prayer beads

Make a list of the most interesting emotions you know of and the experiences that trigger them. More specifically, try to identify things you think the highest majority of people in the world, or in a given region of the world, experience.

To aid this, you can start with listing general abstractions like emotions, beliefs, ideas, either or scenarios, and sources of abundance and wellbeing, then fill in those categories with the specific day to day experiences associated with them. You can use a wheel guide to emotions and their offshoots to help you methodically explore these ideas. Next, you will need a variety of unique beads.  For each one on the list, assign each one a different looking bead to represent it.

Once you identify these emotions and their triggers, begin mixing them like colors. Come up with new triggers that evoke a wider range of emotions simultaneously. Or play with creating experiences that combine a number of triggers and see what you get. To take it further, create combined experiences that can apply to the widest possible range of people. Represent these combinations by stringing the beads together.

The entire string can be divided into segments for each combination group, separated by blank beads. If the same emotion/trigger appears in multiple groupings, use identical beads in each section. Using these beaded strings, focus on each bead one at a time and try to think of new triggers for each emotion. Or combine several within the grouping and think of a new trigger, or find a new trigger for the entire grouping. If you give the string as a gift, provide a key explain what each bead type represents.

Doing this exercise repeatedly over time builds fluid intelligence, challenging you to think of new sources of the same experience once you think you have exhausted all possibilities. It also helps you get into a pattern of perpetually rethinking existing ideas about what it possible within day to day experiences.