One day his horse ran away. All his neighbours exclaimed how terrible this was, but the farmer simply said “Maybe.”

A few days later the horse returned and brought two wild horses with it. The neighbors all rejoiced at his good fortune, but the farmer just said “Maybe.”

The next day the farmer’s son tried to ride one of the wild horses. The horse threw him and the son broke his leg. The neighbours all offered their sympathy for his misfortune, but the farmer again said “Maybe.”

The next week conscription officers came to the village to take young men for the army. They rejectedthe farmer’s son because of his broken leg. When the neighbours told him how lucky he was, the farmer replied “Maybe.”

The same incident was being seen in a different light by the same people. The farmer’s friends were reframing the situation.

What seems to be lucky in one context turns out to be unlucky in another context and the other way round.

Here is another example. A college student breaks his leg during summer vacation. He is crestfallen because he can no longer play tennis and football with his family and friends.

A few days later, he realizes that he now has the quiet, alone time to learn how to play the guitar, something he had always wanted to do but had been too busy to attempt.

He discovers he has a great aptitude for music and becomes a decent guitar player by summer’s end. One year later, he changes his major to music. After graduation he embarks on a successful music career.

Years later, his friends recall how unfortunate his leg fracture was that summer, and he says, “Breaking my leg was the best thing that ever happened to me!”

From then on, whenever he is disabled by injury or illness, he recalls the lesson and is far less despondent over his temporary disability than he otherwise would have been, as he takes the opportunity to do something novel.

The same incident was being seen in a different light by the same person. The musician was reframing the situation.

Proactive Reframing as a Creativity Skill

Reframes are a different way of looking at things. Being able to reframe experiences and situations is a very powerful skill which can help to generate ideas from a different perspective.

In the first example given above, the reframe was triggered by an additional bit of information that was introduced in the story.

In the second example, reframing was done without any additional information. It was a case of more or less proactive reframing.

Such proactive reframing can enhance our creativity manifold. Here are some examples of proactive and deliberate reframing.

v During the 1984 campaign, there was considerable concern about Ronald Reagan’s age. Speaking during the

Creativity has long been looked upon as an activity behind the closet. No wonder many myths have developed around the creative process. Not to be left behind, there are many myth busters out there as well!

What myth proponents and myth busters refuse to see is that creativity is a very individual thing. It is not a subject of study amenable to rules and too many do’s and don’ts.

Here are some common myths about creativity along with my comments:

Myth 1: Creativity is inborn and only a chosen few are creative.

While it is true that creativity is inborn, it is not true that only a chosen few are creative. Everyone is born creative. In the process of growing up, educating ourselves and adapting ourselves to our environment, we slowly add blocks to our creativity and forget that we had it in the first place. The difference between a creative person and a person who is not so creative is not in the creativity that they were born with but in the creativity that they have lost.

Myth 2: Creativity can be developed by using certain methods, tools and techniques.

Methods are okay as stepping stones to creativity but eventually they act as mental straitjackets. They hinder creativity for the simple reason that creativity is not a predetermined path. It is about laying out your own path. While methods come from experience, creativity is a foray into the unknown. There can therefore be no formulas or recipes for being creative.

Myth 3: Creative people are weird.

Well, some of them may come across as ones but most are regular people who wear a tie and have bosses to report to. The truth is that everyone is creative in their own way. It may be a hard pill to swallow but even the most stuffy, straight-laced person is as creative as anyone else. It’s just how and how much one uses one’s creativity. So the statement “Creative people are weird” suddenly turns into “All people are weird”. And being a little different never hurt anyone anyway?

PS: Some of the most creative people are the bureaucrats and ministers in Singapore. (You surely need creativity to make rules, not to follow them.) You will agree that they are far from being weird!

Myth 4: Only the creative types have creative ideas.

We all have this mental image of the ‘creative types’ complete with the goatee, piercings and the coffee mug. Well, these ‘creative types’ in most cases are creative and are able to come up with ideas but that does not preclude everyone else from being creative as well. The fact is, almost all of the research in this field shows that anyone with normal intelligence is capable of doing some degree of creative work. Creativity depends on a number of things: experience, knowledge, technical skills, talent, an ability to think in new ways and the capacity to push through uncreative dry spells. Intrinsic motivation is especially critical.

