreseen. This all shows the power of a true Mind Map.
There are several states of being that stop light bulb moments in their tracks. I say ‘states of being’ as they are not limited to our state of mind. Light bulb moments are whole body phenomena.
The diagram below shows the main sources of blockages and also the area in our bodies in which they are mainly sited. Note that there is not only a fair bit of overlap between these sites but also a huge amount of cross-communication too.
Starting from the bottom up, if we are in a desperate state the lights are switched well and truly off. When we are in danger, the flight or fight response kicks in at the limbic centres of our brain and no amount of creativity can see the light of day. This is unless, of course, you are trained in a martial art where you have learned to control these base instincts. With just some basic training, we can indeed work inspirationally about how we handle pressure situations. The keys to becoming a master of such arts overlap considerably with the skills that conjure up light bulb moments on demand.
If you are in pain or discomfort, creativity can fly out of the window. A toothache perhaps affects an area of just a few square millimetres but it can put your whole mind in abeyance until you get it sorted. While you are in that dentist’s chair, you probably won’t be composing an opera. Somewhat ironically, if you could manage to do so, it would make the time go much faster.
Moving upwards on the diagram now, a secure environment sets the seeds for inspiration to flow. If you are in a workplace where you are underpaid (hungry for money) your creativity will be stifled. This can be exacerbated if there is a lack of recognition in your home or personal environment where you can’t share your achievements. One of the benefits of the Internet and social media is the ability to share your talents with a larger community should your local connections not recognise your genius.
Fears which we mainly store in our gut are the next causes of blockage.
If we were ever told an essay was poor by a teacher, this memory can stay with us for years. If you find someone else is getting you to write sales proposals or difficult customer emails, you can bet they had this experience at school.
Similarly, if our peers laugh at our attempt at art or music, we might never pick up an instrument or a brush again.
If you don’t try, you can’t fail so procrastination is also a marvellous success avoidance strategy. The other one is being a busy fool, perhaps starting loads of projects but never finishing any.
The two times in my life when I have been the most financially successful were co-timed with the points in my life when I was most stressed. Accordingly, fear of success has been with me for years and I have only just finally dealt with it now I am the other side of my half century.
We move now to our heart. The observant amongst you will notice these sites of imbalance and blockage are also sometimes referred to as chakra points.
If we are grieving or unloved, it is not time to start that novel. That is, of course, unless you are using the writing process as catharsis. A sad heart will reflect in your work. People who see your paintings, hear your music or read your words will pick it up in their hearts first as opposed to their heads. Again, if you want to induce this feeling, it is possible to temporarily recall that time of sadness while you are working. The ability to empathise and associate yet with detachment is the sign of a true master of their art.
We leave now the areas in our body that, for the most part, operate outside our conscious control yet that can affect us greatly. These centres evolved last in our evolution along with the ability to speak and the ability to be self-aware and think. The two are interlinked and often mimic each other. I am sure you have met someone who has to say something in order to think it through.
The very act of talking can suppress creativity, for the time we are actually speaking at least. This is especially if the thing we are talking about is of little consequence. If, however, you are an entertainer and your voice is your art, the opposite is true. The subtlety here is that any inspiration comes in on the in breath while we are not talking. The reason for this is that we speak on the out breath and there is a periodicity to the flow of creativity. Our aspirations flow on the out breath and inspirations come on the in breath or the still point between the in and the out. This flow is so subtle that is difficult to detect and tune into. Once you do though, the difference between external inspirational guidance and internal thought becomes clear.
As well as actual speech, there is self-talk. I am sure we have all been in a situation where someone is talking and we’re not listening but working out what we are going to say next. This is natural but while doing this it’s difficult to have a massively creative spurt on what to say next. It might sound counter intuitive but by truly listening to what the other person is saying, we have a better chance of replying with something erudite and off the cuff. We just have to learn to trust in the process and to trust ourselves. There is many a time when you can just listen and the other person will tell you at the end what a fabulous conversation they just had.
When we are by ourselves, we often have inner conversations. We might be rehearsing a speech or a talk or replaying a conversation where we wished we’d come up with a wittier and more incisive retort. From a light bulb moment perspective, this inner chatter – which is also referred to as the Monkey Mind – is an anathema. Later in this series, I will be showing you the arts of Whole Brain Thinking and Whole Mind Not-thinking and how to make the Monkey Mind quieten down and go for a rest.
