SCABs

Connect Four

Ben Lambert

 

 

 

 

 

By @bensfantastic

 

“The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes”

Sherlock Holmes, The Hound of the Baskervilles.

 

I’m not a Sherlock Holmes fan but this was quoted in a recent article I read and I fell in love with it.

 

Particularly as this week we were blessed with meeting the wonderful Buddhist Ben, who introduced us to mindfulness.

 

If you haven’t heard of it before, simply put mindfulness is about being truly present in the moment.

 

In this way you are able to think clearer and fully engage with what it is you’re doing, instead of being wrapped up in an irrelevant internal monologue of a passed event.

 

This is because our minds are like a river.

 

We have incessant streams of thoughts flowing through them and mindfulness is about getting out of the river and sitting on its bank. Listening to it and learning from it, and then using its energy to guide us rather than haunt us.

 

So why is being mindful important for advertising my mum asks?

 

Well, as Buddhist Ben says it’s puzzling to think why this is not taught in schools as it can benefit absolutely anyone. But I see a particular significance for us in advertising, and the reason is dots.

 

As creative’s we have to collect and connect dots, but how can we collect dots if we aren’t fully observing what’s happening in our surroundings and how can we connect them if we aren’t being mindful?

 

So excuse this woolly metaphor, but I suppose creativity is like a game of Connect Four, where collected dots are the pieces and the opponent is your own thoughts, cluttering up an otherwise empty board to work on.

 

But if you can become mindful and clear those thoughts, spotting connections between the pieces and seeing the pattern before its made obvious should be elementary.

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