Myth 5: Creativity is spontaneous.

This is certainly true. We have all experienced that brilliant moment, when seemingly out of nowhere, we get some brilliant idea. It can happen, anytime, anywhere (it usually happens to me when I am shaving). But the opposite is not necessarily untrue. Creativity can be worked upon as well.

Ideas, concepts, images, tunes, and phrases do pop into consciousness for no apparent reason, but scientists have discovered that creativity is mostly conscious, hard work. Mozart’s ‘spontaneous inspirations’ were no accident. Mozart worked incredibly hard and was enormously productive. He came out of an era in which the musician was related to the craftsman. Craftsmen don’t wait for spontaneous inspiration. They get to work.

Myth 6: Creativity only applies to science and the fine arts.

This one I completely disagree with. Creativity can enhance and enrich each and every experience be it work, relationships, investing, sports and even accounting! To be alive is to be creative and to be creative is to be alive.

Myth 7: Pressure situations spark creativity.

To each his own is what I say. High pressure situations work for a lot of people. People come up with wonderful ideas with their backs to the wall. At the same time, relaxed situations and environments also tend to spur ideas in a lot of people. The key is to identify what works best for you.

Myth 8: Competitive situations foster creativity better than cooperative situations.

Reminds me of the capitalism vs. communism debate! Competition causes lots of ideas to be generated and sometimes companies create an environment where the employee with the best idea is rewarded. While this method does work, it works for all the wrong reasons. By keeping ideas to themselves, the employees don’t allow ideas to be refined by anyone else’s input. They just work silently on their own and hoard up ideas for the opportune moment.

Collaboration gives an extra something to even the best ideas. Without it, the idea is limited by just one person’s perspective. It could have been helped along by a couple of more minds.

Myth 9: Creativity is a specialist’s role.

It’s amazing how many people discount ‘professional’ creativity as something reserved for people like designers and writers. Not true! In fact, I’d argue that just about any job can be helped by a healthy dose of creative thinking.

Myth 10: Creative people always have great ideas.

Most creative people only have a few great ideas out of a barrel-full. It’s these few “gems” that make the process worthwhile for the dreamer. They too encounter failure like anyone else. But then failure drives them to try harder the next time.

]]> http://tickledbylife.com/index.php/myths-about-creativity/feed/ 2 http://tickledbylife.com/index.php/16-habits-of-highly-creative-people/ http://tickledbylife.com/index.php/16-habits-of-highly-creative-people/#comments Wed, 24 Mar 2010 07:04:48 +0000 Shalu Wasu http://tickledbylife.com/site/?p=225

“There is no use trying,” said Alice. “One can’t believe impossible things.” “I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” - Lewis Carroll

Many people believe that creativity is inborn and only a chosen few are creative. While it is true that creativity is inborn, it is not true that only a chosen few are creative.

Everyone is born creative. In the process of growing up, educating yourself and adapting yourself to your environment, you slowly add blocks to your creativity and forget that you had it in the first place.

The difference between a creative person and a person who is not so creative is not in the creativity that they were born with but in the creativity that they have lost.

How can you enhance your creative ability? One possible way is to observe the habits of creative people, identify the ones that you feel will work for you and then make a plan to cultivate them.

Here are 16 habits of creative people. If you cultivate some of them, you will feel an increase in your level of creativity. In the process, you will also feel tickled by life!

1. Creative people are full of curiosity.

Creative people are wonderstruck. They are tickled by the newness of every moment. They have lots of questions. They keep asking what, why, when, where and how.

A questioning mind is an open mind. It is not a knowing mind. Only an open mind can be creative. A knowing mind can never be creative.

A questioning stance sensitizes the mind in a very special way and it is able to sense what would have been missed otherwise.

2. Creative people are problem-friendly.

When there is a problem, some people can be seen wringing up their hands. Their first reaction is to look for someone to blame. Being faced with a problem becomes a problem. Such people can be called problem-averse.

Creative people, on the other hand, are problem-friendly. They just roll up their sleeves when faced with a problem. They see problems as opportunities to improve the quality of life. Being faced with a problem is never a problem.

