It is early in the morning, there is a nice light wind, and the sun is coming up behind the hill looking toward the sea. You’ve been running for about half an hour, you’re focused on some things that are waiting for you at work, however, it’s a light concentration, you don’t have anything that keeps you particularly worried, it’s the usual work things that you now handle quietly, and yet, that light and carefree running makes you see them in a different way and makes you think of other ways to do them. You could try to do them in another way as well, actually, and maybe you become more efficient. Then you stop for a second, pick up your phone and write two quick notes.
Or not, it’s almost night, you’ve gone black from work, you’ve got a big cat out of the bag and you don’t really know what to do, you put your shoes on your feet and go out into the usual narrow street on the embankment, partly out of habit and partly to let off steam and relieve stress. You don’t want to do it, but you find yourself thinking about that problem that you would like to solve as soon as possible but it seems too difficult. Until at some point, after the curve that makes you go behind the abandoned offices that have now become a Thai restaurant-which, however, is closed today, an idea hits you like a slap in the face and there it is, the solution you were looking for. You stop for a moment and take your smartphone out of your pocket, make an audio note and save everything.
How many times has such a situation happened to you? It is one of the most pleasant side effects of running. The body is engaged in physical exertion that requires a lot of energy, and the circulatory system has to bring blood to the muscles to enable it to move, so the brain automatically goes into a kind of
SAFE MODE
to consume as little energy as possible. In this energy-saving situation, our mind reveals all its complexity and efficiency, allowing us to develop what is normally called the lateral thinking, an approach to things from a different point of view that makes you not only change the way you look at things, but also possible solutions to problems that seemed insurmountable or simply allows you to develop new ideas about things you are used to doing.
It doesn’t work for everyone in the same way, of course, but like so many other things that relate–in one way or another–to running, lateral thinking can be trained, and you can train for it (just like running) even when you’re not running. How? There are many ways to do this, but the absolute easiest is to create a desk mind map of what you are analyzing and want to see from another point of view. You take a blank sheet of paper, write down in the center what we are interested in and then start making arrows with connections on the sides for all the things we can think of to connect, even those that at first seem disconnected because if they come to your mind, a connection is actually there, it’s just to be found.
You’ll see that later, when you put your shoes back on your feet to run, those connections that seemed meaningless will find their place; you just have to let your running self come off the road and start looking at things from a different point of view.
Breathe. Look at the horizon. Keep your hands level with your pelvis. Here you are.
(Main image credits: realinemedia on DepositPhotos.com)