Meditation

Brainpower Newsletter

What does meditation have to do with art and brainpower? I'll get to that in a moment. First, I have to tell you about a simple meditation you can try.

Find a quiet place with nice scenery. Maybe an isolated corner of a park, a spot on the roof of a building, or anywhere you can enjoy the view. Stand there and take a good look at the scene in front of you.

Now close your eyes, let the tension drain from your muscles as much as possible, and breath deeply through your nose. Then let your breathing fall into a comfortable rhythm. Pay attention only to your breath. When your mind wanders, just bring it back to your breath. This gets easier the more you do it.

After five or fifteen minutes, when your mind has quieted, open your eyes. Look around without words going through your mind. All is the same, and yet it looks different. The colors may even seem more vibrant. It is an experience you probably won't be able to easily describe or explain.

You're seeing with "new" eyes, because your mind is quiet. Normally, your thoughts affect how you see. This is why many people have problems drawing. For example, a photo of someone's face can be right in front of you, but you draw what you think a face looks like, instead of what is actually there.

Good art instructors will have you turn the photo upside down, and then draw the face. This interrupts your normal mental interpretation of the face, and leaves you with nothing to do but draw the lines the way they are. Try this technique. You'll be surprised how much more accurate a drawing done this way is.

Back to brainpower and meditation: This "clearing" of the mind that meditating gives you means you can use it to break out of your habitual patterns of thinking and see things in a new way. Try meditating before working on a creative problem. You may get better ideas.

One of my subscribers sent this to me, and I thought I would pass it on. Believe it or not you can read it.

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid. Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer inwaht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt.

(You may remember this problem solving technique from last year. I'll occasionally repeat some topics because there are new subscribers all the time.)

Why not find solutions to problems by asking how to cause them? It's an especially good technique for personal problems. Too much stress? Think of the most effective ways to cause more stress.

Hmm...promise too much, don't sleep enough, be constantly interrupted, leave decisions hanging there unresolved, and so on. Each of these ways to cause stress can show you something about how to reduce it: Make fewer promises, sleep more, don't allow too many interruptions, make a bunch of small decisions now, to get them off your mind, and so on.

Need more customers? Ask how you can scare them away. You may be assuming you need more new customers. Then, when you consider how to chase customers away, you start to see ways to get your existing customers to return more often. The point is that if you only look at the problem from the perspective of "how do I solve it?" you tend to see only solutions based on your hidden assumptions. Looking at how to cause a problem can show you more ways to solve it.

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Newest Pages:

Right brain Left Brain
http://www.IncreaseBrainPower.com/right-brain-left-brain.html

How To Stop Worrying
http://IncreaseBrainPower.com/how-to-stop-worrying.html

Until next time,

Steve

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