How To Come Up With Creative Ideas To Solve Life's Puzzles

Sometimes life throws little or big surprises at us. They transform into either huge puzzles we need to solve, or tiny little nuisances that, if we let them grow can contribute to negatively alter our existence.

I've been reading Wired to Create by Scott Barry Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire. Although this book refers to the habits and practices of artists and scientist; backed by their own(Kaufman and Gregoire) and other's scientific research, I've come to the conclusion that we can all have access to some of those great thinkers, philosophers, and artist habits, to find answers on how to come up with creative ideas to solve life's puzzles.

The key or keys to solving these unavoidable problems can come from many sources; either external or internal. We can, for example, call a plumber to fix a leaking faucet before the tiny leak accumulates and turns into a miniature pool, which can wound up costing a lot more money(life altering experience). Or we can search deep inside our emotions or thoughts how to create a solution to a massive event like the 2008 market crash that caused many Americans to lose millions of dollars.

On either side of the spectrum of life's biggest conundrums and the answers to tiny annoyances; the simplest or smallest actions can lead us to enormous solutions.

Carl Jung, the influential Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst came up with a creative visualization technique called Active Imagination in 1913, which looks to daydreams to channel the wisdom of the unconscious mind to help solve the problems of the conscious mind. Jung argued that with the free visualization and mind wandering technique, he was able to heal from the emotional problems he was going through at the time by getting new awareness of his condition.

Taking a shower, besides getting our bodies clean, is also very relaxing and can be a surprisingly outstanding problem solver. Since our minds are less prone to distraction during this brief or longer periods of time, so we can come up with solutions. Scott conducted a research that found that 72 percent of people around the globe report experiencing new ideas in the shower than at work.

Going for walks or hikes are other simple but effective ways to come up with ideas that can help us either stop, avoid or decode life's biggest or smallest puzzles. The amazing American writer Henry David Thoreau was an avid walker. In an 1862 essay for The Atlantic, Thoreau said that daily walks were absolutely necessary for his physical and mental well-being. " I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least, sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements, "he wrote.

The Greek philosopher Diogenes used the phrase Solvitur Ambulando," It is solved by walking." Even recent scientific studies have shown that nature walks help to generate ideas to think about solutions, since there are physiological changes in the brain that cause less stress, lower frustration, increasing levels of energy to tackle daily activities and enthusiasm, all of which can lead to a better thought process to help us resolve any kind of situations.

Wisdom is all around us. All we need to do is take simple actions to activate it.

Simply by taking breaks from ordinary tasks or even from extraordinary events, and putting our bodies in motion, or searching deep inside our own selves can help stimulate our brains to get to the root causes of problems and find the missing pieces to solve life's puzzles, therefore creating ways to design the live we truly want to live. A life worth living!

Thank you for stopping by!