Train For Aha Moments

The best insights always pop up when you stop trying to generate them. Your subconscious is a powerful place to connect the dots, but just like meditation, you cannot force the effort. Kind of like when the answer to a question you’ve been wrestling with hits you in the shower.

You can foster, encourage and even train your ability to bring these serendipitous moments to light. After years of writing, learning how the brain works, and running WTKY at Emory University in Atlanta, I found a repeatable method to actually increase their occurrence in my life. Like anything worth having, it takes a little work, but the work itself is equally fulfilling.

We call the process to generate these aha moments Synthesis. Journaling helps us turn our thoughts into objects. Synthesis freely builds with these lego blocks activating divergent thinking and combinatory play. While you probably won’t experience a life changing revelation during your first week, you will start building the muscle that increases the likelihood of noticing a spark that may lead to it.

I’ll give you an example - Mind you, I’ve been at this for years.

This summer, I’m reading The Gene - An Intimate Story by Siddhartha Mukherjee, and I’m also coaching a 4th and 5th grade club lacrosse team. Unifying that team toward a common goal has been parked in my subconscious for the last few months. 

While reading this morning, two sentences from the book caught my attention and got the wheels turning. I always do my best to trust these gut instincts and give these feelings a little time and energy. Sometimes they lead to something and sometimes they don’t. When they do, it’s pretty awesome. When they don’t, it’s completely fine.

“Individual genes specify individual functions, but the relationship among genes allows physiology. The genome is inert without these relationships.”

Something clicked. I put the book down and immediately went to my journal.

Here is me working through it in real time:

A team is not just a group of players. Well, maybe an average team is just a group of players. Great teams are defined by the relationships between the players. Relationships that are built in a series of interactions that drive a response to moments. Games are not one big moment, but a collection of hundreds of micro moments. The relationships between players offer confidence and courage to those players working to affect those moments favorably for the team. They don’t have to be best friends. They do have to see each other, celebrate putting in the work together, lift each other up in defeat and relish in the victories. 

My job as a coach is to create environments that naturally foster these interactions that become the foundation of their relationships. Like genes in cells that build complex things from small, simple things, their success depends on these relationships. 

In his book, Mukherjee makes a great analogy. What makes a boat a boat? Pieces of wood? No, it's the relationship and organization of those pieces of wood that makes a boat. 

Organization - This is the culture that is part hierarchical but mostly emergent. It is a set of standards and expectations that reinforce the relationships required to achieve any goals.

Relationships - If we don’t have relationships, we are just a pile of wood. Players need consistent environments to allow those relationships to develop naturally. The starting point is always trust, which is built in a number of ways. By doing what you say you are going to do, by demonstrating an ever present level of effort, and by being prepared to practice. The last one is a big one. It’s putting in the individual work to be ready to deliver as a team member. 

Let’s be the boat and not the pile of wood.

Have you had any great aha moments this week? Send them to [email protected] and we’ll invite you to our online community where you can try WTKY for free.

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