Burning Question? Sleep on It

“We can­not solve our prob­lems with the same lev­el of think­ing that cre­at­ed them.” ― Albert Einstein

Last month I was at a din­ner in the US, chat­ting with a great CEO I work with about a mas­sive prob­lem in his busi­ness. He need­ed to find a key per­son for a very, very impor­tant role, and had no-one in the pipeline. He knew he couldn’t suc­ceed with­out the right per­son and was at his wit’s end.

That night, he decid­ed to sep­a­rate him­self from the prob­lem by delib­er­ate­ly putting it the back of his mind so that he could get some sleep. The next morn­ing, like a pack­age from Ama­zon, the solu­tion arrived in his mind. Some­one he had worked with, many years ago, would be per­fect for the role.

Although he was already with anoth­er com­pa­ny, the CEO sent him a mes­sage and they talked lat­er that day. To his delight the per­son was ready for a change. The tim­ing could not have been bet­ter, and they are now thrilled to be work­ing together.

The Law of Attraction

Many books have been writ­ten on the Law of Attrac­tion: the abil­i­ty to attract into our lives what­ev­er we focus on — about lever­ag­ing the pow­er of the sub­con­scious mind. It can be shock­ing how prob­lems can be solved if we just give our brains the space to solve them. Some­times overnight, some­times over time.

I recent­ly worked on new keynote pre­sen­ta­tion and stayed up late try­ing to wres­tle it into sub­mis­sion, but it just wasn’t work­ing. I gave up at 11 pm and con­scious­ly decid­ed not to think about it any­more, to let my brain work on it while I slept. In the morn­ing, I woke up with the ideas and clar­i­ty I need­ed, and I could see exact­ly what I need­ed to do to make the pre­sen­ta­tion better.

Sleep on it

In The Super­hu­man Mind: Free the Genius in Your Brain, authors Dr. Berit Bro­gaard, PhD (Direc­tor of the Bro­gaard Lab for Mul­ti­sen­so­ry Research, Uni­ver­si­ty of Mia­mi) and Kris­t­ian Mar­low, MA (Fel­low of the Ini­tia­tive on Neu­ro­science and Law, Bay­lor Col­lege of Med­i­cine) take a sci­en­tif­ic look at how gift­ed indi­vid­u­als – like Nobel prize-win­ners, pro-golfers and authors — have gained con­scious access to the potent pro­cess­ing pow­er of the brain through ​‘lucid dream­ing’ – a hybrid of wak­ing and dream­ing – that acti­vates the brain’s high-activ­i­ty frontal area.

It comes down to ask­ing the right, spe­cif­ic ques­tion and then let­ting your mind work on it while you get on with oth­er things. Who can do the job? How can we dou­ble refer­rals? Fix the design flaw?

I guess there’s real­ly some­thing to the expres­sion ​‘sleep on it’.

The Chal­lenge

• What burn­ing ques­tion to do have to answer now?
• Can you invite and trust your brain to work on it while you sleep?