Posts from — February 2011

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Last time, I talked about creating a vision and how that was the critical first step to creating what you want.  A vision is crafted in language (and I’m using the term “language” here loosely to include pictures as well as words).  No surprise here right?  A vision of the house you want to build isn’t the actual house that will exist in physical reality.  One is a construct of language and the other is a construct of materials - wood, cement, glass, etc.

The nature of language is that it’s malleable.  Physical structure is set.  Once the house is built, it’s built!  But while it remains a vision in your mind, you can in an instant change the color of your siding from yellow to blue to white to pink.  When you’ve actually put the yellow siding on your house, sure you can change it, but it requires that you start the creative process all over again.  It requires that you rip the yellow siding off and slap that pink siding on.

I realize that none of this is rocket science, but I’d like you to begin to consider that in many instances, you relate to your thoughts as if they are as static, set and physical as the things that exist out here in physical reality.  If you did the work I assigned you in the last post and created a vision, go back to it.  Think about it.  See if you can distinguish any thinking that you’ve made part of your vision that you really don’t want to be part of your vision.  It could be something that found it’s way into your vision without your full awareness or it could be something that you placed in your vision because you thought it was necessary.

I’m sure you’ve heard of the association game.  It’s that game where someone says a word and then asks you to say the first thing that pops into your mind.  Psychologists use this technique to analyze the types of associations that you make as a means to discovering something about who you are.  In the realm of design, we are not so much interested in analyzing the types of associations you make as we are becoming aware that you make associations.  The brain is designed to make order out of chaos.  It’s designed to put things into compartments and to automatically fill in any holes in thinking.  While this is a very useful process, it’s also useful to be aware that the process is taking place and to recognize that making associations is sort of the “auto-pilot” setting for the brain.  The brain is really good at making associations, but it’s not so good at questioning or even seeing the associations it’s made.

Very often we are not aware that we’ve made an association, because the thoughts either arise so quickly OR the thinking that arises doesn’t occur like something we should even question.  The point here is that when you have a vision of something you want, your brain is wired to make associations about it, and whatever associations the brain makes becomes part of your vision of the future.  It becomes part of the thinking that like any thinking starts the creative process.  For example, imagine your vision is to build a new home.  When you think “new home” your mind will start to make associations. You might imagine a white house, 5 bedrooms, out in the country, 5 acres of land, etc.  You mind might also start to think things like, “A house like that is going to cost $250,000 easy.  It’s going to require a 10% down payment, which I don’t have.  I could take on an extra job or maybe two to raise the money, but then when would I spend time with the kids.  I’d never have time to be with them.  But I want to be a good parent and give them a nice home.  This is going to be hard.”

Sounds reasonable, right?

It is reasonable, valid even, but that thinking has just made it into the vision of the future.  It’s defines the parameters of our vision of the future in the same way that choosing the color of the siding does.  Don’t misunderstand what I’m saying, there are constraints when you create.  Buying a home does typically require a down payment.  I’m not suggesting that if you give up this thinking that the money is magically going to reveal itself.  It’s more about being aware of the associations we make and the impact that our thinking has on us.  We often talk ourselves out of the things we wish to create with our own thinking.  We often forget that the first stage of creation is happening in thought and that the nature of thought is it’s malleable.  While you’re forming your vision in thought, just like you can change the color of your siding in an instant, you can remove and change ANY THINKING including the thinking about how you are going to bring your creation into existence.

Let me say that again.

While you are forming your vision in thought, just like you can change the color of your siding in an instant, you can remove and change ANY THINKING including how you are going to bring your creation into existence.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with the thinking above of how to raise the money for a down payment on a house; that is unless that thinking actually stops one from moving forward on their vision of the future.  Understanding the nature of language isn’t about making any particular thinking wrong, it’s simply about being aware that you - the thinker -are defining the parameters of the problem, and therefore, you are defining the entire picture of the vision of the future.

So take some time and re-examine your vision of the future.  Make sure you include not just the object of your desire but the entire pathway from today to that tomorrow when the object of your creation will exist in physical reality.  Note where you have any feelings of resistance or conflict that arise as a result of your thinking.  Let it be okay to let that thinking be there, but also commit to coming back to resolve the feeling of conflict.

Just remember if you aren’t moving forward in action on your vision, it’s simply because you haven’t resolved some conflict in your thinking.  It’s no different that choosing the color siding for your house.  Until you can decide between the yellow or the blue, the construction of the house will be stalled.