Your Mind is a Gold Mine
Writing a rough draft while not having a clear direction is relieving. Although direct guidance upfront is what we hope to have, starting with the mess of our thoughts is often where we find clarity.
I am working on finding my niche in coaching, and a coaching friend advised me to start with thinking about the experiences I’ve connected with clients the most. “Take out a journal and start writing about these conversations- what the conversations revolved around, where they felt stuck, what solutions they came up with.” She continued, “Once you feel like everything is out, then go back and highlight key words and themes that stand out to you.”
The method proved effective. I began with vague notions swirling around in my head of the language I wanted to use towards my clients. Writing everything out produced a tangible space from which I could pick out the phrases that resonated most. I found my niche. Initially, I was unsure how helpful the method would prove, and the process felt almost too simple on the backend.
To embrace creative thinking requires us to begin with some uncertainty, or curiosity, rather, about what our brain will produce. In fact, creativity means change without the certainty of desirable results. We can generate solutions to many of the areas we face tension in, within work and home life, through utilizing the principles of creativity to capture our thinking.
These “brain dumping” techniques, such as brainstorming and mind mapping, minimize the pressure to perform up front because any thought that comes to mind is acceptable. We may even find that an idea we initially wrote off as futile becomes the focus of a solution. We may also uncover helpful relationships between items that we could not decipher in the mess of our minds.
As we generate ideas that get us unstuck, we feel more capable the next time a problem arises. It’s as if we begin to ask our brain: okay, what gold do you have inside that I don’t see right now?
For more guidance on “brain dumping” tools, see below:
