During the course of the day, events constantly occur. We automatically deal with most of them, acting on the information and situation as it presents itself, and moving on. Sometimes, we have to make a choice or a decision. Most of the time, we do this automatically, too. We way our options, assess the pros and cons, and decide something. Chicken or beef for dinner? Do homework now or later? Go to a movie? Respond to a question, or shrug it off? Some decisions require so little weighing and assessing that we are not even aware that we are making a choice. Some decisions are habitual, so that we nearly always respond to the options the same way. Sometimes, however, the choice is harder. Sometimes, Option A has clearly advantageous possibilities, but also has serious risks. Sometimes Option B is so close to Option A in pros and cons that we have trouble deciding between them. Sometimes, we don't want to do something, but we don't see any alternative.
These choices are harder, but we make dozens of them every day. We think about it a little, worry a little, waver a little, but then we pick one option. If there is not a clearly superior option, we usually are relieved to put the situation behind us, and then we make the best of the choice we have committed to.
Sometimes, however, we are faced with a harder situation. We rack our brains for days and days, worry about an action we need to take, get headaches, despair, think there is no good solution, let the situation resolve itself based on other people's choices instead of our own, do foolish things because we couldn't think of anything better. We may toss a coin rather than make a decision, or we may ask other people for advice, or we may simply give up and remain in an unfavorable situation because we don't know how to get out of it. I am going to show you a way to solve these problems.
If we solve a problem automatically, or with very little conscious thought, we usually aren't even aware that we had a problem and made a decision. If we solve a problem by thinking it through and weighing up the pros and cons, we don't need a problem-solving system. If we have gone through our usual problem-solving process: if we have racked and stewed and pondered and considered and discussed and prayed and whatever else we usually do, and we still can't solve a problem, then we need to attack the problem differently.
There are many different problem-solving systems. Some are analytical: they consist of different ways of breaking down a problem and solving various parts of it, until it unravels. Others are more intuitive: the simplest is to toss a coin; heads I do A, tails I do B. You can take it a step further: after tossing a coin, ask yourself if you are glad or sorry that tails came up, and act accor ing to your feeling.
The problem-solving method I am going to describe is based on deliberately NOT thinking through a problem. If you have tried to think through a problem and were unsuccessful, despite minutes or hours or days of working on it, then you need to try something COMPLETELY different. The usual ways are good, and they take you through 99% of your problems. Everyone develops a system for solving problems; it's part of growing up. Whether or not you've ever thought through the steps of your system, it is nonetheless in place, and it is the system that works for you. Someone else may use a completely different system. Most people don't analyze their system; they just solve their problems. When you can't solve a problem your usual way, however, then the harder you try, the deeper you sink into the rut of your thinking about the problem the same way. The method that works best in that situation is image-streaming. I will describe image-streaming shortly. This is a method that provides your conscious, problem-attentive brain with a link to a solution that is on the fringes of your awareness, but you can't quite put your finger on it.
Our subconscious mind is constantly active. The brain is always zinging around, processing thoughts, ideas, perceptions, images, flashes, and random activity. This has the advantage of keeping us mentally alert, and allows the potential for processing huge data inputs at lightning speed. Faster than lightning - at brain speed. On the other hand, it can get pretty confusing, unless we develop a system of harnessing the inputs. The problem is: most people stifle their flashes and images to keep them from interfering with what we WANT to think about. In particular, one of the main functions of early childhood education in the United States is to teach children to gain control over their thought processes. Go into 95% of American classrooms for third grade and below, and you'll hear repeated through the day variations on "Pay attention. Stop daydreaming. Look at me when I'm talking; I'm the teacher." This is necessary for establishing classroom focus and discipline. When children hear from both their parents and their teachers that they must sit up straight, pay attention, avoid daydreaming, etc., they internalize these instructions. This is the way they must behave, and if they don't accede to it, life gets increasingly difficult, as they get older and more and more attention-paying is forced on them, and they become increasingly isolated if they resist, as more of their peers succumb. Eventually, nearly all children learn to pay attention and stop daydreaming when someone is trying to teach them something. The few who don't are labeled "learning-disabled" or whatever other euphemism is popular at the time. Eventually, as children internalize the "pay attentio " instruction, they learn to focus their attention on whatever they are doing. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THIS. THIS IS NORMAL. EVERYONE DOES THIS.
However: when this happens, we work so hard to ignore our natural images and impressions and thoughts and perceptions that we actually dispel them from our awareness. In time, we don't even know that our (now subconscious) brain is still producing images and impressions and thoughts and perceptions. And this is a shame, because these images are the brain-speed, instant reactions to situations. We are so busy thinking about our problems that we fail to notice that our brain has already solved most of our problems. We ignore the brain's solution, because we are TRYING to THINK of a SOLUTION to our problems.
