What Is Thinking Block and How To Overcome It

Everyone has an idea of what writer’s block is. I am familiar with this problem first hand. You sit there… staring at a blank word document and it stares back at you. Your mind tells you – “Write something!”, “Anything!” So you write some banality that starts with “Everyone needs motivation in life”. And your brain screams, “No! Delete it before someone sees it! No one wants to read THIS.” So you are back where you started – a white void, where all great ideas die, before being born.

You might not have experienced writer’s block. But I am sure that at some point you have had to deal with imagination or thinking block. Do you know that feeling – a complete brain hiccup where all of a sudden you just cannot come up with a decent answer or solution to a problem, because your mind goes blank?

Following Murphy’s Law – great spontaneous solutions rarely come to us when we are thinking intensely about them. Quite the opposite, the harder we try the more feel confused and frustrated.

Why?

As it turns out, it all has to do with the way our brain works. It can either process information in an intuitive and spontaneous way, while looking at the whole picture or it can process the data in an analytical and sequential way, looking first at the pieces then putting them together to get the whole. It all depends on which hemisphere of the brain is more engaged while thinking. After numerous experiments neurologists have found that the left hemisphere of our brain is responsible for logical thinking, while the right hemisphere is for creative and lateral thinking.

Most people use left-side thinking or think “rationally” a lot more than they use the right side of the brain. You might be wondering what is wrong with thinking rationally and relying on your analytical skills.

Nothing. Unless you over use them. Health care professionals report that left hemisphere strokes are a lot more common and more dangerous than right hemisphere strokes. It may be a signal that we work our rational mind into a blowout.

Sense versus Sensibility.

Contrary to what we would expect, relying heavily on our logical brain might not always be the best way to solve complicated problems or make the right decisions in our professional and personal life.

First of all, the logical part of the brain relies heavily on our past experiences when analyzing any informational input. It also creates structures that often act as barriers to alternative solutions and perspectives.

Think of a clock-work toy robot that is able to walk only in one direction. My brother had one of these robots when we were little. The robot’s name was “Obi” (probably because my brother could not yet pronounce “R”).

All you had to do was turn the key on the robot’s back a couple of times and it would start walking. There was only one problem with Obi. It would go forward until it bumped into a wall. And then it would be stuck there, until someone turned him around.

Our rational brain works almost like Obi did. Whenever it faces a complex problem it performs a sequence of mental steps/operations to resolve it. If it does not work, our rational brain continues to use the same logic and comes to the same conclusions.

How to overcome dead-end thinking?

To get out of a thinking block, you must “zoom out” and look at the problem from a different creative perspective.

The secret to overcoming imagination and thinking block is to switch channels. Whenever you face a complex problem, feel stuck, or do not know what would be your best course of action do not force your mind to come up with an answer.

Instead distract yourself with a completely unrelated activity (like cooking, reading, drawing, singing, playing with your children, doing aerobics or taking a bath). The answer might come to you out of nowhere when you least expect it. The key is to get back to your challenge periodically and then drop it. This process of switching back and forth from rational to intuitive thinking triggers an insight.

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” – Albert Einstein

Maybe it is time to rediscover your gift?