You get dirty and take a bath every day. You get tired and relax every day. Similarly, you have problems that need to be solved every day. Life is a fascinating rhythm of problems and solutions.

To be problem-averse is to be life-averse. To be problem-friendly is to be life-friendly. Problems come into your life to convey some message. If you run away from them, you miss the message.

3. Creative people value their ideas.

Creative people realize the value of an idea. They do not take any chance with something so important. They carry a small notepad to note down ideas whenever they occur.

Many times, just because they have a notepad and are looking for ideas to jot down, they can spot ideas which they would have otherwise missed.

4. Creative people embrace challenges.

Creative people thrive on challenges. They have a gleam in their eyes as soon as they sniff one. Challenges bring the best out of them – reason enough to welcome them.

5. Creative people are full of enthusiasm.

Creative people are enthusiastic about their goals. This enthusiasm works as fuel for their journey, propelling them to their goals.

6. Creative people are persistent.

Creative people know it well that people may initially respond to their new ideas like the immune system responds to a virus. They’ll try to reject the idea in a number of ways.

Creative people are not surprised or frustrated because of this. Nor do they take it personally. They understand it takes time for a new idea to be accepted. In fact, the more creative the idea, the longer it takes for it to be appreciated.

7. Creative people are perennially dissatisfied.

Creative people are acutely aware of their dissatisfactions and unfulfilled desires. However, this awareness does not frustrate them. As a matter of fact, they use this awareness as a stimulus to realize their dreams.

8. Creative people are optimists.

Creative people generally have a deeply held belief that most, if not all, problems can be solved. No challenge is too big to be overcome.

This doesn’t mean they are always happy and never depressed. They do have their bad moments but they don’t generally get stumped by a challenge.

9. Creative people make positive Judgment.

A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn. It can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a right man’s brow – a businessman Charles Brower

The ability to hold off on judging or critiquing an idea is important in the process of creativity. Often great ideas start as crazy ones – if critique is applied too early the idea will be killed and never developed into something useful and useable.

This doesn’t mean there is no room for critique or judgment in the creative process but there is a time and place for it and creative people recognize that.

10. Creative people go for the big kill.

Creative people realize that the first idea is just the starting point. It is in the process of fleshing it out that some magical cross-connections happen and the original ‘normal’ idea turns into a killer idea.

11. Creative people are prepared to stick it out.

Creative people who actually see their ideas come to fruition have the ability to stick with their ideas and see them through – even when the going gets tough. This is what sets them apart from others. Stick-ability is the key.

12. Creative people do not fall in love with an idea.

Creative people recognize how dangerous it is to fall in love with an idea. Falling in love with an idea means stopping more ideas from coming to their mind. They love the process of coming up with ideas, not necessarily the idea.

13. Creative people recognize the environment in which they are most creative.

Creative people do most of their thinking in an environment which is most conducive to their creativity. If they are unable to influence their physical environment, they recreate their ‘favourite’ creative environment in their minds.

14. Creative people are good at reframing any situation.

Reframes are a different way of looking at things. Being able to reframe experiences and situations is a very powerful skill.

Reframing allows you to look at a situation from a different angle. It is like another camera angle in a football match. And a different view has the power to change your entire perception of the situation.

Reframing can breathe new life into dead situations. It can motivate demoralized teams. It helps you to spot opportunities that you would have otherwise missed.

15. Creative people are friends with the unexpected.

Creative people have the knack of expecting the unexpected and finding connections between unrelated things. It is this special quality of mind that evokes serendipitous events in their lives.

Having honed the art of making happy discoveries, they are able to evoke serendipity more often than others.

16. Creative people are not afraid of failures.

Creative people realize that the energy that creates great ideas also creates errors. They know that failure is not really the opposite of success.

In fact, both failure and success are on the same side of the spectrum because both are the result of an attempt made. Creative people look at failure as a stopover on way to success, just a step away from it.

]]> http://tickledbylife.com/index.php/16-habits-of-highly-creative-people/feed/ 48 http://tickledbylife.com/index.php/how-to-purposefully-increase-our-natural-creativity/ http://tickledbylife.com/index.php/how-to-purposefully-increase-our-natural-creativity/#comments Mon, 15 Mar 2010 09:59:40 +0000 Shalu Wasu http://tickledbylife.com/site/?p=357

There are three different kinds of creative responses.

