What's wrong with my mind, and how I exploit it! ? 5min-read

Hello again! ?? This time I have a personal story to tell you. I've been saving it for quite some time, but now I feel comfortable to share it with you. ?? I hope you enjoy it!

Back when I was a kid, I had trouble communicating with my friends and other kids at school. This didn't seem to be the case when having short conversations or just messing around, but the problem suddenly presented itself as soon as I had to explain something to a group.

Later, during my early teenage years, my parents sent me to different "Dale Carnegie" courses, including special rhetoric, self-development and communication trainings. My parents had a hard time trying to understand what I meant and hoped these series of courses would help me structure my thoughts in away that would be understandable for them and others. You might ask yourself... "well, Nelson, did it work?"

The answer is "Kinda". It surely aided me back then, but I wouldn't figure out what was "wrong" with my way of thinking and communicating until way later in life. It was during my university time, that I finally understood what was wrong with my mind; please, allow me to explain:

This is how "normal" people think:

Normal people think about the apple and make logical connections (e.g. nature, fruits, some fruits grow on trees, etc.). They eventually land their thoughts and come to say "pine". Now, it just make sense to take both thoughts and combine them: pine + apple = pineapple. And this is also the way how they verbally communicate their ideas to others.

Makes sense, right? Now wait until you see how I think...

This is how I think:

Alright, I know. I'm confused too...

I usually start with the apple; everything seems normal. I then proceed to tell you about the pineapple and it is easy to notice that some information is missing to "connect the dots"? People usually stops to think about the pineapples and ask themselves "how did this dude get here?!" But now, ADAM SANDLER?!

Okay, please let me elaborate...

I realized that I have an extremely holistic, unstructured and visual way of thinking. Since my early 20s I'm aware of this and have been working on learning better communication methods; the best way that I've discovered so far is: VISUALIZATION!

So, this is how I got from apple to Adam Sandler:

The first thing you should know, is my head creates a temporary, giant mindmap to think and solve problems. To get an idea, going from apple, to pineapple, to Adam Sandler took me less than 3 seconds as I forced myself to come out with a good example for this article.

This particular time, I thought about apple and how it is a fruit. At the same time Michaela, who was sitting next to me while I wrote this article, smiled. She wore an elegant yellow blazer. Simultaneously, David offered me a drink to help me get inspired. Yellow made me remember a yellow smile and how I drew one smiley during the filming of my company's (weSpark) first commercial in London which happened a few days ago. Yellow also happens to be the color of a fruit, this time spikey... PINEAPPLE! If I mix a pineapple with a drink, then I think about pi?a coladas. I proceeded to remember the song that goes "If you like Pina Coladas, and getting caught in the rain". Filming was still in my head, "Movies!". And guess which movie has this song? "Grown Ups (2010)" Featured by Adam Sandler.

I wrote this last paragraph exactly the way I thought it. It is confusing, I know. And I'm going to leave it as I wrote it on my first try so as to prove my point. My mind is holistic, unstructured and visual.

Is this what people call a "Creative Mind"? Or is it just my mind malfunctioning? Who knows!? What I discovered is that visualizing things helped me persuade and inspire others in a way that I never experienced before.

How do I exploit it? I learned different visual facilitation techniques in the past years and got used to working in very visual ways with my old Surface Pro 4 from Microsoft. Nowadays, I use my empowering, visualizing skills to solve highly complex challenges and to create a "visual common brain" with the people I work with; mostly during my innovation workshops.

My way of thinking is similar to how multiple people with different backgrounds, skills and personalities would gather to think together. I thought, if it works for my "splitted mind" it might work for groups too. That is why visualizing problems, ideas, strategies works so well when working with groups of people.

Alright, this is mildly embarrasing for me, but this is not only true, but also a big chunk of who I am. Have you ever experienced something similar? How does your mind think? I'm always super-happy to read your comments!

About the author:

Nelson Javier Mejia, is an entrepreneur and #innovation enthusiast in his late-20s, who is committed to making the world a better place to live and work.