Do you have difficulty coming up with ideas? You sit down, pen in hand, blank page at the ready and then nothing. It happens to us all. But have you ever asked yourself “have I exercised my\u00a0ideas muscle recently?”.<\/p>\n
Your \u201cideas muscle\u201d? What part of the body is that located? Well according to author\u00a0James Altucher<\/a> we all have one and we should practise using it everyday:<\/p>\n “It\u2019s important to exercise the idea muscle right now. If your idea muscle atrophies, then even at your lowest point you won\u2019t have any ideas.\u00a0How long does it take this muscle to atrophy? The same as any other muscle in your body: just two weeks without having any ideas. Atrophied”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n He adds.<\/p>\n “Take a waiter\u2019s pad. Go to a local cafe. Maybe read an inspirational\u00a0 book for ten to twenty minutes. Then start writing down ideas. What ideas? Hold on a second. The key here is, write ten ideas.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Altucher<\/a> recommends doing this EVERY day. Just 10, good or bad, silly or sad. Like going to the gym, that constant repetition builds up your muscle. In other words you need to get your ideas sweat on.<\/p>\n “when you exercise in the gym, your muscles don\u2019t start to\u00a0 build until you break a sweat. Your metabolism doesn\u2019t improve when you run until you sweat. Your body doesn\u2019t break down the old and build the new until it is sweating.\u00a0The poisons and toxins in your body don\u2019t leave until you sweat.\u00a0The same thing happens with the idea muscle. Somewhere around idea number six, your brain starts to sweat. This means it\u2019s building up.\u00a0 Break through this. Come up with ten ideas”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Don’t worry if you can’t come up with 10, it’s all about getting the pen going. Getting those reps going. Before you know it, you’re an iron man ideas athlete.<\/p>\n I adore Altucher<\/a>‘s writings, his honesty and outlook on life. I do this muscle tactic every day and it has helped me greatly in my creative life.\u00a0His full post on the topic is here<\/a>\u00a0and I highly recommend his new book which is called Reinvent Yourself<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Do you have difficulty coming up with ideas? You sit down, pen in hand, blank page at the ready and then nothing. It happens to us all. But have you ever asked yourself “have I exercised my\u00a0ideas muscle recently?”. Your \u201cideas muscle\u201d? What part of the body is that located? Well according to author\u00a0James Altucher…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":263,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,59,44],"tags":[61,62,15,40,47,60],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/alanswan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/instagram-10-Ideas-e1483924875920.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanswan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanswan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanswan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanswan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanswan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/alanswan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":267,"href":"http:\/\/alanswan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262\/revisions\/267"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanswan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanswan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanswan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanswan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}