AlkaliMarxist [he/him]

Things that work for me, not necessarily recommendations:

• Mindfulness practices
• Always be a little bit too busy for comfort, keeps you from dwelling on things
• Smoke; weed or tobacco, both help
• Deliberately cultivate positive self-talk, don't just uncritically accept whatever you mind tells you

Depends on how unique the thought needs to be. You could simply count up from 0 and eventually you'd encounter a number you'd never thought of before, like 145,398, which I'm pretty sure is a number I've never thought about. You could do this forever and still be having technically unique thoughts.

The problem, I think, is that all thoughts seem to be a product of previous thoughts. Totally new thoughts are driven by external stimuli. We can, however, mutate an existing thought into a new one. I think this would be my process, take a common thought and change one aspect of it at a time until it's unrecognizable.

That's my interpretation of the creative process behind fiction and invention also. You take a familiar concept in your mind and mutate it with the goal of either making something more efficient or effective (invention) or of creating engaging narrative (fiction).