RULE TO BREAK

“Think through your problems”

How do you cope when you have a knotty problem to deal with? Most of us spin it around in our minds, looking at it from this side and that, considering all the possibilities, ramifications, alternatives, approaches and outcomes. It seems logical enough to keep thinking it through until you finally arrive – must surely arrive – at the best solution.

Except that sometimes you find the more you worry at the knot, the more tangled it gets. The problem becomes more complex under the microscope of your mind, and the solution gets further away from you. You end up more confused and frustrated, and the problem can start to obsess you. Should you take the job? Do you want to start a family? Is university for you? Is this really the right career path?

Thinking harder about things doesn’t always make them better. Sometimes it makes them worse. It can be difficult to ignore the problem so you need to keep busy, fill your mind with other things, let the matter go for now. Counter-intuitively, this can actually get you closer to the answer you’re looking for.

The subconscious mind is very powerful, and if you present it with a challenge and then go away and leave it alone, it will continue to puzzle at it without your conscious help. Often it will find you an answer, which it will feed back to you. Maybe it will give you some kind of inspiration, or a solution you hadn’t considered, or perhaps just a gut feeling you can pick up on that tells you which way to go.

The sewing machine was invented by a man called Elias Howe. His knotty problem was working out how to get the needle to go through the fabric and pick up the thread from the other side. He spent years working on it. One day he fell asleep at his workbench, and he had a dream. He dreamt he was being pursued by cannibals carrying spears. When he woke up he realized that all the spears had holes in the points. That was his answer – he put the hole in the tip of the needle instead of the end where it is on a normal, manual needle. In his case a dream led to him becoming the second richest man in the USA.

I can’t promise you such wealth and riches, but I can tell you that your subconscious mind often does a much better job than you of unravelling knots. And, as in Howe’s case, it will notify you when it’s arrived at an answer. So put your problem to it – in so many words if you like (‘Hello subconscious, I’ve got a question for you …’) – and then let it alone. Keep busy and see what happens.