In essence while you are studying or feeding your mind a problem or outlining an opportunity just before you go to sleep is like stuffing your subconscious mind. This feeds your powerful brain new fresh material to play with and from which to work.

Try this simple form of personal brainstorming…you might inspire yourself with the wisdom you draw from your subconscious mind.

The mind works best when challenged with a daily routine of creative thinking, just like an exercise program designed to condition the body’s muscles. The late Earl Nightingale, noted self-help expert, devised a very simple method that only requires three things:

• An open mind
• A pencil or pen
• A pad of paper or something to write on.

Here is the system or method he devised that works as well today as it did when he introduced it to his readers and listeners.

1. Give your subconscious a pressing problemto digest and gnaw on just before you go to sleep. Spend 20-30 minutes thinking about a challenge, problem, or opportunity you are dealing with currently. When you lay down forget about it. While you sleep your subconscious mind, the source of most breakthrough ideas, will be mulling it over and thinking about it from various perspectives and sides.


2. Wake up an hour before anyone else. Find a comfortable place to sit, get a coffee or juice, a pad of paper and a pencil or pen.


3. Relax and let the ideas flow. Write everything down as the ideas occur, no matter how wild, far out or seemingly impractical they seem. Don’t stop to edit or judge these ideas, just capture or record them. Let your mind do a mental dump onto paper into a form you can do something with later.

This simple brainstorming method worked like a charm for Earl, on a regular basis and produced some outstanding ideas, which he later launched successfully. According to Earl, the key is the subconscious mind, which acts like a gigantic warehouse for ideas and thoughts, floating around just below our conscious mind awareness. Insights or hunches are ideas, which simply bubbled up from the vast reservoir of our subconscious mind.