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CREATIVITY | PSYCHOLOGY

Your Best Creative Ideas Can Come Easily: Mix These 2 Mind States

Effort isn’t the only factor in making quality creative work

6 min readApr 3, 2025

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Image by Andrea Piacquadio at Pexels

Ever wondered why your best ideas come in the shower? Or when you were least expecting them? Yet, when you try to replicate that, you get nothing.

There’s a reason you get great ideas in certain situations, and a reason they don’t reliably come simply by stepping into the bath.

In order to get these creative ideas coming when you need them, you need to jump on and ride two mental-emotional systems, and dial down the other. Here’s how that works.

Three systems

We all have three emotional regulation systems that run in our heads and bodies: drive, threat, and soothing. They can’t all run together, and running the soothing system will help to turn down the systems of threat and drive.

Use the correct combination at the right times, and you’ve got a wonderful little brain hack for hitting some great creative ideas right when you need them.

Step one: Dial down the threat system

You can’t expect to come up with great ideas while the threat system is running. The…

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Happy Brain Club
Happy Brain Club

Published in Happy Brain Club

A publication for personal growth, mental health and psychology related reads

Alexander M. Combstrong
Alexander M. Combstrong

Written by Alexander M. Combstrong

Research-backed ways to change your life for the better. Out now: The Confident Introvert’s Handbook. Actor/screenwriter. Forge, Better Humans, Mind Cafe.

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