Only when your mind is silent can the light bulb moments come in. This is of course why in the normal run of things light bulb moments occur when you aren’t expecting them. Perhaps you are driving, dreaming or in the shower when that flash of inspiration occurs. The proximity to water by the way is not coincidental.
The trick is to induce the conditions for light bulb moments to occur under your own volition. So, next in this series, I will dissect a light bulb moment and explain how it interacts with all these mind centres – all in less than a second. P.S. if your mind is closed to all of this, this blocks external inspiration coming in via the crown
Incredible advances in understanding how our brains work have been made by neuroscientists, yet the place where our consciousness is generated and our mind resides proves elusive. It’s a good guess is that it’s only proving tricky to find because people are looking in totally the wrong place.
So when it comes to finding the source of something even more ethereal such as an idea, where do you even start looking? Even an expensive MRI scanner won’t help you here as it measures the brain state after a thought has occurred. Apart from anything else, you might not have an MRI scanner handy when that idea comes along as they tend to be random in nature.
Bring in the Thought Detectives
To find the source of ideas, we have become sleuths. The first clues to pick up on can be found in our language.
It is no accident that we say things like, “Off the top of my head” and “At the back of my mind”. When something is on “the tip of my tongue”, it well be exactly where it is at that moment in time.
If you observe people when they talk, the position of their hands gives much away too. Sometimes people reach above their heads as if they are pulling an idea out of the ether. They will pat the centre of their chest if they feel passionate about something.
It turns out that thoughts exhibit properties similar, but different, to electromagnetic waves. The quantum physicists, neuroscientists and the mystics (and crackpots) are all converging on the same type of somewhat preposterous conclusion. It looks like our three space and one time dimensions sit on top of a number of other dimensions that, accordingly, sit outside space and time. Furthermore, it is in these ethereal realms that thoughts propagate from the present, past and future.
So it seems that the latest theories in cosmology are somewhat converging with those on consciousness. These theories could explain things like your dog knowing you are coming home or that you know the phone is about to ring and who is going to be on the other end of it. Da Vinci may well have had the prescience to invent the helicopter and parachute by using a similar mechanism.
Water, Water Everywhere
A similar mystery exists around where ideas and thoughts go once we had them. The search for the location of our memory in our brains has proved fruitless.
Some further illumination into this conundrum can be had from the phrase, “I can feel it in my water”. Many people I spoke to when researching my book on light bulb moments testified that they got their ideas when in the shower or when out walking near a river or waterfall.
It is also reported that people who have had transplants of organs like the heart, lung and kidney exhibit personality changes and can even pick up memories from the donor.
It appears that the water in our cells is not just to stop us drying out. The Japanese author Masaru Emoto has done many experiments with water that show its state changes with the mood and emotions of people around it.
Nothing New Under the Sun
For some readers, some of this might sound bonkers and for others, it may nothing new you may have heard bits or all of it elsewhere. Well it appears that much of what we are re-discovering was known and accepted by the ancient Greeks and civilizations that predated them by thousands of years.
There may be a benefit to those who suspend their belief and accept that some of this might be true, even if it’s not been quite ratified and embraced by the left-brained scientific community. If you accept the notion that thoughts might come from outside our brains from a collective thought pool, we must then ask the question of why we just picked up on a specific thought at a specific time.
After all, if this is all true, there’s a near infinity of thoughts bouncing around in the cracks between our neurons.
If these specific ethereal whispers are filtering through to your conscious awareness, perhaps it’s important that you pay attention to them. What’s more, as they only occur in the space between your thoughts and if you want more of them, it may pay great dividends to attend that meditation or yoga class.
A wonderful and eclectic chat with the inspirational Julia McCutchen from IACCW on how authors can use light bulb moments in their work …
Topics covered :
Where do light bulb moments come from?
What blocks light bulb moments?
How to use your whole brain and whole mind
The beauty and power of Mapping Your Mind
The importance of meditation and the breath in ideas generation
When I was introduced to Mind Mapping about ten years ago, I discovered a tool that increased my creativity and productivity by leaps and bounds.
When I was introduced to Mind Mapping about ten years ago, I discovered a tool that increased my creativity and productivity by leaps and bounds.
There are several states of being that stop light bulb moments in their tracks. I say ‘states of being’ as they are not limited to our state of mind. Light bulb moments are whole body phenomena.
Incredible advances in understanding how our brains work have been made by neuroscientists, yet the place where our consciousness is generated and our mind resides proves elusive. It’s a good guess is that it’s only proving tricky to find because people are looking in totally the wrong place.
