There you are.
Sitting there, looking at a blank screen.
You had a brilliant flash of inspiration, what, an hour ago? You were busy, but and weren't in a situation where you could conveniently write down your flash of wisdom that might likely save humanity.
You convinced yourself that it was an obvious "A HA!" that you would of course remember it, but...
So you sit.
Sometimes you are lucky, and you get a flash of creativity when you can easily capture it on paper, or electronically.
Or if you're smart, you might carry around one of those small electronic voice recorders so you can spout your sporadic nuggets of verbal wisdom on the fly.
But does it have to be that way? Do you have to wait until you "get" a creative thought? Is creativity locked in some mysterious creativity mine on the moon, dispersed by some alien god of creativity to random earthling's according to the interpretation of sunspots? What if you were to realize that you could dig in your own mine of creative thought, anytime, anyplace? What if I could teach you a simple procedure that would literally increase the amount of physio-chemical neural connections in your brain to give you on-demand enlightened insight? If it sounds hokey, don't worry.
Your creativity is just like a muscle.
The more you exercise it, the stronger it gets.
After practicing this simple technique, you will never again have to wait for an idea to come.
You will go into a search of your own brain, and find it.
The heart of creativity is thinking of a completely new thought, which is really a connection of other thoughts, thought previously unconnected, from a new perspective.
Like the old commercial for Reese's peanut butter cups.
Two people walking down the street, one enjoying peanut butter, the other enjoying chocolate.
They bump into each other, their respective snacks serendipitously mix into one of the greatest inventions in the history of humanity.
(Ok, I exaggerate.
) Peanut butter wasn't new, chocolate certainly wasn't, but BAM and a brand new idea.
This is what you will be doing with the thoughts that are already in your mind.
Connecting them in ways you never thought about before, which will in turn spark a geometric increase in your synaptic connections.
I won't even get into the enormous benefit this can have above and beyond enhanced creativity.
Ready? Let's go.
What you will be doing is widening the physical pathways connecting different places in your mind where memories are stored.
When this happens, you will naturally generate all kinds of new ideas simply because making new associations will automatically pop up.
And when you digging for new ideas, they will be easier to find as well.
The way to do this is through free note association, or free noting.
You write out a couple of words, and then as quickly as possible, spit out all the first things that come to mind when you think of either word.
You will need to record the associations somehow, whichever is most convenient.
Personally, I type mine out on a word processor, because I can type much quicker than I can write longhand.
Some people prefer to use a cassette recorder, or a digital voice recorder.
The trick is to be completely unconcerned with spelling and grammar, and write the ideas out as quickly as they come.
Most people, after doing this for a week, have an incredible "A HA" moment when you will realize just how much information you have stored in your head, with literally infinite ways to combine the information already there to create new and fantastic ideas.
For example, lets take the word "baseball" and "spider.
" Two completely random words that I just came up with.
Here's how I'd do it: baseball baseball, baseball game spider spider car driving driving to a baseball game driving freeway congestion people many people people houses streets houses housing market economy economy money bill gates computers windows software ideas creative ideas ideas are money Notice I haven't made any spelling mistakes.
Normally many words are misspelled and mismatched together.
The above example is general creativity strengthening exercise, like going to the gym for your brain, which I would recommend you do at least ten minutes a day.
It's as simple as that.
It might seem slow at first, but just like continued physical exercise yields a stronger and leaner body, continued brain exercise will yield a quicker and smarter brain.
This technique can also be used for problem solving.
Just choose two words related to the problem, and when you start free noting, you'll be amazed how quickly the solution presents itself.
Once you get really good at this, people will be amazed.
You will be sitting in a meeting, and you will cock your head for a second, and spit out a creative idea or solution, and people will look at you in awe.
How did you think of that? Because self development and human potential is such a big interest of mine, I write a couple articles like this on my blog every day.
Many of the people that read it on a daily basis tell me that you can benefit a great deal from coming to read it from time to time.
Not only is it quick and easy to read, but entertain and helpful as well.