Part I: Benefits of right brain and mindmapping for creative professionals

December 9, 2006 by  

I’m committed to making my change blog valuable with both content and daily updates but sometimes get impossibly stuck about getting it done.  I can fluctuate between feeling like I have nothing to say, and feeling like I have too much to say.  That can have a paralyzing effect.

Mind mapping helps me review my week from an integral perspective, taking the pressure and effort out of "choosing". I approach it this way: there are no accidents, only synchronicity, so have fun with it and see what comes up.

This past week, I’d been thinking a lot about social networking, so I thought I’d join zaadz.  Its a nice site but joining started to feel stressful – more steps to take, duplication of content, and the opportunity cost of belonging. 

I went through my news feeds for an inspiring topic, and came across some stunningly sad news that Ken Wilber is quite ill and has been suffering a lot this past year (with grace and grit, no doubt). His teachings and presence have been huge for me for twenty years.

I listened to the Voice of Knowledge audiobook and watched Goodnight, We Love You – The Life and Legend of Phyllis Diller (2004).  These wildly different sources greatly inspired me in similar ways.

Although I live in the city and probably won’t see anything, I resolved to  to go outside early tomorrow morning for the planetary alignment.  I even checked Free Will Astrology for my weekly horoscope, which was surprising.  And, I watched the Friday night news review and analysis TV shows..hoping for a ray of hope from the Iraq study, but getting the opposite.

So overall, although I was slowly recovering from a bad respiratory infection which had left me uncharacteristically weak and vulnerable, I had a great deal to work with but could not get clear about what to blog.

To get out of my head and unstuck, I mind mapped what strongly strongly affected me during the week. I relaxed, stopped pushing myself and let my right-brain find the connections and the synchronicity in the week’s events.  It looks like this (click to enlarge):
rs_blog_120906.gif

As I suspected, the value was in the connections, but my analytical left-brain could not see it or make sense of it. The mind map not only clarified but also led to simple actions that I can take (Part II).

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