10 minutes a day that will boost your creativity.

A short period of time in which to carve out much more productive thoughts.

Ever since Sigmund Freud developed his theories on the unconscious, much has been written about the psychological processes that operate in the back room of our mind and that, without our noticing, influence the way we think and feel.

But while the father of psychoanalysis believed that the function of the unconscious is to protect us from ideas that can destroy us if they are not well managed, recently the psychologist Benjamin P. Hardy has proposed the idea that by paying attention to this hidden part of our mind we can make the most of our creative potential..

And how could we get to "communicate" properly with our unconscious to benefit from that source of creativity? To do so, Hardy proposes to dedicate 10 minutes a day to get in touch with the hidden processes of our brain.. This is not an activity that has to do with esotericism, although talking about ways to influence the invisible part of the human mind sometimes forces us to refer to mysterious aspects of ourselves. In reality, this psychologist's idea is based on a very concrete routine whose effectiveness can be scientifically tested.

Start the day with a blank canvas.

The idea behind Benjamin P. Hardy's strategy is actually very simple. This psychologist starts from the assumption that most mental processes occur unconsciously. And it does not refer only to those that have to do with regulating mood, making quick movements in the face of possible dangers or maintaining our vital signs, all of which depend on evolutionarily ancient structures of our nervous system, such as the brainstem.

No, it refers to all those tasks that do not require too much concentrationNo, it refers to all those tasks that do not require too much concentration: moving along the route that leads us to our workplace, making the necessary movements to pronounce a word we know well, taking a simple decision whose consequences are of little importance... Our consciousness only materializes in those processes that really require our interest, concentration or improvisation. For everything else, the brain structures in charge of performing repetitive and automatic tasks can serve and act efficiently, without wasting time in apparently useless reflections.

Our conscious mind is, according to this idea, the top of a pyramid of decisions that unconscious processes have already made for us... the idea is to "reboot the system", to take control of those decisions that the unconscious usually makes and to rethink routine thinking patterns.

10 minutes a day to break patterns

To take hold of the power of the ability to choose from many more options than we are given in a normal situation, what we must do, according to Hardy, is to harness the power of rest: When we sleep, our mind is isolated from the environmental stimuli it is used to receiving. and can reorganize ideas in new and innovative ways, "oxygenating" our usual ways of thinking.

What are the steps to follow?

First of all, just before going to sleep, we spend a few minutes thinking about the problems (everyday or not) that we would like to solve, and then we write them down on a sheet of paper.and then we write down these issues on a piece of paper. In this way, these will be the ideas that we will have in our heads just before going to sleep and that will be worked on automatically while we sleep. If we enter the dream stage having reflected on a series of ideas, these neural connections will be fresh at the time we sleep, and will tend to be reactivated. This will make it more likely that they will be modified while our consciousness ceases to act.

The next day, just after waking up, the first thing we will do will be to pick up the sheet on which we had written down the problems and write there everything that comes to our minds on the subject, without stopping to think about whether it is appropriate or not.without stopping to think about whether it is appropriate or not. In those first 10 minutes of the day we will be at the peak of our creative potential and we will be able to approach those issues with a clear mind after having let our unconscious side reformulate our thought schemes.

Areas of application

This strategy, which is powerfully reminiscent of the routine followed by Dalí to come up with the ideas with which to create his paintings, can be very interesting for all those people whose work has an obvious connection with creativity: writers, designers, advertising creatives, etc. But it can also be useful for all those people who simply want to make their mentality more open and prone to change.

If we make this routine a constant habit, place a paper and pen next to the bed and preserve good sleep hygiene, Hardy's ideas can transform the way we construct our reality. And we don't even have to concentrate to find solutions by combining strange ideas: our unconscious mind does it for us.