insists that he was the instrument, that his beautiful composition
“The Wedding Song” played him and not the other way around.
Eureka!
Such breakthroughs come from the subconscious mind, which
a man named Charles Haanel called your “benevolent stranger,
working on your behalf.” We all get them, but we may have shut
ourselves off from them. To recapture the gift of inspiration even
amidst the chaos of life, you must:
1. Listen. Create silence and time. Calm the din. Sit still, if
just for a moment each day. Let your thoughts drift with-
out direction.
2. Accept. Don’t reject the idea, no matter how foolish it may
seem. There’s just no way to selectively welcome only
the “good” ideas, the ones that are going to solve your
problems. If you try to cut off the “bad” ones, you lose
touch with them all and choke off the creative flows. And
besides, you might not be able to tell a good thought from
a bad one until you’ve lived with it for a time.
3. Note. When you receive a breakthrough, note it exactly as
it came. Don’t try to process, shape, apply, or direct it. Let
it be what it is before you make it be something else.Creating the Ah-Ha on Demand
Can you really be creative on demand? You not only can; you have to.
Creative breakthroughs don’t always or even usually come as
surprise nudgings from the subconscious. In your world of con-
stant deadlines and endless to-do lists, they are more often the
product of a conscious process of problem solving.
You’ll never find the time for this conscious process. No one
will give you that time. You’re going to have to make the time.
Here’s a five-step process for making sure your creativity time
yields the results you need.
M A K E T I M E T O T H I N K