How to Unlock Effortless Creativity (Using the Baader-Meinhoff Phenomenon)

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 00:00

So here's the thing, what if I told you there is a way that you can come up with endless inspiration without putting in any effort? You'd probably think I was full of shit, but I'm not. It's called the Bader-Meinhof Phenomenon. It's probably something you haven't heard of, so I'm gonna explain it to you today. If you're new here, my name is Dr. Corey Wilkes. I am a psychologist and coach, and I share no bullshit strategies and insights from psychology to help you build the life you want. So let's get started. So the Bader-Meinhof Phenomenon.

is something I use every single day. I never run out of ideas. I virtually stay in a creative mindset. And a lot of my content almost writes itself. And I'm not using AI or some complicated tech stack or some other complicated system and shit. It's literally just human psychology. So what is the Bader-Meinhof phenomenon? So years ago, I dated a girl who drove a Volkswagen Beetle. I'd occasionally seen beetles before, but after we started dating, I saw them.

Everywhere. Years later, I dated a different girl who drove a red Jeep. And the same thing happened. All of a sudden, I saw red Jeeps everywhere I went. But why? Was there suddenly a surge in Beatles or red Jeeps? Obviously no. But my mind was suddenly paying attention to them. Where before, it largely ignored them. The number of Beatles or Jeeps was the same. But my perceptual awareness of them is what changed.

This is the Bader-Meinhof phenomenon in action. Because this basically says when we come across something for the first time, our minds start noticing it everywhere. Because our minds are great at two things, identifying patterns and filtering out 99 % of the endless stream of information from our environment. There's just too much going on in our environment for our minds to really pay much attention to. We're constantly filtering out sights, sounds, smells.

textures, whatever. So our minds are constantly having to prioritize what is worth paying attention to and what is worth filtering out so that we can stay sane. This is critical for our ability to function and maintain our sanity because we're just not equipped to consciously process everything in our environment. Our minds have to have a way to filter out most of this so that we can go about our day-to-day life while also paying enough attention to identify relevant patterns in our environment so that we can, you know,

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 02:22

our chances of survival. So for example, last time I saw a scratch on this tree, a tiger was nearby. This tree has a scratch mark on it. Well, shit, there's probably a tiger nearby, right? We need to remember certain things like that. We need to be able to pay attention to certain things like that. The Bader-Meinhof phenomenon is basically when our minds allow a little bit more past that filter so that we can identify patterns most people overlook. And we can actually access this intentionally.

by learning how to expand our perceptual awareness. So then how does this relate to creativity? Well, being creative, creating content or doing whatever is effortful. Trying to find new things to talk about or making new nuanced connections is really hard. But we can use the Bethe-Meinhaft phenomenon to make this effortless. Because the Bethe-Meinhaft phenomenon can basically be boiled down to a single phrase. Whatever you focus on, you will find. Right, so like if you focus on problems, you will find more problems.

Right, I talked about this in a video about how to stop making excuses and start making changes basically by using the Bader-Meinhof phenomenon. If you focus on solutions, you find more solutions. If you focus on things to complain about, you find more things to complain about. If you focus on gratitude, you find more things to be grateful for. Right, this is why having like a gratitude journaling practice is really helpful because you're basically just priming your mind and saying, hey, find more things to be grateful for. It's not that all of a sudden there are more things to be grateful for.

there are probably the same number of things that have always been around you, you just weren't paying attention to them. But now that you have primed your mind to find more of those things, you find more of those things. This isn't some like manifest your dream life bullshit. Like this is legitimately how you're wired. Right, without getting overly complicated with like psychobabble shit, basically we can't remember what we don't pay attention to. So if we want to remember things, we have to find ways of paying more attention to

Right, this is why like if you're zoned out and somebody's talking, you're like, what the fuck did you just say? You literally can't remember because you didn't attend to it. You didn't pay attention. So you couldn't encode or retrieve that information. So similarly, when you're going about your day to day life, there's a lot of shit going on that you're not paying attention to. And because you're not paying attention to it, you don't remember it. Right, like there are a lot of Jeeps, but if you're not paying attention to Jeeps, you don't remember all the Jeeps you saw because it isn't relevant information.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 04:47

Right, your mind is constantly filtering out stimuli from your environment. So finding ways to focus your mind, to prime your mind, to pay attention to specific things you want it to pay attention to allows you to find more patterns and remember them. So for example, like with creativity. When I was working on my article for the hidden cost of success, which I've also made a video, I'll link that as well for you to check out, it's become one of my most popular pieces.

I actually leveraged the Bader-Meinhof phenomenon to write it. Basically, I had this half-baked idea that success has two costs, the price you pay to achieve it and the price you pay after achieving it. Most people only ever think about the first price, the price you have to pay to actually achieve success, but they don't think about what happens after I achieve success, what does my life look like at that point? So my idea was to prime my mind, to selectively attend.

and remember ideas related to this second hidden cost of success. I basically said, hey brain, pay attention to things related to this that pops up in our environment. Well, before I was writing that article, I don't remember shit related to the hidden cost of success, because my mind was filtering out any relevant examples. But as soon as I primed my mind to find them, to seek them out, I found a shit ton. Within a few days, I was finding.

dozens of social media posts as examples of this hidden cost of success. I kept hearing examples of it in multiple podcasts I was listening to. YouTube videos I was watching, all of a sudden I was surrounded by examples of this hidden cost of success purely because I had primed my mind to find them. They already existed in my environment, I just wasn't paying attention. Right, because ordinarily, if I wasn't thinking about that, I may have seen an example of it.

but I would have just kept scrolling because it wasn't relevant information. My mind was filtering it out. This is how you can leverage the Bader-Meinhof phenomenon to access effortless creativity. You basically just say, hey brain, I'm interested in learning more about this. I'm interested in writing or creating content about this or exploring this topic. When you see examples in the environment, let those through the filter, expand my perceptual awareness so I can pay attention to these things.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 07:06

and I can remember these things. And then over the course of a few days or a week, you have collected dozens of examples that you ordinarily would have filtered out. Well, now all of a sudden you can sit down to this draft that you're trying to create and you're like, well, shit, I've got a dozen examples now and I didn't really do any work. I told my brain to open up, it opened up. Look at all this shit I've collected. This is awesome. I have this draft half written already. You can easily leverage the Bethe-Meinhof phenomenon in your own life to access

near limitless, effortless creativity. So next time you want to create something, think of a topic, brainstorm a few ideas or concepts you want to play around with, tell your brain to just open up, then go live your life and then see what patterns your mind picks up on. Because if you focus on inspiration, you'll find inspiration all around you for endless ideas in your everyday life.

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