Back-to-the-wall creativity

There are times when you are stuck in a difficult situation. Your back is to the wall. Your survival instinct comes into play very strongly. There is no option but to find your way out.

Suddenly your mind becomes very creative. It is as if you had a huge reserve of creative energy which is now available to you in one powerful burst. You do your best to come out of the predicament you have got into. And you do.

You can call this sort of creativity back-to-the-wall creativity. You are compelled to be creative because your survival is at stake. You find a solution because you can’t afford not to.

Manna-from-heaven creativity

You are driving on a highway. The weather is great. The landscape is beautiful. There is something in the air that connects you to some childhood memory. Soon your mind starts flitting from one memory to another. You feel very good.

Suddenly, something wells up in you and you are struck by a perfect solution to an unresolved issue. Or it can be a blockbuster of an idea capable of changing the course of your life. How it happens is a mystery.

You can call this sort of creativity manna-from-heaven creativity. It happens unexpectedly. It is a godsend. Some connections are made and magically an idea knocks at your door.

Conscious-and-purposeful creativity

You want to design a new product or launch a new service. Or maybe you are just looking for ways to enhance productivity. You consciously look for a creative solution. You collect all the information.

You get other people’s views.

You look at the problem from several angles and examine it clinically. You spend sleepless nights racking your brains. Then after several days of hard work, you hit upon the perfect solution. You are happy that your efforts have borne fruit.

You can call this sort of creativity conscious-and-purposeful creativity. This is the result of effort, hard work and discipline. It is a cool-headed, deliberate attempt to arrive at a creative solution.

It is all well-earned!

All three kinds of creativity have their due place in life. While the third kind is the result of your own sweat, the first two kinds are seemingly dependent on outside circumstances.

Interestingly, when you use the third kind of creativity more often, it sharpens your creative responses and builds some kind of a ‘reserve’ of creativity in you. It has the effect of enhancing your overall creativity including the first and second kinds.

While the third kind of creativity is obviously ‘well-earned’, the first two kinds are no less so because eventually they too are more or less dependent on the ‘reserve’ built by the third kind!

This is perhaps the biggest difference between real life and school. But by the time we finish school we are so conditioned that we are unable to bridge the gap. We unconsciously try and avoid situations which could result in failure. We therefore live our life like the straight line stock!!

Failure and creativity

Fear of failure hampers creativity. It’s not unusual for an individual to present a new idea, see it fail, then never again try something new. Fear of adverse criticism narrows creative potential.

On the other hand, a truly creative person thoroughly examines the failure to identify what went wrong and why. He turns failure into a learning experience.

Every bit of solid theory and evidence demonstrates that it is impossible to generate a few good ideas without also generating a lot of bad ideas.

The greatest failure of all, of course, is not to attempt a new idea.

Failure is not the opposite of success

Are success and failure opposites of each other? The answer is NO. The energy that creates great ideas also creates errors. Not achieving success is usually termed as failure. And ‘failure’ is so looked down upon that we sometimes avoid taking a shot at success. We forget that success and failure are actually neighbours or pals and success may only be an inch away from failure! Looking at failure as an antithesis of success is to lose our creative powers. In any case, if we are successful every time, it means our goal is not big enough!

If you aren’t allowed to fail, then you won‚Äôt risk anything. Then every idea has to be a “safe” idea, and you are no longer creating. You are simply doing it the way it has always been done.

A useful phrase to keep in mind is ‘THERE IS NO FAILURE, ONLY FEEDBACK’. This is a great thought that works especially well when we are trying out new things and thinking of new solutions.

We need not fear failure but we should try and learn how to fail intelligently!! When we try and not succeed, it is a good failure. The only ‘bad failure’ is not trying and not learning from mistakes.

I realized I was “different” through occasional reminders such as this:  when walking to school in New York many years ago, someone yelled, “Ni Hao Ma?” (i.e. How Are You?) from a block away.  I looked back and a fellow college student I didn’t recognize started waving frantically and flashing his electric smile and blazing white teeth at me.  I wondered what I’ve done to deserve such warmth and friendliness from someone I didn’t know.  Was it simply the color of my skin?

