Ways to get ideas!

For this blog, blog 1B, we were asked to read and analyze Mitch Ditkoff's "14 ways to get Breakthrough Ideas" --------------> http://changethis.com/manifesto/show/49.06.14Ways

I enjoyed this article, and agreed with nearly all of the suggestions. I particularly agree with suggestion #3, Tolerate Ambiguity. I think this is an important suggestion, because oftentimes ambiguity stops people in their creative tracks. If you cannot see a direct purpose in something you are doing, or a clear solution, it is easy to lose motivation. I think it is a very powerful suggestion to make friends with uncertainty, and let it just slosh around in your brain until it becomes something entirely new. If you do not have some sort of concept of how something will or should end, you eliminate all limits on the possibilities of what an idea can become. I think that I will be able to implement this idea into my creative life in a lot of different ways. I will use this suggestion to remind me that it is ok to start something without knowledge of where it is going. In fact, that is probably a healthier environment for a creative idea to grow. I think that this concept is not only important in the creation of creative projects and the thinking of creative thoughts, but in all areas of life. As humans on this earth we are never sure entirely why we are here and what we are doing. If we can learn to not only accept, but to embrace this ever-present feeling of confusion, then a large amount of pressure is eliminated. If we don’t know why exactly something is, then it can become anything we want it to. 

Another suggestion that I felt inspired by was suggestion #5, Fantasize. This is something that I have always felt was important from the time I was young. My mom has always told us to make happy pictures in our brains, and that it would help tell our subconscious minds to take us there. I think that this is why it is so necessary to fantasize as much as you can. If you dwell in reality, it is easy to feel limited by circumstance. But if you let reality take a back seat sometimes and imagine things beyond a realistic realm, suddenly anything becomes possible. I think that it is a good exercise in freeing your mind and allowing ideas to float in freely. I will implement this in my creative life by always remembering the importance of fantasy, and never trying to limit the places that my mind goes. 

Suggestion #10 of this article tells us to Hang Out With Diverse Groups of People. I think that this is a really big one. It is so easy in our lives that are so ritualistic and habit-based to get stuck in the rut of seeing the same faces day after day after day. Not that it’s not great to make such reliable allies, but I think that it is easy to fall into a trap of feeling comfortable and safe, and to lose the desire to explore. I thought about it in this way: many of the people I know very well in my life now have had an enormous impact on me. My good friends have each taught me something that I could not have learned on my own because they all have brains that work entirely differently from mine. They have each opened me up to new ways of thinking. If everyone I am currently friends with had to ability to do this, then it occurs to me that there are infinitely more people in this world who will do this too. I will implement the suggestion to hang out with diverse of people by beginning to start conversations with people I normally wouldn’t. Instead of getting so stuck in the rut of ignoring strangers, I am going to start to try to learn as much as I can from them. In any given conversation with a person, you can pick something up that you may not even realize is important to you yet. But that little piece of knowledge then gets stuck somewhere in the back of your brain, available for you to pull it out when you need it. 

Suggestion #12 in this article says to Look for Happy Accidents. At the end of the page, it suggests reconsidering a failed experiment. As far as failed experiments go, I can’t help but immediately go to the relationship world. So many things with relationships in my life have felt like failed experiments. I think that these are some of the most important things to reconsider. I know it’s not necessarily a typical creative experiment like the article may be calling for, but I think that those things are big indicators of the way I think. Reconsidering these failed experiments helps me see how one thing can lead to the next. How one crash and burn experience can help to grow your brain and point you in a new direction. The things that happen to us that feel the most earth shattering or painful are the ones that light fires in us and allow us to see things from a new perspective. They may not feel like “happy accidents” but I feel as though I can give some of my life experiences new power by redefining them as life-shapers and not mistakes.