Nobody Thinks of New Ideas
Ever analysed a problem to death, sure you’d find some kind of satisfying answer eventually? We know we’re not getting anywhere, but do it anyway. Partly because we don’t know what else to do, and partly because on rare occassions it seeems to work.

In truth, all new ideas start out as energy perceived by our intuition. Ideas don’t originate in your head. They aren’t even your ideas, or anyone else’s! They’re just energy.

Only after your brain receives and processes new energy can a new thought occur to you. By mulling a problem over and over, you’re creating more and more of the same energy –nothing new at all!

When you listen to a friend, you stop talking. If you want to hear new ideas, you have to stop thinking –if only for a moment.

When you take some quiet time to listen, do tell yourself you’re listening. If you tell yourself you’re “not thinking,” it’s gonna be agony.

If your brain keeps chattering, then at least disassociate with it. Tell yourself it’s just neurons firing in your head out of habit, it’s not YOU thinking that nonsense. With practice, it gets easier to ignore the thoughts. (The reasons for chattering, uncontrollable thoughts can be numerous and many more blog posts.)

Don’t expect to feel like anything is happening during your quiet moments. It may take a while for your brain to finish connecting all the dots.

Finally, take note of this example. Let’s just say you spent last week deep in thought on some troubling issue. Then on Sunday, you have some quiet time and your brain receives some great new energy. You’re thinking of the subject on Tuesday when… aha! A light bulb turns on! But the aha! moment did not result from endless thinking!! It resulted from the questions you asked yourself last week and the answer you received on Sunday. You could’ve spent a total of a few minutes thinking about the issue instead of hours. Imagine the stress you’d have saved yourself!

The more you get it through your head that thinking doesn’t result in new ideas, the easier it’ll be to end habits of circular thinking.