Have you struggled with blog post ideas?

It’s something most bloggers struggle with.

And if you’re not a full-time blogger it is even more likely you suffer from a lack of blog post ideas. This might not be your fault, though. Only a few people in history have been wired to effectively think creatively while generating an enormous amount of ideas.

These individuals, known as creative geniuses, have a different way of interpreting their thoughts. This is what allows them to become some of the best inventors, philosophers and thinks in history.

There is good news – you can train yourself to think like a creative genius and it can lead to some great blog post ideas.

The Creative Genius Way of Idea Generation

When you think of creative geniuses, think Leonardo da Vinci. Think of Thomas Edison. Think of Steve Jobs, John Lasseter and countless others that came up with ideas that changed the world. These individuals had a different way of interpreting the world. They removed filters and took into account all thoughts no matter how obscure and ambiguous.

That is what gets in the way of our thinking. For most people, myself included, we eliminate ideas, consciously or sub-consciously, because we are trained to do so. We use our experiences and understandings of the world to make what we think are the best decisions.

When we think of blog ideas, we have reasons to eliminate ideas.

Creative geniuses work in much the opposite way. They have reasons to include everything. Nothing is eliminated until the creative thinking is over and it’s time to work.

From How The Mind Creates Ideas:

When you are brainstorming for ideas and have a thought, the value of that thought depends upon how you interact with it. We are educated to be critical, judgmental, logical thinkers and to instantly evaluate and judge thoughts based on our past experiences. If there is any ambiguity, the judgment is invariably negative and the thought dissipates back into nothingness. The ordinary mind has no tolerance for ambiguity because it is conditioned to simplify the complexities of life. Aristotelian logic maintains, for example, it is either (A or not-A). The sky is either blue or not blue. It cannot be both. We are taught to be exclusionary thinkers, which means we exclude anything that is not immediately related to our subject.

Creative geniuses do not think this way. They know that the sky is a billion different shades of blue. When they brainstorm for ideas, their first objective is to observe and record all thoughts and ideas as possibilities. They observe without judgment. This is why all their thoughts and ideas come into existence as possibilities. Creative geniuses also think inclusively which means they include everything no matter how unrelated or absurd. This is a basic requirement of creative thinking. Creative thinking requires the generation of associations and connections between two or more dissimilar subjects.

This excerpt is fairly long, but the entire article has much more in-depth information on creative thinking and idea generation.

Creative Thinking for Bloggers

The trick to train yourself for blog post idea generation is to think like creative geniuses.

Throughout our entire lives we have have been judged. At the very least we have made ourselves believe we have been judged. This has created a filter in our own minds that makes us consider how others will interpret our ideas.

With blogging, we think about how others will interpret our blogging ideas.

We eliminate blog ideas before we really even complete the idea!

This is the way you used to think.

The new way of blog idea generation is to do what creative geniuses do. Allow your mind to think of any and all thoughts. Document these thoughts with notes or even audio recordings. Take down everything. Do not pass judgment at this point. There is no room for judgment in the creative mind. Nothing will ever get accomplished with judgment.

You can even schedule these sessions where you will record your thoughts. A big part of blogging success is coming up with ideas. It’s important to allow yourself the freedom to create ideas.

When you have what you consider a good list of ideas, then go back and determine what would make for a good blog post today. Save your notes in case you ever have issues again in the future with creating ideas.

The key to blog idea generation is to think like creative geniuses. You can think of numerous ideas without passing judgment on yourself. Allow your mind to be free and all the ideas you already have will surface.

You might think there are no ideas in your head. The truth is that your brain is full of ideas.

You just have to let yourself accept them as potential blog posts.