It’s easy to get excited about the prospects of earning a living from home, even more so to contemplate going beyond simple telecommuting and actually starting a business of your own. To some of us, living life beyond the traditional comfort and security of an employer’s paycheck is a psychic hurdle too insurmountable to get over.
What if nobody buys what you’re selling and how do people come up with all those ideas you see plastered all over the Internet anyway? While it’s true that some people are “idea” oriented and can toss them out faster than you can write them down, it doesn’t mean they’re all good ideas. And even if you don’t see yourself as idea oriented, there is a technique called mind mapping which has helped many a frustrated thinker overcome writer’s block.
A mind map is simply an alternate version of brainstorming an outline. Some of the pioneering work in the this field was done by Gabriele Lusser Rico in “Writing the Natural Way.” Essentially a mind map is a diagram created on a single sheet of paper, though you could opt for a poster board or even the wall of your apartment in a pinch, or if you expect to do some really big thinking. Rico describes the creative process as accessing clumps of knowledge you already have about a topic; these clumps are hanging suspended in your brain matter – just below the surface. To access them, you must keep your left brain occupied while allowing your right brain to bring them out.
Start with the topic you want to create ideas about, maybe “building a spaceship.” Write this phrase in the center of the paper and draw a circle around it. As ideas come to mind about the topic, draw a line or arrow off the main bubble to a smaller bubble somewhere else on the paper. Write the tangential idea, such as “tools needed” or “buy bigger life insurance policy.” Keep your hand moving constantly while building this mind map. Doodle or keep running your pen over the bubbles if you must while waiting for the next idea to pop out. The idea is to free the subconscious and see what’s really in that gray matter of your.
Don’t worry about feeling like an idiot while creating a mind map. You’re not human if you don’t feel like an idiot at least twice daily. And who knows? You might actually have a good idea, or maybe a dozen, even if you’re not an idea person. And we’re of the firm opinion that creating wealth almost always begins with a good idea.
The Creating Wealth Team
Flickr / Mshades
