Can You Force Yourself to Have an Idea?

Practically no one can ‘force’ themselves or ‘demand’ an idea on the spot as we have very little control over our unconscious mind without the use of third parties (i.e. hypnosis, nlp, etc.), and the unconscious mind is where ideas are born!

Exclusions to this rule are the well-trained super creative minds of senior advertising executives, long-time copy editors and a few hyper-intuitive artists. These people have spent a lifetime generating ideas and creative solutions on the spot and are more ‘in tune’ with their subconscious minds than most of us.

For instance, here’s what Andy Rooney says about ideas:

“Anyone who waits to be struck with a good idea has a long wait coming. If I have a deadline for a column or a television script, I sit down at the typewriter and damn well decide to have an idea.”
– Andy Rooney

Oh to be able to create ideas on demand like Andy Rooney!

Yes, I do understand that Mr. Rooney is not everyone’s favorite commentator or mentor, but if you glance at his bio you can’t deny his creativity and idea-ability.

We can all catch up to Andy and his creative ‘idea-generating’ peers by learning the techniques and understanding the process that snap our creative genius to attention.