I learned in a flash that you could turn your “weaknesses” into your strengths.  In PR terms, you could brand yourself through your USP, your Unique Selling Proposition.  Instead of denying my background and experiences, I decided to embrace them.

I would carve a career and eventually launch my own PR firm leveraging my understanding of Asia and Asian companies to support them in penetrating the American mainstream.

I would pitch to reporters in my natural accent influenced by all the places I have lived.  And because it was slightly different from a pure American accent, the reporters seemed to remember my voice and my pitches, and soon became my friends and willing contemplators of story ideas.

Can you think of people you know who have turned their weaknesses into strengths?

Our current president Barack Obama did not have the pedigree of a Kennedy, but he leveraged his bi-racial background and his humble international upbringing to win hundreds of millions of supporters around the world.  Take a moment to contemplate your “weaknesses.”   Perhaps they are really your strengths and can be turned into your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) with a little creativity and panache?

When still a baby, the elephant is tethered by a very thick rope to a stake firmly hammered into the ground.

The elephant tries several times to get free, but it lacks the strength to do so. After some time, the animal gives up trying, believing that it cannot be free.

At this point, the trainer changes the thick rope to a thin one but the elephant makes no attempt to run away. Even when the elephant reaches adulthood, it continues to be tethered by a thin rope, reconciled to its captivity.

As you grow up and gain experience, you absorb assumptions which then drive your life and limit your choices. They are similar to the elephant’s thin rope tied to a post. You can break away from them with a simple tug if you want to but you don’t.

As you acquire more and more experience, your repertoire of blind assumptions grows too, correspondingly limiting your choices. Your experience becomes a hindrance in your being creative.

Here is a list of 15 elephant tethers that possibly hold you back from being creative. Look at them and do identify the ones that apply to you. Are you willing to do something about them and break free?

Tether 1. What will people think?

Your selfconsciousness is one big hurdle in your being creative. You don’t even try to do so many things in life because you are afraid of making a fool of yourself. You waste a lot of your energy in protecting yourself and presenting a ‘good’ image.

You had no such inhibitions as a child and therefore you were naturally creative. It is perhaps the fear of the unknown and what might happen that makes you selfconscious. It holds you back and hinders your creativity.

When you walk into something in spite of the fear, it simply vanishes because by then the unknown turns into the known. The trick is not to think in terms of conquering fear but being with it.

When you let go of your selfconsciousness, you turn more creative.

Tether 2. But I’ve never had any great ideas!

Most people don’t have enough opportunities to bring out their creativity. So their creative abilities remain untapped. It seems to make no difference because not being creative is not too inconvenient.

Being creative is actually a search for a better way and in today’s world most solutions come ready-made. Most of the things that you do have been researched and the ‘best’ ways to do them have been arrived at.

Most people follow the standard ‘best’ ways without questioning Рhow to clean teeth, how to reach office, etc. They do a great number of tasks automatically.

Trying a ‘different way’ may in fact be inconvenient in most situations Рdriving speed, the route to office, how to tie your shoe knots, standing in the queues, etc.

Most of these automatic ways are perhaps good. By sticking with them, you are able to accomplish many tasks without thinking. They save time but you end up with the habit of not thinking afresh.

Over time, you develop attitudes and assumptions which prevent you from thinking creatively, locking you into the existing ways of thinking and doing things. You become a prisoner of familiarity. You never have great ideas.

As a result, even when the need arises for you to think differently and generate new ideas, you are unable to do so.

Tether 3. What is the right answer?

One of the worst aspects of formal education is the focus on the correct answer to a question or problem. When somebody asks a question, you generally give an acceptable answer instead of an original one fearing it might be wrong.

While this approach helps you to function smoothly in society, it hurts creative thinking. Real-life issues are ambiguous. There is no one single answer to any problem. There can be several answers if only you think about them. They may all be contradictory and yet correct.

Tether 4. I don’t want to fail.

The fear of failure is something that you learn in school…and it never just goes away. All through school, you perhaps take hundreds of tests, exams, assignments, etc. You are in one big trouble if you fail even once. You are scared of failure.

