Day 171:

Boost your self-esteem by sleeping on it

Yesterday a friend's contract at work was terminated and he was only given two day's notice. The company had previously asked him to go to a different site in Texas next week for the company. He had already bought his ticket using his own funds and the company did not even offer to pay his refund costs.

Most nights I write these articles at night working until around midnight. Given the events at work I just could not come up with a topic to write on. So I decided to use an excellent method for problem solving and creativity. I suggested to my unconscious mind to come up with a topic for the article and went to bed by eleven knowing that I would wake up earlier than usual with the correct answer.

This method has been used by many creative people over the years. A famous case is the discovery of the molecular structure of Benzene by Friedrich August von Kekule after he had a dream of whirling snakes. A few years later in a dinner to commemorate this great discovery he said:

"I turned my chair to the fire [after having worked on the problem for some time] and dozed. Again the atoms were gamboling before my eyes. This time the smaller groups kept modestly to the background. My mental eye, rendered more acute by repeated vision of this kind, could not distinguish larger structures, of manifold conformation; long rows, sometimes more closely fitted together; all twining and twisting in snakelike motion. But look! What was that? One of the snakes had seized hold of its own tail, and the form whirled mockingly before my eyes. As if by a flash of lighting I awoke... Let us learn to dream, gentlemen."

The method used for actively sleeping on it is to relax using self-hypnosis, meditation, progressive relaxation or any other method you know (a simple way to breath deeply a few times while just affirming relax). Now talk to you unconscious mind and ask your unconscious mind to come up with a solution overnight to you problem. Now let go of all concern and go to sleep. It may be not so easy in the beginning to do this but with practice you can become an expert at it. Last night when I went to sleep I knew by the morning this article would write itself and (forgetting about the fact that my Windows 98 crashed -- what do you expect from a Microsoft product) it did.

Have a paper and pencil handy so that you can write your thoughts and solutions to your problem as soon as you wake up. Just continue practicing this and each time you have success in solving your problems creatively by sleeping on it you will boost your self-esteem and increase the likelihood of success the next time.

Back

Home