Though I don’t know much about poetry, let me try to be poetic. GhoughtL good ideas are like flowers that bloom when they are ready. But you can only have flowers from the seeds you plant. And you can’t plant seeds that you don’t have which is why I write about what I know. I might be forcing this metaphor to explain the content of this and other posts/episodes, but stick with me. I’ve written before about how I am a terrible gardener, but even I know you can’t get roses from tulip seeds. You get what you plant.
Which brings me back to the content of these posts/episodes. I write what I know. And, I know my wife. Cue the build-up to a stand up routine involving wife jokes. Well, I’m not going to do that. At least not in public.
What I will do is write a bit about a recurring annoyance that my wife deals with, nearly every day and sometimes even two times in one day. The charging cord for her phone mysteriously disappears. Before you jump to the conclusion that this is some kind of set-up for the aforementioned stand-up, wife-bashing joke, it’s not. So if you are wondering how a charging cord can disappear and my wife not be at fault, let me say two words. Teenage daughters. With those two words, we can easily imagine where my wife’s charging cord goes. Now, where my kids’ cords go that necessitate them taking my wife’s is a mystery far more complex than the source of good ideas.
Why am I talking about charging cords? Let’s use a metaphor. The electricity in the wall is the unconscious. Nearly unlimited, but hard to access. The phone is the conscious, able to do so many things. Think about how many apps your phone has. Think about the raw data-crunching ability. As I’m sure you’ve heard your phone holds more computing power than all of the machines used to pull off the first moon landing.
As amazing as our phones are, and they are truly incredible, our minds are incalcuably more complex. Your phone can play a video, calculate location, remind you, entertain you, monitor you, and teach you. But it can’t create. We’ll touch upon Artificial Intelligence in later episodes and how that is altering the creativity landscape that we look at and stand on.
As amazing as our mind is, it gets tired – just like a phone’s battery runs down. It needs to be recharged. This of course brings me back to the randomly missing chargind cord. We know how to recharge a phone. Of course, we need the right cord with the right adaptor.
How can we recharge our minds? I think most of us will come up with rest and maybe relaxation. If you have been following The Creativity Algorithm, then you might answer ‘relaxed engagement.’ Relaxed engagement allows for those groovy alpha waves. Your mind and body are doing something. Your body could even be working quite hard. Exercise and even physical labor can lead to relaxed engagement. When exercising, working or doing any hobby, of course your body or parts of your body are being moved by your mind, but your mind is not concentrating. It is being recharged.
Just as we alluded to your phone needing the right cord, plug, and adaptor to recharge, your mind needs the right type of ‘relaxed engagement’. For example, yoga is not for me. Knitting is not for me. Long-distance running is not for me. Walking my dog, gym time, and martial arts are the cords that allow my mind to recharge. NOTE: this type of relaxed engagement can only happen when the physical, three-pound brain is properly cleaned. How can the brain be cleaned? Sleep. In a later post, we’ll discuss sleep in detail but for right now, let’s just say that trying to get a tired brain to foster relaxed engagement is like trying to get a dehydrated body to exercise well.
So what does this have to do with helping sales professionals and management professional have good ideas more often?
Relationships matter. You can be the wall and your employees can be the phone or you can be the phone and your clients can be the electricity. However you imagine it, there needs to be a charging cord. If the electricity flowing to the phone is the relationship, the cord is what allow it to exist.
The same can be said for the conscious mind and the unconscious. It needs a regular, recharging connection.
If you have been following The Creativity Algorithm, then you know that we try to foster relaxed engagement by working with sophisms. The cognitive toys that invite the unconscious to play and bring us good ideas like a playful dog will retrieve. For instance, have you ever seen the inside of mashed potatoes?
For a sliver of a time, your mind probably did a stutterstep. At least your conscious mind did. Your unconscious mind, perked its ears up, jumped in and allowed you to ‘get it.’ Sophisms are lovely tools to distract the conscious mind so the unconscious mind can practice relaxed engagement.
That sliver of amused engagement, was probably pleasant (Østby, 2023). While probably not haha funny, it is humor adjacent because it requires your unconscious mind to play. Humor usually lives in the unconscious which is why it is so hard to ‘plan’ to be funny. When a comedian is in the zone, the jokes flow. But catch a comedian when they are paying bills, analyzing whether they should take a gig, or worried about making a connecting flight and the jokes will not be there. That is because their conscious, concentrating, beta-wave laden mind is in charge.
Before we jump into the next sophism, let’s discuss why. ‘Relaxed engagement’ starts with distraction. Well, actually, I’m not sure of that. Check out post/episode 11 “What Comes First.” Can you enjoy your hobby before you become relaxed? What comes first? So, let me retreat a bit from the statement, ‘it starts with distraction.’ Instead, let me say that distraction is important to relaxed engagement.
Hopefully, if you are reading or listening to this, you are distracted from paying bills, analyzing a financial decision, or worrying about making to where you need. So, distraction, check. Relaxation, well, does playing with a mental puzzle relax you or should you take a few minutes to exhale and release the tension in your trapezoid muscles? Yes. The trapezoid muscle is the huge muscle on either side of your spine that extends from your mid back to your neck and is often unduly tense. So, please let your shoulders sag lower and looser with each exhale. After you have done three exhales, play with this.
- Your phone is your conscious mind
- The charging cord is relaxed engagement.
- The power grid outside of your house is the unconscious. This gives us an appreciation of the scale in size difference between your conscious-the size of your phone and your unconscious-the size of your town or state’s interconnected power grid.
In the real world, we know that electricity is most often created from something spinning. Either by wind, water, or steam from power plants. Let’s continue our three part metaphor. Imagine the source of the ‘electrcity.’ that recharges your mind. How is it generated? What would a solar-powered unconscious look like? Wind powered? Nuclear? Meh… that’s too literal and ‘science-y.’ What if we said your unconscious is powered by hope? Greed? Magical rays of goodness that comes from love? Ridiculous right?
Takeaway for this week: Build out the idea of how your unconscious is powered. If you can imagine it, then you can improve it. In earlier posts and episodes, we talked about building a control room. Now it is time to power it. If you cannot take a few minutes a few times during the week to envisions this, then do it as you fall asleep. Remember how we said we will discuss sleep in a later post/episode, well, here is a preview. Don’t try to sleep. That is using your ironically too tired conscious mind to do something it can’t do. Instead, distract it. Distract your conscious mind by letting your unconscious mind figure out what is powering it.
Spreading the Thoughts: Wait for a lull in a conversation and ask someone if they have ever seen the inside of mashed potatoes. If they are amused, tell them about The Creativity Algorithm. If they are not, walk away because they are not fun.
Next Post: Confession & Preaching Confession
For more information on how to help yourself and people in your organization learn how to access solutions more regularly, please go to:
Website: Joeswope-publicspeaker.com
Youtube: youtube.com/@joeswope-publicspeaker
Podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/joe-swope
Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/joe-swope-speaker
References
Østby, H. (2023). The Key to Creativity: The Science Behind Ideas and How Daydreaming Can Change the World (M. Bagguley, Trans.). Greystone Books Limited.
The Creativity Algorithm 
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