Friday is about dreams… because I have a hidden passion for dream work, and tomorrow morning is the perfect day to sleep in.
Dreams are an excellent source of creativity. They can also be used to uncover a vast source of insight. Lucky for you, everyone dreams every night. Except possibly when there is a lot of alcohol, or when you don’t go to bed. Although, then you might start hallucinating, which is also fun.
Dreams aren’t that useful (in my opinion) if you can’t remember them, so the first step is learn how to recall your dreams in detail.
Dream Recall Technique:
Purpose: To increase your ability to remember you dreams.
Steps:
Keep a private dream journal next to your bed.
Before falling asleep, repeat to yourself (at least 10 times) a positive intention to remember your dreams. For example: “I remember my dreams with ease, and write them down as I awake.”
First thing in the morning, as you awake, lie still. (This can be difficult with an alarm clock.)
There is a period between when you end dreaming and when you awake, where you are conscious but still have access to your dream memory. Think up 3 key words to describe your dream with.
When you awake, write down the key words before anything else.
Next, write down your dream in a much detail as possible including anything you remember – most importantly how you felt and anything out of the ordinary.
When you start, you might not remember anything. Just focus for five minutes and jot down anything you come up with. The longer you do this, the better you get.
Here is a group focused on innovating around management – examining current models of management and creating more effective working environments. So, what’s the secret?
To make matters more challenging, there is no play-book, no set of golden rules for management innovation. But, the research found that there are several vital ingredients that always come together when management innovation happens.
These are:
A distinctive and novel point of view on the future
A clearly-articulated problem or challenge that needs resolving
A core group of heretical thinkers and action takers who push the new idea through the organisation
A deep understanding of the traditional orthodoxies that need to be overcome
The exciting bit is that in a world of intense competition, companies are learning that focusing solely on financial success is not the best way to higher profits. Instead, companies generally earn more by focusing on value to the customers, and creating more fulling work environments where employees have more responsibility and empowerment in deciding how to achieve their objectives.
I asked myself this morning, how many times in the last week was I truly creative?
Monitoring my thoughts this week, it is a shock to realize just how persistent the thoughts are racing around my head… I leave no room to be creative… the space is squeezed out with a constant urge to be doing.
While I’m on the go, I do create blog posts, photographs in the park, drawings during art class, saucepans of stuff for supper… but they don’t have that novel aftertaste of true creativity.
The most creative moments come when I am not doing but just being. During these times, the problems which have been stewing in my unconscious bubble up into the present moment.
Work environments push for creativity, but they don’t tend to encourage space for reflection. How can you create a quick space for creative thoughts to flow? Bring yourself back to the present:
Tool for returning to the present moment:
Find a quiet space where you can sit uninterrupted
Sit with your back straight, and your feet planted on the floor.
Inhale. Take a deep breath, and watch what it feels like to breathe in.
Exhale. Let your breath out slowly, and watch what it feels like to breathe out.
Smell. As you breathe in, what do you smell?
Taste. Move your tongue around your mouth. What do you taste? Any bits of lunch left over?
Listen. Ask your self what you hear. And then probe deeper. What background noise is there?
Look. What do you see around you?
Look again. This time, look at the negative space – the shapes of emptiness between objects.
Look again. This time look at the a color, and how the tone varies with the light and shade.
Examine your thoughts. Ask yourself, “what is the next thought that enters my mind?” Sit patiently until the thought enters.
Through focusing the mind or with determined observation, meditation increases self-awareness and provides a safe space of emptiness where creative thought naturally flows. Further reflecting on Jill Taylor’s video, this space of meditation seems to be similar to the right-brained state she describes.
This week, I am monitoring my thoughts throughout the day. After a 35 minute tube ride and 10 minute walk, I realized that I had barely noticed the past hour… my mind was busy racing through details, reciting e-mails to be written, checking of todo items, and thinking about what I need to get done. My mind doesn’t know how to take a rest.
After 45 minutes when I caught myself, it is as if I woke up to the world around me. The rain drops still on the trees, the stillness of a street at night. My walk became much more vivid. And my mind stayed quiet.
Here is an interesting insight into the right-brain from Jill Taylor:
Jill seems to suggest that creativity comes from the right-brain, whereas logic and language belong to the left-brain. I’m not sure if it’s as much a distinction between the left and right hemispheres, as a mode of operating.
Shortly after watching this video, I came across another distinction on right-brained characteristics – and thought, hey, that’s me… and perhaps this is why I having trouble remembering details.
This week, I am taking note throughout the day of the thoughts that race through my head. My thoughts are heavily pre-occupied with not having enough time to get things done. I am quite aware of this (and am actively trying to get a handle on it), but I wasn’t aware of the negative messages I keep repeating to myself, such as:
I can’t get anything done.
I don’t have any time.
Angry messages to myself of, “why haven’t I done that yet?!?”
Anxiety is an inhibitor to tapping into creative flow of ideas and possibility. I have been trying to solve the problem by getting the thoughts out of my head and assigning clear next steps to each of them. However, before I do this, I need to eliminate the negative messages which are reinforcing my anxiety.
How do you eliminate negative thoughts? You don’t. You can’t force thoughts out of your head. Instead, observe them and accept they are there. When you observe you thoughts without getting attached to them, change happens naturally.
My experiments with Getting Things Done have started. (Right-brained people of the world – don’t have a heart attack… it’s just an experiment.) Objective: to use this methods for reducing stress and to become more efficient by:
Gathering all the thoughts on my mind
Processing the thoughts
Ensuring that items which need accomplishing have a clear, concrete next step attached to them
Tackling one action at a time
“Supposedly” (i.e in some far-fetched theory) by getting vague thoughts out of your head and becoming clear on the next concrete action, mental space is created to get things done. More mental space = room for creative ideas to surface.
The catch is, if I become more efficient, and that raises other’s expectations… will I find myself taking on more responsibilities to fill the new found space? This could be a disaster in waiting.
One of the biggest inhibitions to creativity and creating mindful work environments is the stress that accumulates from the looming cloud of vague commitments. In an age addicted to the hyper-speed of technology, e-mails, meetings, tasks and “stuff” flying around – the stress from trying to hang on to what we need to get done is often overwhelming.
Recently, I have ben exploring David Allen’s Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity – aka, GTD – a method for getting all the thoughts out of your head, into an organized system, where a concrete next-action can be supplied for each task. I discovered a free open-source package called Thinking Rock to process all the thoughts that have been eating away at my attention and energy.
For the next 21 days, I am going to use this software, to see if it really increases my productivity and lowers my stress. If I lower my stress, how will I manage to stay awake at my desk?!?
– aka, GTD – a method for getting all the thoughts out of your head, into an organized system, where a concrete next-action can be supplied for each task. I discovered a free open-source package called