Training the mind

When a baby is born, the parent and every one around the growing baby tend to
directly or indirectly tame the baby into an adult, but once the child becomes an adult,
almost everyone expects the adult to take care of him or herself. But most adults are
surprisingly deteriorating in self development. This article from mindtools online
learning course is an awakening call to all that the mind and brain are trainable and at
any age as well.

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Training the mind

Develop your thinking skills

The best tool for thriving in a constantly changing environment is a mind that is open,
flexible, and capable of generating innovative solutions. The strategies, exercises, and
tips in this article will expand your thinking and heighten your creative prowess.
Learn to view uncertain situations as opportunities to be grasped, and discover how to
benefit from the thinking skills of those you most admire.

Tips

-Break free from your mental limitations

Learn how the brain works as an organising and connecting tool, and how your brain
can become more effective at storing and relating information as a precursor to
creativity and innovation.

-Awaken your feeling mind

Recent research suggests that the mind is the seat of emotions as well as thoughts.
Find out how positive and negative emotions can impact your ability to think and
innovate.

-Find opportunity in uncertainty

Incubation — the downtime that fosters creative problem solving — is an important
aspect of innovation and invention. Learn how to make your brain take a vacation so
you can take advantage of serendipity and chance.

-Collaborate to innovate

Forget the largely mythical notion of the lone creative genius. Learn how to enhance
your creativity and ability for innovative thinking by interacting with others who may
be very different from you.

Debunking myths about innovative thinking

Everything that ever was, is, or will be starts with someone thinking of a new idea
(what we call “creativity”) and then taking the action to make that thought a reality
(“innovation”). But how does creativity and innovation happen? The first step to
broadening mental horizons is to get into a positive mindset. Let us start out by
addressing some of the misconceptions around what it takes to be a creative,
innovative individual. Which of these myths have you bought into?

-Creative individuals are born, not made

Incorrect. Once upon a time we believed that the intelligence and mental agility that
support creativity and innovation were “fixed.” That is, you were pretty much stuck
with the brain you were born with. Neuroscientists have since discovered that the
brain is immensely flexible or “plastic.” Indeed, the process of learning something
new (involving thinking and experiencing in new and broader ways) actually changes
the brain’s physical structure.

Those structural changes, in turn, enhance the brain’s ability to organise information
in a way that makes it easier to be creative. Check out the work of Dr. Edward de
Bono, Prof. Reuven Feuerstein, and Professor Howard Gardner on Google or
Wikipedia to find out more about this fascinating topic.

-Innovation comes from the work of a lone, creative genius.

Not true. US inventor Thomas Edison may be credited with more patents and
inventions than just about any other person in history. But perhaps you weren’t aware
that he ran what is often considered to be the first research and development
laboratory. Or that his success was actually attributable to the combined efforts of
many, unsung staff members?

For every Bill Gates or Steven Spielberg there is a Steve Balmer or Kathleen Kennedy
working alongside (often behind the scenes), contributing to bring their creative
efforts to the world. Even your favorite TV show employs a team of writers rather
than just one special individual!

-Creativity only thrives without confines or constraints

Wrong again. Ever heard those famous words, “Houston, we have a problem.”?
Check out the DVD of Apollo 13 and marvel at the problem-solving genius of the
space mission crew and ground control staff when faced with the seemingly
impossible task of getting the craft and its human cargo safely back to earth rather
than continue its trajectory to the moon. Many would argue that it is the drive to
overcome limitations (such as was the case in this famous example) that fuels true
creativity.

“Creativity arises out of the tension between spontaneity and limitations.” Rollo May,
existential psychologist.

Mind 101: The Mental Filing Cabinet

“Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that
what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.” – William Pollard, The
ServiceMaster Company

This section introduces you to the latest understanding on how the brain works as an
organising tool, or mental filing cabinet, and its amazing ability to cross-reference
information that lies at the heart of creative thinking.

-Increase Your Experience

Making a commitment to seek fresh experiences (such as every month learning a new
skill, reading a different genre of books, or subscribing to a magazine you would not
normally read) not only makes you a more interesting person, it also enhances your
creative potential.

How? An active brain is continually restructuring itself, becoming increasingly

complex and efficient as new neural pathways are created, strengthened, and
interconnected. This matrix of mental super-highways means that you are more easily
able to link new information to what is already stored in memory — the basis of
learning.

Like the most efficient filing system you can possibly imagine, your mind cross-
references stored knowledge at astounding speed. Those “aha” moments typical of
creative thinking are the result of your mind making connections between the
knowledge you are learning and what you have already stored. Increase that store of
knowledge through many, varied experiences and you will increase your potential of
“aha” bursts of creative inspiration.

-Doing and Reflecting

Psychologist David Kolb’s four-stage model breaks down experiential learning into
things that we do (the stages of “concrete experience” and “active experimentation”)
and what we think about (“reflective observations” and “abstract conceptualisation”).

The exercises contained in these lessons represent the “doing” piece and will
stimulate your mind with new content to connect! By learning more about yourself as
well as the world around you, you are taking important steps to becoming more
innovative. Just relax! Your mind does this for you automatically. All you have to do
is provide it with fresh stimuli.
Become a divergent thinker

We tend to describe creative individuals as thinking “outside of the box.”

Psychologists call this “divergent thinking.” The good news is that anyone can learn
to think this way, with practice.

Open-Mindedness:

Generating new ideas requires a different kind of thinking than finding the “right
answer” to a mathematical problem. Unfortunately, the ways we are typically
educated, and the requirements of standardised testing, tend to over-emphasise the
latter, which psychologists have termed “convergent thinking.”

Science, mathematics, and technology are all areas where convergent thinking tends
to be appropriate. But what about topics for which there is no single, “correct”
response? For that you need to tap into “divergent” thinking.

For example, let us imagine someone hands you a brick. In Math class you are asked
to take the brick’s measurements in order to compute its mass. Obviously your answer
is either correct or incorrect, using convergent thinking in the process.

But in your creative writing class, as an exercise in divergent thinking, you are asked
to come up with many different uses for a brick as you can think of in fifteen minutes.
There is no right and wrong answer to this challenge, but the longer your list the more
creative you are likely to be!

The more you practice divergent thinking, the greater your capacity to think of new
ideas. Here is an exercise to get you started: Take a fresh look at everyday objects.
Challenge yourself to come up with novel uses for a pen, a shoe, a bar of soap, or a
rope.

In a journal article outlining different tests for creative abilities, E.P. Torrance, asked
readers to imagine that humans had six fingers on each hand instead of five. His
question: What would be some of the repercussions or implications of that change?

Time yourself and see how many ideas you can come up with in three minutes