How to Have Kick-Ass Ideas: Get Curious, Get Adventurous, Get Creative. Chris Barez-Brown

       THE GENIUS THAT WHISPERS

      Have you ever had to make a decision that when you rationally weigh up the options there can only be one solution? You then make that decision, because, hey, you’d be a fool not to. But although it was the obvious choice, you feel terrible. Something about that decision does not sit well with you and you can feel it, big time. In fact, it feels so wrong, you sense you are going a little crazy but have no idea why.

      This experience is incredibly common. It happens because our brains are trying to tell us something but are unable to in our everyday ‘rational’ language. Our subconscious is therefore speaking to us through our intuitive feeling, which often has a much better grasp on the information our brains gather and what to do with that information to our best advantage. If we could understand our brains better, we could then use more information, more effectively, more often, so making ourselves very clever indeed.

      To understand why that happens and how to use it when creating inspiring possibilities, we need to go back to school … a nice school with cool teachers who say things like ‘Don’t call me Mr Hedgeworthy, call me Clive’, plenty of finger painting and lessons on the lawn.

       BRAIN BASICS

      Our brains are groovy things. Slight understatement there – it’s off-the-scale groovy. Scientists don’t exactly know how the human brain works and they still don’t know what it all does. Its capacity is beyond comprehension (you’d probably need two brains to do that). Needless to say it’s fast, it’s sexy, it’s clever. Now I can’t explain all the brain’s magnificence, but here’s some stuff I’ve learnt that is handy to know.

      Our brain has an enormous capacity to store information. We may have the potential to store every car number plate we have ever driven past in our lives.

       Recent research suggests that potentially we can remember all our experiences

      So the human brain is vast and very capable. The storage and processing of information is handled by two facets of the brain, the conscious and the subconscious. However, they are not physical parts of the brain as both functions seem to take place simultaneously throughout.

      Our conscious brain is the bit we have conversations with, the thinking we are aware of when we are awake. It only constitutes a small fraction of our total brain and we only use about a half of that – the rest is saved for ESP, levitation and winning Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? It therefore only has a relatively small storage and processing capacity compared with our subconscious.

      Many people have devoted their lives to studying the human brain, and its complexity and versatility are still unfolding. As the brain has such a huge capacity and is always processing information, always making connections, it has the ability to understand things we can’t figure consciously.