Exploring Your Special Interests
and Creativity

How to stimulate your subconscious mind; Things you may be collecting and their worth; Inspiration for inventing a new gizmo or gadget; and How to be more creative.

Fire Your Imagination!

To fire your imagination, stimulate your subconscious mind by reading more, listening closer, and paying keen attention to what’s happening around you. This will methodically pack your brain with new information and ideas that will automatically release some of what’s already hiding there on a subconscious level. Viola! A “brilliant brainstorm” when you least expect it.

“In every mind, there should be a very personal room set aside for ‘playing with ideas.’ It should be a place of joy and refreshment where the imagination can roam freely up and down any avenue of thought that strikes the fancy; a place one can return to with an adolescent’s enthusiasm untethered by convention or autocratic restraint.” – Charles A. Thomas, American chemist

“How successful you will be at anything is inexorably tied to the words and beliefs about yourself that you have stored in your subconscious mind,” says Shad Helmstetter, author of What To Say When You Talk to Yourself. I’ve written more on this topic in an earlier Brabec Bulletin you might have missed: “Harnessing the Power of Your Subconscious Mind.”

Tennis coach Philip Conley adds: “Your imagination has much to do with your life. It is for you to decide how you want your imagination to serve you.”

Are You a Passionate Collector?

Do you collect anything? The key to picking a collectible item is that it needs to be small, readily available, and affordable. Pick any object, and most likely those who collect that object are probably meeting somewhere.

I began a salt and pepper shaker collection while in grade school, bringing my collection of two dozen sets to my marriage in 1961. Years later, I put the collection on a garage sale and sold for $30 all but one pair I couldn’t part with, not knowing then that a collector somewhere might have paid that much for any one of my S&P sets. Years later, I learned about the Novelty Salt & Pepper Shakers Club, which holds an annual convention. Until then I had no idea how many shaker collectors there were or the countless thousands of S&P shakers available for sale in various markets.

When Harry and I were traveling extensively in the sixties, we began to collect small wood-carved animals and birds. I have other small art-craft collections of little financial value, but their nostalgic value is such that I won’t willingly part with them. Try a search for “organizations for [your collectible],” and also visit Collector’s Weekly for many categories of collectibles. What you’re collecting may be more valuable than you realize. 

Sharing these thoughts made me wonder how YOU feel about things you may have collected, and what you plan to do with them if your heirs don’t want them. I plan to leave my heirs with a list of museums that might welcome donations.

Invention Inspiration

Ever thought about inventing a gizmo or gadget to sell? Maybe that crazy idea you once had was simply ahead of its time, and maybe it has potential for profit.

I remember the winter when my late husband Harry was griping about having to scrape snow off the windshield. “What the world needs now,” he said, “is a pad of windshield protector sheets that could be affixed to the windshield before bad weather and then stripped off later so I didn’t have to do all this darned ice and snow scraping.” He was only a few decades ahead of his time. Today, Amazon offers custom windshield covers for snow and ice to fit any vehicle.

Harry’s creative mind was always at work, thinking up innovative ways to do one thing or another. A true “foodie,” he created unusual sandwiches and dinners, such as Purple Chicken and Sauerkraut and Mushroom Pizza. Of course, his true talent was in the area of music. Like many other percussionists, he designed and made several small percussion instruments to get new sounds, but his best invention was designing special hardware for his drum set in the 1940s.

When attached to his bass drum (even older than that), this hardware tied all his instruments together, enabling him to quickly pick up the whole set of drums and move it from one location to another when he was working in two or three rooms of a hotel or recording studio. (No wonder he had a bad back in his old age.) Among Harry’s papers, I found this article he wrote in 1985, which pictures his unique drum set and offers historical perspective and tips for today’s drummers.

If you need a boost to become more inventive, watch this charming, motivational six-minute video that probes the mind of UK inventor Trevor Baylis (1937-2018), who said, “As long as you’ve got slightly more perception than the average wrapped loaf, you could invent something.” (Click here for more astute quotes by Baylis.)

Creativity! Where to Find It

I believe there’s a streak of creativity within each of us waiting to be discovered. Some people find their creativity easily while others are convinced they don’t have any. Creative people tend to be enthusiastic with broad interests in life, those who often seek recognition for their creative efforts by exhibiting their work or vying for prizes and awards.

Anyone who has ever attempted an art or craft project is expressing a form of creativity, even though they may use someone else’s pattern or design. Even simple projects help people develop new and imaginative ideas that may lead to original, one-of-a-kind creations. To speed up this creative process, get in the habit of constantly feeding your mind with fresh images and ideas. Then you’ll have a reservoir to draw from when you want to express a new level of creativity.

“There is no one right way to be creative—the only right way is your way,” says Salli Rasberry, author of Living Your Life Out Loud—How to Unlock Your Creativity. “The difference between creative people and those who are not is purely a matter of self-perception. If you perceive yourself as creative, you are, and if you don’t, you won’t be.”

First published as a Brabec Bulletin on October 7, 2024.

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