I’ve been exploring a fascinating yet simple “mind-mapping” journaling process recently that can help you boost creativity and understand yourself in a new way 🙂
If you already journal, it can inspire new ways for you to explore yourself with pen and paper.
And if you don’t normally journal, it’s easy to follow and might spark something new for you that regular journaling doesn’t.
It’s a four-part prompt that takes about 15 minutes. You can either go through the whole shabang or just scan around for ideas and inspo.
Let’s get it!
Step 1: Thought Train (choo!)
Positive effects: Unfiltering your creative flow
Write a single word on your piece of paper and circle it. Pick a word that feels top-of-mind. Perhaps a theme in your life right now. It’s not important what word you choose, so don’t overthink it. “Love” is just as good a theme as “Jersey Shore.”
Here’s an example:
Then write a word that your first bubble makes you think of. First thing that comes to mind, no matter what it is. Put a bubble around the second word and connect the two bubbles.
Then write down what that second bubble makes you think of. First thought. Then put a bubble around that new word.
After a few bubbles, it’ll look something like this:
The words that come up don’t need to make sense.
Go for a few minutes until you fill the page:
This process will let you take the filter off your creative impulse. Plus you get a map of which threads are currently occupying your consciousness.
Step 2: The Color of Your Intuition
Positive Effects: Discerning which threads to pursue in your self-realization process.
Pick the three bubbles that feel the most exciting to you. The ones that feel like there’s a lot of information and life inside of them.
Circle those in red (and notice what they feel like in your body).
Then, pick three bubbles that feel the least alive to you. Like you want to avoid them. Maybe they sound boring or over-analyzed.
Circle those in blue (and notice what they feel like in your body).
Your page will look like this now:
In the process of self-realization, we are at constant choice of which threads to feed and which to put on the back burner. We often pursue the ‘wrong’ threads because of thoughts like: “I need to pursue this thread to be successful!” or something of that flavor.
But when you give attention to the red-hot threads, you are attuning to what wants to come forth, which creates an intuitive flow in your own self-realization process.
Step 3: Let a Bubble Give Birth
Positive Effects: Releasing tension around a charged part of your life.
Now pick one of your red bubbles.
Write that word and bubble it on a new piece of paper.
Like this:
Then write as many related thoughts, themes, or threads to that single bubble as you can fit. And place them around the last bubble. Like this:
When you do this, you’ll start to make some surprising creative associations.
You also might feel like some tension was released because there was a bloated bubble that finally gave birth.
You can also repeat the color-coding and bubble-expanding process with this new map if you’d like.
Step 4: Connect the Unexpected
Positive Effects: Integrating your consciousness, learning to create unexpected connections.
One thing that creative people do really well is notice how this thing over here is related to that thing over there.
To train this muscle, randomly pick a bubble from your most recent page.
Then, randomly pick a bubble from Step 1.
EG:
Then write on the prompt:
How are these two threads related?
Shoot for 3-5 sentences at least.
Your mind can find patterns anywhere, you just have to point it where to look.
Finding connections between these two bubbles will connect two previously disparate islands of your consciousness.
The last few times I’ve done this I’ve found connections between sex-coaching and goats, and between hippies and slugs. Lol.
Go You!
That’s all 🙂 Feel free to riff on this process and make it your own.
I hope you found something in this process interesting, useful, or inspiring. Now, go forth with your creativity and share it with the world!
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