The mind map was crazy! After being challenged to do a mind map, the words that I had written on the page amazed me. A mind map is where you write all the words associated with an idea or issue that is in your mind. You write them around the idea as in a random pattern as in near or far, you write them around the idea. Not like in circles or symmetrical but just random and away from. Then you step back and observe what you wrote. Then you “ponder” the words or emotions that you decided were “associated” with the issue. What I had written was amazing to me.
Creative minds are amazing to me. I have never had the ability to see certain things before they were created. Like seeing what a room would look like before you re-arranged the furniture in the room. I can’t do “can’t you see it’ very well. That, in my book, takes a really creative and different mind than I have.
However, I do have creative ideas once in a while. Like how to make a better spatula because the one I was using didn’t fit the bowl correctly and it was frustrating for me. I can’t think of any other ideas, cause I don’t have that creative of a mind!
However, when I was doing a mind map on an issue in my life, I found it to be very creative. The words and situations that where in my mind were now on the paper. Amazing, I thought. Very creative, I thought to myself.
I was reading a book called “Die Empty”. The author says that we often are not paying attention to our own minds. He says that all minds are creative. In his view, our minds talk to us all the time about our worlds. Most of us are not aware of those creative thoughts, or we don’t hold on to them. He said we don’t “believe” they are possible or we don’t pay attention to them. We notice them, and discount them, and let them pass us by.
If our minds are always creating, then we should be paying attention to the words our minds are telling us about our world. Creative does not mean we should be creating things out of nothing. I means our minds are telling us there is a better way to “drive to Walmart” because it is solving a problem. Creative means our minds are solving and thinking of different and better ways’ to live. Our minds love doing that.
Creative problem solving is what our minds do..
So accept the idea that you have a creative mind, and that you can solve, in a creative way, the problems that show up. You might not come up with a creative idea right away, or you might not think it is creative, but notice the ideas that do come to mind when you have a problem to solve and pay attention to them.
That is why I was amazed at what I wrote on the page. My mind was associating in a very creative way idea words to the idea I was thinking about. I thought it was amazing.
Maybe we should pay closer attention to the words in our minds. They could be the next “amazing yo-yo”.
Dan