By the time you finish school, the fear of failure has seeped into your system and you avoid situations which could result in failure. You are extra-careful about whatever you take up. You play safe.

The fear of failure does not let you try new things, crippling your creativity.

Tether 5. That’s not my area.

Creativity requires finding connections between unrelated things. The diversity of your interests and experiences enhances your ability to find connections.

When you explore completely unrelated areas, you are pleasantly surprised by the interrelatedness of almost everything. You start seeing new possibilities when you discover new connections.

In an era of hyper-specialization, the scope of work is getting narrower and narrower. Loss of creativity is the immediate casualty.

When you just stick to your area, you hinder your creativity.

Tether 6. I don’t like uncertainty.

If you are not confused, you are not thinking clearly – Tom Peters

When people are confused, they feel compelled to resolve the situation quickly, making it systematic and orderly again. They are likely to miss the key issues in their haste to do so.

There is something in the culture or perhaps in the education system, which makes people want to be ‘knowers’ rather than ‘find-outers’.

This attachment to ‘knowing’ makes you feel jittery and inept when you ‘don’t know’. This tendency is so engrained that even small kids begin to lose their curiosity in order to become ‘knowers’.

However, when it comes to creative thinking, not knowing is a good thing and ambiguity is a great thing. Certainty is the enemy of creativity.

If you are certain about something, you don’t have much leeway to generate new ideas to solve problems.

Tether 7. That’s the way it is done!

The need for standard ways of doing things is perfectly legitimate. But then it gives rise to an ever increasing number of rules that govern people’s lives.

While some of the rules are legitimate, some are totally unfounded. They are not very different from the thin rope that tethers the elephant.

Tether 8. Everyone says so.

When all think alike, then no one is thinking. — Walter Lippman

The desire to belong is a powerful one and at times it leads to ‘groupthink’. This herd approach is probably a relic from the cave age. It is important to have a mind of your own in order to be creative.

Tether 9. How can a boss lose face ever?

Bosses are generally hung up on being always right. It is unimaginable for them to be proved wrong. They just can’t afford to lose face. Such over-protection of their ego hinders their creativity.

Employees almost always tend to go along with bosses. While harmless minor disagreements are okay, they are careful not to have a difference of opinion when it comes to larger issues.

No boss can be creative if he is surrounded by people who can’t dare to contradict him. He will be provoked into thinking creatively only when his views are challenged by someone.

Tether 10. My work is so boring.

One of the perils of over specialization is repetitive and uninteresting work. It makes you resentful, robbing you of your creative urges.

Tether 11. Smart people respond quickly.

When quick response is valued, you avoid deep thinking missing out on the finer points of an issue. You start giving out readymade answers. In trying to be smart, you sacrifice creative possibilities.

Tether 12. I feel safe when I am like everyone else.

People start off as unique beings. They are very different from each other as children and young adults with their very own likes and dislikes.

Yet, as if by magic, they get into a common mould after they reach their thirties. Their likes, dislikes, wants, needs and goals somehow begin to converge. They seem to become more and more like one another.

As a result, their creative abilities suffer.

Tether 13. I have strong views and firm opinions.

There are people who pride themselves for having firm stands and being inflexible. They have strong views and unshakable opinions. They are too judgmental.

Being judgmental means blocking or ignoring other points of views. It means reducing your options and leaving your mind with much less to work with. It is then reflected in your ability to generate ideas and solutions.

When you are nonjudgmental, you have an open mind. You have more choices. Being nonjudgmental reduces the surface functioning of your mind, stimulating its deeper functioning.

Then you allow your unconscious mind to throw up more ideas into your conscious mind. You are more creative.

Tether 14. Why keep thinking unnecessarily when I have found the answer?

Such is the hurry to find a solution that people are satisfied with the first one that comes to their mind. They stop thinking further.

However, if you don’t share your ‘first’ idea and keep thinking more and more, the subsequent ones are sure to be better.

The more you think, the more the chances to find better solutions. You never know when you will hit the jackpot.

Tether 15. Self-fulfilling prophecy

Two similarly qualified groups of engineers in a company were exhibiting different levels of creativity.

The two groups were alike in all respects. In the research subsequently conducted by the company, there was only one finding.

