There’s a story in Think and Grow Rich about a man who engaged in the practice of “sitting for ideas.”
The man sat in a quiet room, undisturbed, until he came up with a useful, creative idea for himself, or the companies he consulted.
Great story that you may not find helpful because the inner secret to sitting for ideas is not revealed in the book. Sitting for ideas can only work if your mind is quiet; it can only work when you have successfully turned a question over to the subconscious part of your mind. This means you literally have to “let go and let God.”
Many people unknowingly use what Dr. Maltz referred to as “forebrain thinking” when they attempt to sit for ideas. And it doesn’t work because your forebrain is not the area of your brain that comes up with ideas or solves problems.
This helps explain why so many people get their best ideas while taking a shower, while swimming or taking a nap. When you’re “doing something else,” the forebrain is taking a rest.
If you are using your forebrain to come up with an idea, you’re asking the waiter to do the cook’s job.
The job of the waiter is to listen to what the customer orders, then relay this message to the cook. The waiter does NOT attempt to cook the food.
After the waiter relays the customer’s order, he or she temporarily forgets about the order that was given to the cook and finds another customer to wait on. While waiting on the next customer, the cook prepares the meal. When the waiter relays the next order to the cook, the first meal pops up on the counter.
This is how your mind works when you come up with creative ideas or answers to specific questions. If you stress yourself out for an idea, you’re not going to come up with anything useful because you’re not using your Creative Mechanism the way it is intended to be used.
Ideas and answers come when you take a rest from thinking, when you are engaged in doing something unrelated to the objective.
You pose a question to the subconscious part of your mind, and then you forget about it and do something else.
While doing something else, you allow yourself to be surprised when the answer gets delivered to you on a “platinum platter.”
It’s similar to forgetting a person’s name or not being able to recall a particular fact or detail. If you tell yourself, “I’m horrible at remembering names,” you have unwittingly directed your mind to NOT recall names or misplaced details.
But if you say to yourself, “Ugh. What is that person’s name again? What is it? What it it? Oh well, it’ll come to me later,” stand back and be amazed at how the name will come to you sometime later, with no conscious effort or “forebrain thinking.”
When does the answer come to you?
The answer comes of its own accord, often when (or where) you least expect it.
Trust the process.
Here endeth the lesson.
Matt Furey
