« The Beginner's Mind, Appearances to the Contrary | Main | Dissing Radio »
April 01, 2003
The Breakout Principle
Sometimes on the way to work I'll catch the Diane Rehm Show on KUER. Diane always has some interesting topic with an interesting guest. Yesterday was no exception.
Dr. Herbert Benson was the guest yesterday. He is the president of the Mind/Body Medical Institute. I doubt I would have listened to anything beyond the name of his company (I'm not really into yoga and bio-feedback and so forth), had he not been on Diane's show.
Dr. Benson talked about "eureka" moments, those moments when suddenly our minds become clear and the solution is so clear and obvious. These typically come after a long, difficult struggle to find the answer we've been looking for. His research led him to believe that these moments can be engineered to happen if we will follow some basic steps. I was driving, so I didn't take notes; I'd recommend you listen to the show to get more detail.
- Prepare: get ready to start looking for the solution
- Struggle: put everything you can into finding the answer
- Back off: go do something totally different; take a shower
- Let the moment happen: your brain will reconfigure itself to find the answer
Dr. Benson has an in-depth book on this subject, The Breakout Principle: How to Activate the Natural Trigger That Maximizes Creativity, Athletic Performance, Productivity and Personal Well-Being that has received many strong recommendations.
I've tried this on a few occassions, even before I heard Dr. Benson. It does seem to work. Dr. Benson says that you can even use these principles on a larger group.
As I was listening to the show, I was thinking about how amazing it is that we know so little about ourselves and how we work. This is my own brain, the closest I can get to myself, and I have to listen to someone else tell me how I can use it better. Weird.
Posted by pete at April 1, 2003 10:54 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry: