13 Ways To Clear Your Mind For Great Ideas

You can try to see if the shower helps...but you may be better off trying some of these. For more than 35 years, Post-it® Brand has helped catapult ideas from paper out into the world.

1. Get the junk out.

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When trying to come up with ideas, say or write everything that first comes to mind —those are probably just "brain scraps," and you have to get 'em out of the way early. Once the bad stuff is out of your mind, you can make room for the best ideas, and you'll see how their quality improves as you dig deeper.

2. Run for your...ideas

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Take off running and experience the mental clarity that a "runner's high" provides. Running can be therapeutic, and just jogging through the city or in nature, encountering new sights, can serve as inspiration.

3. Let yourself feel the feels.

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Of course it's nice to be in a great mood, but sometimes allowing yourself to feel a bit of sadness or nostalgia through music or by revisiting, say, a photo album, can open up the creative gates since you're dealing with raw emotions that you may not experience often.

4. Write, write, write.

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Our mind goes a million miles an hour — however, when we write, we usually have to stop and think, as writing somehow forces us to analyze as we summarize some experiences and expand upon others. It also opens up new roads for us to explore that we wouldn't spot solely by thinking about them.

5. Talk it out.

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Another way of clearing our minds is simply by expressing what's going on in there to others. Once you open up to conversation, you might find that you're also discovering answers to mental roadblocks and simple solutions to issues that may have been lingering in your mind.

6. Get crafty.

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Doing repetitive tactile activities can be totally Zen. When the body is immersed in a task, our mind is allowed to rest, and absolute repose might make it totally open to begin spurting out fantastically creative thoughts.

7. Let the stars help.

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What's more whimsical than the sights of celestial forms once the sun is down? By focusing on something bigger than "us," you can allow your mind to escape the mundane or repetitive thoughts that come with the daily grind and welcome new, amazing thoughts into an unclouded mind.

8. Switch subjects.

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Keep your brain on its toes by reading or watching something completely different from whatever you're trying to think about. Maybe looking at flowers won't help you to get inspired to paint a bouquet, but perhaps watching a space documentary could prompt you to come up with a galactic neon floral painting idea or something entirely different than what you first visualized.

9. Get lost in what inspires you.

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Have you ever gone down an internet black hole where you keep finding more and more stuff you love and bookmarking pages with a kind of unparalleled fervor? Good. The web is there to provide you with bits of material you should be able to revisit as often as you need to. Things that interest us are basically brain crack, which is great for creativity.

10. Get up and get going.

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You brain is fresh as lettuce in the a.m., so why not take full advantage of that? Make room for equally fresh content by pouring yourself into your creative endeavors for two to three hours in the early mornings — maybe after a while you'll even start to crave it.

11. Move around.

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When stuck, a change of scenery could be all our mind needs to feel clean and fresh. Or, well, just ~refreshed~.

12. Look at other people's work.

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Unfortunately, it's not hard to believe that whatever project we may be working on will turn out entirely sucky. But seeing someone else's beautiful, finished project serves to remind us that, heck, if they can do it, so can we. So don't even hesitate to get in the mindset of "I can, and I will," finding inspiration in completed works by others.

13. And...just...live.

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Sure, great writers, for example, sometimes read great books, but in order to be really original, you gotta live things for yourself. Reading about a concert isn't the same as feeling your heart pumping and the music elevating you when you see a band play live. Living new experiences could give your brain room to breathe and inspiration to create.

A clear mind makes room for great ideas. Post-it® Brand has been helping you take your creativity to the next level for more than 35 years.

Courtesy of Post-it® Brand