Accessing your non-rational mind to get better results.

I’ve been using my creative intuitive mind all my life. I guess most of us could say fairly confidently that we do that pretty well. We do, we know when we do it, and we value it when we do it well. Being creative gives us lots of options. It allows us to think outside the box. Come up with new angles. Jump to solutions quickly. Innovation and brave solutions come from this place. As do remarkable and exciting solutions that set us apart and help us compete effectively.

But when it comes to switching this facility on at will, well mmm that’s a bit more tricky. Sometimes even impossible. It seems that our judgements and analytical mind just don’t like to let go hanging on to a more cautious approach and worrying about giving over the freedom to roam to our intuitive mind. Makes sense in a way. After all the world is a pretty random place. By bringing some order into play, our critical and logical mind protects us very well.

Evenso, it’s always been self-evident to me that the world is doing just fine when it comes to being logical, critical and judgemental. But it’s not doing so well when it comes to the skill of intuitive and creativity. If it were, we’d see a much better world than the one we see now.

Ok, hold those thoughts for a moment. Recently I’ve managed to get my head around one of the key areas of understanding in relation to this really important issue. And it’s best explained through three exercises. The first is the connect your arm to your unconscious and multiply its strenght. Two is a story telling game to demonstrate how to recognise the zone when you’r in it. And the third one is a technique to open up the mind to intuitive opportunity around the problem you’re attempting to solve.

But first the point of this. Really this is about achieving our goals. I’ve written alot about visualisation techniques. These are where you use the power of the imagination to enliven the unconscious mind to focus on a task and ensure all the appropriate back-office resources get on target. In other words, when I have a clear picture of where I’m going, my unconscious mind is alert to seeing opportunities which my conscious thoughts won’t have time to pick up.

The final technique I’m going to describe demonstrate how to do this on the fly so to speak. But let’s start by understanding the principle. You may have come across this method before. It demonstrates the power of the unconscious mind to do things we can’t really explain. Start by focusing on hold your arm in a bent position and get a friend to try very hard to bend it using two hands. Concentrate on being really strong and powerful. Stronger than the other person. Don’t let them bend your arm. You must try to win. … ok, so they won. And it’s pretty hard to resist the might of another person using two hands. Ok, now do it again, but this time you’ll need to use your imagination. Something like this. Hold your hand in that position again. Now let’s not think about strength or comparison with our colleague. In fact don’t think about anything at all. Concentrate this time however, on using your imagination to focus on something that takes you away from your physical arm. For instance I imagined a steel like rod of light flowing out of my arm, through the wall, up into the sky and way out to space. Not too much effort. Just imagine it. Focus on making the picture and the sense of it as real as possible. Now when the attempt to bend is done, the resistance is much much easier. Why? Let’s not worry too much about the why for now. Let’s just accept it. it’s very tangible. This just demonstrates the difference that we can make by making a shift from the talking, judgemental, left part of our brain to the sensory, connected and visual side of our right brain. If you’re interested in knowing more about the structure of the brain, see the link on the right column for Jill Bolte. Awesome!

Ok, the next exercise demonstrates this fromthe point of view of stories. Two people share a story in this game. No rules about structure or reality. The story goes where ever, when ever and how ever. The one condition is that when it reaches an appropriate moment of tension, you pass the baton over to the other person to carry on and they must do precisely that. The challenge is for the person listening to stay in the zone. To enter the story and switch down the volume of the thinking analytical mind. What we normally find is that it’s pretty hard to quiet the mind. Knowing it has responsibility to take the story over, it’s chomping at the bit to add the next part of the story. Calm down I say. Let it be, get back into the story. If you do, you’ll be amazed how quickly you pick up and run with the tenor and direction of the story. No matter where it was or was going. The point of this exercise is that we’re now seeing the difference between being in and out of the zone. “In” is immersed in the pictures and responses generated by the story. “Out” is thinking thoughts, analysing, chattering, being clever, being worried, anxious and fearful too.

Ok, the third exercise. This one is awesome, and applying it to solving intractable problems is even moreso. In this exercise two people face each other and share their desires by starting with the words either: “I would really love to…” or “Ya know, I really love it when…” and expanding on this. The concept of loving to do something wakes up the imagination and non-rational mind. It’s like throwing something out there into the future and wishing for it. I’d love to do this and that. It can be anything. Again there are no rules in terms of content. Let your imagination fire on all four cylinders. Fly like a bird if you want. Just fire up the images and feelings. And see how exciting it is. We’re not really generally very used to this sort of talk. And yet it’s so invigorating.

Ok, this final exercise is the really important one. When we use this techique it instantly calms the voices inside. It has the affect of quelling any further discussion as in linear, judgemental, critical faculties. It lets you imaginatively play with the possibilities. But the really interesting thing is, that when you do this in the context of a problem that you’re solving, you’ll find that new ideas will pop into your head that you just would be able to “think” of.

For instance, I used this when I was preparing for a meeting. I was worried that I would fail. Uh oh, left brain thinking. Failure. Referal back to past experiences. Oh boy, think think think my way out of it. And if I can’t, bummer. Feelings of fear and anxiety start to slowly kick in.

Now it is at this point that I stopped and took a bit of time out and caste my mind into the future. Any time, as long as it’s after the event. And I started saying stuff like “wow, I’d really love to be working with these people for a long time into the future”, and I’d love to manage to make the meeting go really smoothly so that everyone feels like the outcome was in line with their expections”, and “I’d so love it if I managed to capture the mood of the day etc”… you get the idea. I also did some back filling too, for instance “I love it when I manage to get the client’s eye’s sparkling, I love that” and “I love it when the customer is very appreciative of my preparation etc.”

Each time I’ve done this, I was really amazed how before long new highly relevant solutions were popping into my head.

What I’d effectively done is turned the volume down on my serially processing mind, and up on my parallel processing mind. Or down on thoughts and feelings and up on intuition and creativity. Or down on the left brain and up on the right brain. The result was astounding, and now I’m developing other strategies for flexing these amazing muscles of ours!