“If You Can’t Explain it Simply, You Don’t Understand it Well Enough”–Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein

Dream

The dream was always running ahead of me. To catch up, to live for a moment in unison with it, that was the miracle.

You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.

The best love affairs are those we never had.

Like all dreamers I confuse disenchantment with truth.

Have you noticed ... there is never any third act in a nightmare? They bring you to a climax of terror and then leave you there. They are the work of poor dramatists.

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.

Dreams are illustrations... from the book your soul is writing about you.

There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other.

You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream. - C.S. Lewis

I'll do my dreaming with my eyes wide open, and I'll do my looking back with my eyes closed.

You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.

Life is never easy for those who dream.

When your dreams turn to dust, vacuum.

Keep your dreams alive. Understand to achieve anything requires faith and belief in yourself, vision, hard work, determination, and dedication. Remember all things are possible for those who believe.

confusion

Sometimes I'm confused by what I think is really obvious. But what I think is really obvious obviously isn't obvious...

Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not yet understood.

Confusion is the welcome mat at the door of creativity.

The attempt and not the deed confounds us.

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.

Everything in the universe goes by indirection. There are no straight lines.

Restlessness and discontent are the first necessities of progress.

If you're not confused, you're not paying attention.

You always admire what you really don't understand.

Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.

I'm not confused, I'm just well mixed.

DEEP THINKING

Albert Einstein used a technique for deep thinking, which he referred to as "thought experiments." He didn't invent the technique, but perhaps made it more popular. It was essentially the practice of relaxing and setting a visualization in motion while watching it closely to see what might be discovered.

You may recall that he imagined himself riding a beam of light in this way, which lead to the Theory of Relativity. Elias Howe had a dream about cannibals attacking, and their spears had holes in them. This gave him the inspiration for the sewing machine he invented. There are many other examples of visual imagery leading to deep thoughts and inventions. Let's look at why it works and how to use it.

Deep Thinking - Watch That Mental Movie

What happens with this kind of deep thinking is that you tap into the creative power of you unconscious mind. For example, when I was having trouble selling a particular ebook I had written, I imagined giving it away. I actually pictured myself handing the book to a man, although it is an ebook so there is no paper version. He looked it over, and then something interesting happened. He asked me, "when can I have more?" Only then did I notice that I had only given him a chapter.

"Next week," I told him, and he nodded. This was the basic idea for what I actually did. I started giving the ebook away a chapter at a time by email (all set up on an autoresponder). People naturally got impatient if they liked it, and they chose to buy the complete book. Not only did this boost sales, but I hosted the free chapters on web pages where I made money on advertising.

Now, what is interesting here, is that the imagery took on a life of its own. I hadn't predetermined a solution beforehand, only to guide the imagined scene in that direction. My unconscious mind was doing its own deep thinking, and delivering images to me that suggested good ideas.

By the way, it seems to be easiest to find solutions to financial problems with creative thinking techniques. But this particular technique is great for philosophical issues and other "deep" questions, especially when you imagine conversations with wise people. The whole conversation is your creation, of course, yet the imagined figures will often come up with ideas you wouldn't have normally thought of. It seems likely that this is what is going on when people claim to be "channeling" individuals who lived in the past.

To do this yourself, simply start with an imagined scene that is relevant to whatever you are working on, and let that mental movie roll on its own. If you are trying to understand a moral issue, for example, start with a person facing a morally tough choice and watch to see how it turns out and what might be learned from what you see. If you are trying to boost sales at your restaurant, imagine a customer walking in to see if they like your place.

Practicing this deep thinking technique can cause you to fall deep asleep. Einstein is said to have held a rock in each hand, which would fall if he nodded off, and so wake him up and bring his attention back to the mental images that he was working with.