Why Ideawork Is Selfwork

An idea is an idea. It exists independently of the human mind and cannot be changed, but depending on what you think, feel and believe, it can lead to other ideas. The way you approach ideas will define their fate - and your destiny.

Working with ideas

You can connect with ideas intellectually, emotionally, or existentially.

Connecting intellectually means you understand the idea and find it relevant, meaningful and useful. You get it, it’s just right.

Bonding emotionally with an idea, you feel the importance and find it attractive, satisfying and suitable. You love it, it’s high priority.

Associating existentially with an idea makes it feel real, and the idea will resonate with your worldview and mindset. You believe it, it’s the truth.

Just as an idea can resonate with us, it can challenge us too.

If it confronts our knowledge, we tend to judge the idea as irrelevant, uninteresting, and irrational.?From what we have learned, the idea looks odd and unfitting.

If the idea opposes our taste or values, we reject it as incomprehensible, unimportant, and even disgusting. Personal preferences and emotional attachments will keep us from welcoming the idea.

Finally, if the idea challenges our faith and belief system, we will label it deceptive, false and impossible. Our personal narrative of who and what we are will not allow the idea to be further considered.

Our resistance grows with the perceived strangeness of the idea, understood as the degree to which it challenges what we think, feel, and believe. Therefore, to fully embrace a new idea, you must try to stretch your knowledge, free yourself from ingrained emotions, or rewrite our personal narrative.?

Stretch your knowledge

On Google, you get about 2.180.000.000 results when tapping “climate change.” A search for “good life” yields 10.500.000.000 results. Tons of information and knowledge to gain. How much of it do you know about, have access to and are familiar with?

The biggest barrier to new insights is not Google or other search engines. It’s assumptions and prejudgments. We think we know, because our brain tells us so. Unconscious processing puts us in the trance state of an endless predict-project-confirm cycle. What we perceive as reality is an illusion, a self-produced narrative of what is happening within and around us.

How we see an idea is a mirror of our thinking. Only if we recognize specific elements will we accept it. If the idea challenges our knowledge too much, we reject it on the spot. It is our conditioned thinking, flat-minded tunnel vision, and lack of imagination that makes us label an idea bizarre and unthinkable. Not the idea itself.

Next time, you feel smarter and better informed when presented with a new concept or invention: instead of rejecting the idea, accept it. Stay away from judging, and keep an open mind.

Questions to ask. What is possible? How does the idea challenge my current knowledge? What else could it be? What is and is not? Could it be something like this? What wins?

Release your?emotions

We all have a strong drive towards pleasant experiences and away from unpleasant. Maximizing reward and minimizing threat is the main organizational principle of the brain (Gordon, 2008). Every experience is labeled with a positive or negative emotional tag. Something to repeat or something to resist. This is the motivational drive in our brain.

Motivation is different from engagement. When ideas match your motivation, you find them attractive and important. Fun to watch and nice to have. When you engage in an idea, you invest life energy in unfolding the potential. The more personal energy, mental space and brain cells you invest in an idea, the more important you find it. And the more engaged and motivated you will be.

The human brain is hardwired to engage. We can’t help it. When we engage, we recruit brain cells. Our own and others. The distance from “I don’t know about” to “I can’t live without” can be surprisingly short. Falling in love with an idea is the direct link to full engagement and total commitment. If you don't love the idea at first sight, you can choose to fake it until you do.

Emotions help you choose between alternatives. Moment by moment, the emotional system gives you a prioritized list of things to do. The more you feel for an idea, the more important you find it, and the greater your urge to act upon it.?

Questions to ask. What is important? Why do I feel like this about the idea? How is the idea challenging my values? What to release from? How is my attitude? What to change? What works?

Rewrite your narrative

We form our individual identity by integrating life experiences into an ever evolving narrative. It provides us with a sense of coherence and purpose in life. This personal narrative integrates the reconstructed past, perceived present, and imagined future. We are the natural center of the universe and the ultimate first-person hero in our unfolding life story.

The illusion of stability, predictability and control disappears the moment you understand you are an idea too. Life is impermeable and changeable. You cannot experience the same thought twice. Either it has changed or you have. Similar thoughts can arise in endless streams, but no two thoughts are perceived the same.

Research by Lisa Feldman Barrett and others suggests that all perceptions are produced by the brain and formed in the mind. We construct reality, based on available information from memory and the present moment. Even the experience of being a self is constructed, and in principle an illusion.

Your reality is a self-produced and self-promoted movie. The coming and going of thoughts, emotions, and sensations is impossible to control. Instead, you can choose which content to focus on and cultivate?—?and which to let go. In this way, you can change your brain and mind over time. Your personal narrative will change as new ideas are integrated and activated.

Questions to ask. What is true? How is the idea challenging my identity and self-narrative? Who am I? What am I? What is the source of my being? How to let go? How to let be? How to let come? What emerges?

Ideawork is selfwork, because any idea you encounter can change your thoughts, emotions and beliefs. How you prepare to work with ideas will determine which ideas will live and which will die. When you transform, your ideas will transcend.

Transformative ideawork is part of the transperience universe. New book “Experiment Beyond?—?grow humans to grow ideas” is out now.