As I said earlier, we usually are able to solve most of our problems. However, if we could regain access to our brain's images, impressions, thoughts, and perceptions, we would have access to a different pathway to processing our solutions. If we can not solve a problem our usual way, checking our brain's instantaneous impressions may provide a different way to the solution, based on what we ourselves know about the problem and possibilities and probabilities. The brain works so fast that we can't always catch ourselves solving our problems, and these fleeting solutions elude us.
This is similar to the way we can have very vivid dreams, but can't remember them the next day. If you accustom yourself to jotting down your dream as soon as you are awake and realize that you had a dream, you would find yourself drawn into the dream, and you would gradually recall more and more of the dream, and after a few minutes, you would figure out what stimulus the previous day or year caused that dream, and you would gain insights into what your subconscious mind was telling you about the stimulus. Similarly, if you could accustom yourself to catching your brain's ideas as they flash by, you could gain insights into your own suppressed thoughts about a problem, and gain a new solution that had been eluding your conscious thought.
The easiest way to accustom yourself to perceiving your brain's insight flashes is called "Image-Streaming." In image-streaming, you do not think about your problem consciously. You simply close your eyes, and allow yourself to see images in your mind. If you don't see anything when you close your eyes, be patient - it will come. You may, after a few moments, see a patch of color. You may see rods and cones floating across your (closed eyes) vision. You may see the after-image of light. It doesn't matter. As soon as you see something, describe it OUT LOUD: even if there is no-one there to hear you. It is best to do image-streaming with a partner, taking turns, but solitaire image-streaming also works if you describe your images aloud, into a tape-recorder. As you are describing the image, it will change. Keep describing it AS YOU SEE IT: don't even complete the description of what you saw when you started describing. Describe what you see (or hear, or taste, or feel, or smell, or think you sense) in the present tense, exactly as you see it. "I see a green circle, now it's blue, I see a cloud in the sky, it seems like a bug or a caterpillar." Keep talking out loud. If the image doesn't change, describe more and more of it - if it changes, either gradually or suddenly, describe the change and what you are seeing now. As you describe it, other senses may come into play - describe everything you sense. Use complete sentences as much as possible. The purpose of the description out loud is to LINK your imaging brain with your conscious brain, so that a pathway will form enabling you to be aware of and understand your brain's thoughts, which are expressed in perceptions and imagery.
As you describe something, you become more aware of it. The more you describe something, the better you understand it, and the more you become able to describe it, in a spiraling effect. At some point, as your consciousness becomes better and better able to describe the images and perceptions your subconsciousness is producing, you will develop an engram, or pattern of recognition which will enable you to understand and verbalize what your brain is telling you about the solution to the problem which has been troubling you.
Although most of our conscious thought is highly verbal, and therefore we must stretch to catch a glimpse of our images, there is a corollary to image-streaming. As we focus on our images, we must remember to involve the verbal side of the brain. Therefore, it is essential that you describe your images OUT LOUD, in complete, grammatical sentences. If you don't, you weaken the link to your analytical brain. The whole point of the exercise is to get different areas of the brain linked together. We have to develop our ability to catch the fleeting images as they flash through our awareness, but we also have to link these images to our analytical side, so we can make use of the images. If you refer to an image as "that thing, you know," you will wind up with the equivalent of an unremembered dream. By verbalizing aggressively and exerting yourself to form sentences, you reinforce the image onto your conscious awareness.
Note: if you have perception of images or remembered dreams, but can't figure out what your mind is telling you, try this:
Return to the imaging state, or the semi-dreaming state, and allow yourself to develop a second image or dream. Describe this image or dream out loud, in great detail. Then explore what it is that is common to both images or dreams, when everything else is different. By exploring the common themes and elements, you may find it easier to understand what your brain is communicating to you in its image-language.
Talking about something helps you understand it. If you watch someone studying, you will notice that when he gets to a particularly difficult passage or thought, he will say it out loud to himself, or say an unfamiliar word out loud. When children are learning to read, they say the words out loud. This is partly because the people teaching them to read had to say the words out loud, but it's also because so much of our thought is verbal, that the easiest way to read a difficult word is by sounding it out, aloud. Adults who are not smooth readers also read out loud, but they have learned to muffle it for social purposes - they subvocalize, or just move their lips when the read, because they know that other people will think less of them if they read out loud. However, it is the easiest and most natural way to absorb concepts. Try a math problem that is on the edge of your ability. You will see that saying the terms out loud FEELS right, and leads you to the answer.
The same holds for learning foreign languages. You can read a vocabulary book, but if you don't say the words aloud, you won't retain them. The words you say out loud will stick in your mind better than the ones you simply look at.
This is partly because you are involving multiple senses - seeing and hearing and saying. More than that, however, the act of articulation focuses a DIFFERENT aspect of attention onto the same stimulus; as the brain is observing, which is a passive activity, it is also verbalizing and interacting with its perception. Thus, the idea is entering the brain through more than one channel, and the intermodulating effects of multiple stimuli keep the brain engaged with the idea in a more profound way.
