Think Like Da Vinci: 7 Easy Steps to Boosting Your Everyday Genius. Michael Gelb

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СКАЧАТЬ with a theme is a powerful tool for focusing your Curiosità. Choose a theme for the day and record observations in your notebook. You can jot down your thoughts throughout the day, or just make mental notes to be recorded in your notebook at a quiet time before sleep. Aim to make accurate, simple observations. Speculation, opinion, and theory are fine, but actual observation offers the richest resource.

      Your list of a hundred questions, or the power questions, will provide plenty of themes for this exercise. Additionally, you can choose any of the following or make up your own. Some favorite themes include: Emotions, Seeing, Listening, Touch, Aesthetics, and Animals. Do this exercise on your own or choose a theme with a friend and compare notes at the end of the day.

      CONTEMPLATION EXERCISE

      In an age of sound bites, contemplation is becoming a lost art. Attention spans grow shorter and the soul suffers. To contemplate, as defined by Webster, is “to look at with continued attention, to meditate on.” It comes from the root contemplari, which means “to mark out a temple” (con, “with”; templum, “temple”) or “to gaze attentively.”

       A Sample Theme Exercise

      My friend Michael Frederick is a theater director, acting coach, and teacher of the Feldenkrais Method, the Alexander technique, and yoga. He has been doing theme work for more than twenty-five years. He graciously agreed to share the following unedited sample from his notebook:

      January 10, 1998. Theme: Contact with Material Objects

      

      1) 7:40 a.m. Noticed the quality and sense of my feet first touching the floor. That the contact with the floor was supporting me and allowing me to continue lengthening through my body as I stood up for the first time today.

      2) 8:20 a.m. As I brushed my teeth, I saw how I was holding my toothbrush too tight in my right hand and this tension spread up through my arm and shoulder causing neck tension. Then I looked in the mirror and noticed I was slumping.

      3) 11:30 a.m. Holding the telephone with a vise grip and with my head cocked to the right side causing a pain in my arm and shoulder. Similar to my toothbrush observation. Holding on to objects with an over-effort … “for dear life.”

      4) 4:30 p.m. While eating a sandwich in a hurry, I saw how I would gobble the food down without paying attention to what I was eating. Speed was important and this made me lose contact with the taste and even knowing exactly what the sandwich consisted of.

      5) 5:30 p.m. I also noticed the sunset today and the warmth of the sun contacting my face allowed me to slow down and see what was in front of me (i.e., bringing me more into the present moment).

      6) 9:30 p.m. Sorting through today’s mail. Having to take time with the junk mail (i.e., junk material objects). Felt like my life was/is taken up with sorting & filing & fixing & handling material objects. I become a “caretaker” of these objects!

      7) 10:30 p.m. As I hold this pen in my hand, I’m noticing how little effort is required to actually write. The pen works very well without the extra effort of pushing.

      Choose any question from the previous exercises – for example: What people, places, and activities allow me to feel most fully myself? – and hold it in your mind for a sustained period, at least ten minutes at a time. A good way to do this is to take a large sheet of paper and write the question out in big, bold letters. Then:

      

Find a quiet, private place and hang it on the wall in front of you.

      

Relax, breathe deeply, allowing extended exhalations.

      

Just sit with your question.

      

When your mind starts to wander, bring it back by reading the question again, out loud. It is particularly valuable to do this contemplation exercise before going to sleep, and again upon waking. You will find that if you practice it sincerely, your mind will “incubate” insights overnight.

      STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS EXERCISE

      A powerful complement to contemplation, stream of consciousness writing is a marvelous tool for plumbing the depths of your questions. Choose any question, and working in your notebook, write your thoughts and associations as they occur, without editing.

      Devote at least ten minutes to writing your responses. The secret of effective stream of consciousness writing is to keep your pen moving; don’t lift it away from the paper or stop to correct your spelling and grammar – just write continuously.

      Stream of consciousness writing yields lots of nonsense and redundancy but can lead to profound insight and understanding. Don’t worry if you seem to be writing pure gibberish; this is actually a sign that you are overriding the habitual, superficial aspects of your thought process. As you persevere, keeping your pen on the paper and moving it continuously, you’ll eventually open a window through which your intuitive intelligence will shine.

      

Take a break after each stream of consciousness session.

      

Go back to your notebook and read aloud what you have written.

      

Highlight the words or phrases that speak to you most strongly.

      

Again, look for themes, the beginnings of poems, and more questions.

      

Contemplate the metaphor of the poet’s motto: “Write drunk, revise sober.”

      The contemplation and stream of consciousness exercises are excellent tools for personal and professional problem solving. Let’s consider the role of Curiosità in problem solving a bit further.

      

      CURIOSITÀ AND CREATIVE

      PROBLEM SOLVING

      Think back to your school days. We all remember what curiosity did to the cat. But what happened to the kids who asked too many questions? A common refrain from overworked, beleaguered teachers was “We don’t have time for all these questions; we’ve got to get through the curriculum.” Now persistent question askers are diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder or “hyperactivity” and treated with Ritalin and other drugs. If the young Leonardo were alive today and attending grade school, he would probably be on medication.

      “Why is the sky blue? Leonardo’s answer: “I say that the azure that the air makes us see is not its proper color, but this color comes from warm, damp air, evaporated into minuscule and СКАЧАТЬ