Conscious Brain-Mining: How to Program Your Human Intelligence to Solve Problems and Generate Creative Ideas

You know those annoying times when you can't remember a person's name, or a film you enjoyed, or that cool investment opportunity you forgot to bookmark?

And then, a few minutes, hours or days later... boom! There it is in your head?

You arrived at the answer because, unknowingly, you seeded your mind via what neuroscientists and computer coding folk call a transderivational search (TDS).

What a mouthful. I prefer to call it brain-mining.

When you're trying to remember someone's name, you're effectively prompting your highly sophisticated, information-processing, pattern-matching machinery (aka your brain) to search for, or create, the answer you're seeking.

Even though you may not give the question another (conscious) thought, the prompt will trigger your unconscious mind to start sifting through billions of bytes of data in your brain, searching for the nearest match or coming up with the right inspiration, working tirelessly behind the scenes until...

??PING??

Up comes an answer.

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When you're searching your mind for information, or trying to create something, you're doing exactly what people do when they prompt ChatGPT to find facts or come up with solutions. (Except that human intelligence was doing this for multiple millennia before John McCarthy, who coined the term artificial intelligence in the 1950s, was even a whisper of a suggestion of a frisky moment between his parents.)

The fact that we can come up with answers following a prompt is the best news:

IT MEANS OUR MINDS ARE PROGRAMMED TO LOOK FOR CREATIVE SOLUTIONS WHEN WE FEED IN A REQUEST.

How about if we were to approach problem-solving and creativity in a more conscious, focused and systematic way? Would the quality of the ideas improve It's entirely possible that they would. And that's what brain-mining is all about.

So how do you do conscious brain-mining?

It's pretty simple. You just need to take something you do every day – looking for an idea or an answer – and turn it into an intentional process.

Here's how I show my mindset training clients how to use conscious brain-mining in any area of life:

1?? PREPARE – Start with the intention of conducting a clear and deliberate dialogue with yourself. Prime yourself by acknowledging your creativity and asking your mind to pay attention to the very specific instruction you're about to give it.

2?? SEED THE PROMPT – Now ask a question, set a challenge or ask for a solution. This can take the form of:

• A statement, e.g. "By the end of today I'll have come up with three new ways we can over-deliver on our clients' expectations and measurably improve the service we deliver."
• A question, e.g. "What five points on the topic of motherhood and work can I include in my newsletter this afternoon that will resonate with my clients?"

Either way, concentrate and be specific and detailed in your request – and write it down. Just as with AI, the value of the end result depends on the quality of the input.

What you're doing here is setting out the parameters of the problem you want to solve or the thing you want to create. The more you understand what you want to fix or create, the more relevant the results will be. Conscious, considered prompts usually deliver greater clarity and better, more detailed results than casual or incomplete instructions. This reflection can also help you work out if there's a bigger problem hiding behind the one you started out trying to solve.

If you're stuck on the detail, try using the SMART format as a guide to shaping your request. (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant and Timed).

3?? CONFIRM WITH INTENT – After you seed the prompt, tell yourself with conviction: "I trust my creative mind to come up with strong ideas". And MEAN it. If you don't yet have faith in your ability to problem-solve on demand, try imagining vividly what it might feel like to believe that it's going to work. Your mind will respond to the ramping up of energy and positive intention by trying harder.

4?? DO SOMETHING ELSE - give your mind time to process the request. Non brain-intensive activities, such as cooking or going for a walk, are better than doing things that use a lot of concentration. One of my best incubation activities is having a bath or shower.

5?? REVIEW YOUR PROMPT AND THEN LISTEN – Pay attention to what pops into your head. You may have ideas flying in immediately, or it could take a little while, but they will come. Either way, make sure you capture the downloads as they come through. You could dictate the results into your phone using a transcribing app like Otter.ai, or go analogue like me and grab a pencil. I've been known to wear a small notebook on a lanyard around my neck when I'm brain-mining – nerdy or what.

You may want to have something next to your bed to capture ideas that arrive in the middle of the night. One of my clients bought herself a pen with a tiny light on the nib so she could scribble things down without getting out of bed or waking herself up too much. Don't make the mistake of assuming that brilliant 3am idea will still be there in the morning!

Rather wonderfully, when you're using brain-mining to create, for example if you're a writer and you want to fix a story that's not quite working, be prepared for an amazing rush of creative energy that can happen when your mind delivers.

6?? OFFER THANKS – Acknowledge your mind's good work and be grateful for the incredible creative machine you have between your ears. If you're not used to thanking yourself it might feel odd to start with, but it's rewarding and sends a "more of that, please" message to your mind.

Your mission, should you choose...

Over the next week, try consciously practising brain-mining a couple of times a day to get your mind used to seeding prompts in different situations. Have a go too next time you're facing a challenge or you feel stuck and could use a bit of creative inspiration.

The more you use this simple technique, the more readily the quality ideas will come. It really does work.

Let me know how you get on.

PS - Brain-mining is entirely responsible for me retraining as a therapist in mid-life and finding my true thing, which is being a mindset trainer to sensitive, purposeful people who know they were born for something more.

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is a proven way to develop greater self-awareness and self-leadership for you or your team. Message me on LinkedIn or contact me at [email protected] to arrange a chat.