Trainers in Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) teach that if you want to get an idea across to a group of people, you should present it visually, orally, and kinesthetically. Different people respond better to different stimuli, so if you present it all ways, everyone will get it in the way they learn best.
I agree with the practice, but I think there's another explanation for the phenomenon: everyone learns better with a multi-sensori input. If I tell you something, show it to you, and let you do it, you will learn it much better than if I only do one of the three. The NLP techniques are valid and good, but it is the cross-linking of the elements of the brain that accounts for the superior learning process.
You have millions of brain cells. More importantly for the thinking/learning/enjoying process: each active brain cell makes connections, or synapses, with many other brain cells. It is these connections that process ideas, thoughts, emotions, perceptions, and feelings. As synapses are reinfor ed by repeated use, patterns, or engrams, are developed, which provide short cuts for faster thought processing. Most engrams are established within clusters of adjacent brain cells. When different sections of the brain connect up, more and more of your brain's abilities get linked into new, previously unused engrams, and your thought processes become faster, more efficient, and clearer.
We call the process of linking different sections of the brain together "pole-bridging." Activities which use pathways between widely separate parts of the brain develop linkages that are usually UNdeveloped in most people. Developing such linkages increases polebridging in the brain, and will make the person smarter, more perceptive, better able to solve problems, and more appreciative of sensations and emotions, because it creates engrams of usage of more and more of the brain. Polebridging activities include ANY exercise which connects previously unconnected pathways, such as: reading music (which links the visual with the hearing, as well as linking the thinking, verbal hemisphere with the creative, musical side); juggling (which links physical coordination with visual attentiveness); solving math problems while listening to non-obtrusive music; drawing freestyle sketches while describing in detail what you are drawing or thinking or feeling; or many other activities you can make up for yourself that fit this pattern and fit with your unique life style.
Image-streaming is a special kind of pole-bridging activity. It links your imaging brain with your analytical brain. Although it can be used for many purposes, including speed-learning, settling emotional upsets, and even plain recreation, one of its very best applications is problem-solving, because it gives you access to every facet of the problem: what you know about it, what feelings you have (including hidden feelings you don't want to admit even to yourself), what impressions you have gotten of the situation that you didn't recognize or acknowledge at the time, and what result would most satisfy you.
In sum: if a problem has you baffled: stop rehashing what you think you already know about it. If you haven't solved it within a reasonable time, it is likely that your rehashing is taking the form of REJECTING whatever alternatives you are considering. Instead, try to relax yourself as much as you can, close your eyes, and describe your flow of natural images out loud, in complete sentences. Your brain is likely to present you with an unusual, unexpected image that, surprisingly, will be the key to a solution you had not thought of.
This is NOT a gimmick. This is a normal, natural pathway through your own mind that you were trained to squelch. Regaining this access will open a new world to you - a world you once had, and lost.
Everyone is different. We all have unique combinations of genes, experiences, personality, training, goals. Opening new pathways will provide different things to different people. You may find a solution to a problem, peace of mind, a path to God, creative ideas, or ecstasy. I can't tell what this will do for you individually. But it is as natural, automatic, and safe as breathing. It is a return to the way you solved problems as a baby, but with all the wisdom, self-control, and knowledge you have accumulated. It will not interfere with your current successful problem-solving system. It will supplement it, within your constant control. You turn it on and off at your will. It is an amazingly powerful tool. Enjoy it, and please let me know how it works for you.
I am: Susan Wenger, at wwenger101@aol.com.
For workshops on Creative Problem-Solving, check out the Creative Education Foundation, 1050 Union Road, Buffalo, NY 14224; telephone 1-800-447-2774.
Mensa holds its annual gathering every July. For info, contact them at their website, below.
For better information about Image-Streaming, Raising Intelligence, and Increasing your Perceptions, contact Win Wenger (my better half) at P.O. Box 332, Gaithersburg, MD 20884; telephone 301/948-1122; or check out any or all of the following websites: http://www.winwenger.com or http://www.anakin.com or http://www.botree.com or http://www.amateur-spirit.net
I am pleased to say that the book THE EINSTEIN FACTOR (by Win Wenger) is increasingly popular, and has been published overseas in six languages. Domestically, it was an alternate selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club and the Quality Paperback Book Club. If you don't find it at your bookstore, I know it is available from www.amazon.com on the web.
I myself have a new book called The Port-Wine Sea. It is a parody of the Patrick O'Brian Aubrey-Maturin series, considered "The best historical fiction ever written" by The New York Times Review of Books. If you haven't read any of this excellent fictional series, I suggest you start with "Master and Commander," and then enjoy the next eighteen books in the series. Please consider buying "The Port-Wine Sea" in multiple copies for everyone you know!
For info, contact me at susanwengermail@yahoo.com.
Links to other sites on the Web
The Einstein Factor: a book of techniques for increasing intelligence and building brainpower
Mensa: a high I.Q. society
Creative Education Foundation - they run workshops on creative problem-solving techniques.
Creativity and brain-boosting
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