The difference between the two groups was that engineers on one group believed that ‘I am creative’ and engineers from the other group believed otherwise.

This is a monster article. I could have split this into 9 different posts but I feel having all these techniques together in one place is much more helpful.  Some general guidelines before we begin:

• Mix and match creativity methods and tools.
• Share these tools with your colleagues and friends.
• Have a favourite method. Once you have a favourite method that you use more often, you will gain mastery over it and the process of generating ideas will become more effective and efficient.
• Keep changing your favourite method! This is useful because once you gain mastery over more methods you will be able to mix and match creativity methods with ease, boosting your productivity to a higher level.
• Never evaluate ideas at the generation stage.

Let’s get started now!

(1) Brainstorming – perhaps the most popular idea generation technique

Brainstorming is the classic creativity technique used for generating a lot of ideas. There is no better way to learn or to get better at this technique than to actually practice it. Brainstorming works well in a team as well as individually.

Brainstorming is a lateral thinking process. It asks that people come up with ideas and thoughts that seem at first to be a bit shocking or crazy. You can then change and improve them into ideas that are useful, and often stunningly original.

Guidelines for brainstorming

1. No criticisms or judgments or reactions to be made while ideas are being generated.
2. All ideas must be welcome. No matter how silly or farout they seem.
3. Absolutely no discussion should take place during the brainstorming activity. Talking about the ideas will take place after brainstorming is complete.
4. Use others’ ideas as stepping stones to think of a better idea.
5. If you are doing brainstorming in a group write all ideas on a flipchart or board so the whole group can easily see them.
6. The last step is to evaluate the ideas against some criteria.

Variations in brainstorming

Use the random word association method(coming up later) to spice up your brainstorming!

The final stretch! When your feel that you “can’t think of any more ideas” then give yourself a few more minutes as the best ideas sometimes come towards the end of long drawn out thought processes.

Brainstorming can even be done in groups or individually. In fact, when done individually, brainstorming may even produce a wider range of ideas than group brainstorming as individuals are free to explore ideas in their own time without any fear of criticism. On the other hand, groups are usually able to develop the ideas more effectively due to the wider range of diversity.

If the brainstormers have difficulty in coming up with solutions, we can reframe the problem.

(2) Brainwriting

Brainwriting works very well in a group situation, especially when all group members are aware of the situation. There are many variations of brainstorming, but the general process is that ideas are first recorded by the individual who thought of them. They are then passed on to the next person who uses them as a trigger for their own ideas. It continues like this till everyone has had a chance to contribute ideas on every sheet.

Brainwriting 6-3-5

The name brainwriting 6-3-5 comes from the process of having 6 people write 3 ideas in 5 minutes. Each person has a blank 6-3-5 worksheet like this:

Steps

1. Write the problem statement at the top of their worksheet (everyone needs to do this) word for word from an agreed problem definition.
2. Write 3 ideas on the top row of the worksheet in 5 minutes in a complete and concise sentence.
3. At the end of 5 minutes or when everyone has finished writing, pass the worksheet to the person on your right. You then add three more ideas. The process continues until the worksheet is completed.
4. There will now be a total of 108 ideas on the 6 worksheets! WOW!!

(3) Leonardo da Vinci’s Idea Box

This one is my favourite. This technique was developed by Leonardo da Vinci. He is considered by many to be the most creative man who ever lived! This method is particularly applicable when we are trying to come up with options for a new product or service.  Below is a hypothetical example of a box similar to one that da Vinci might have constructed while trying to come up with different kinds of faces that he could draw.

While the number of items in each category is relatively small, there are literally thousands of possible combinations of the listed features. The circled features indicate only one out of thousands of different groupings of features that could be used. By using this technique we can literally come up with hundreds of possible combinations of attributes very quickly and surely we will find one that we like.

Try it out with an example about choosing the positioning for a new restaurant.

(4) Switching

This creativity method is particularly useful in relationships. The objective is to understand the other person better to be able to adapt our communication and enjoy a better relationship. For good results, take upwards of 15 minutes for this exercise.

1. You are A.
2. Identify a person who you want to improve your relationship with.
3. Gather all the information that you know about this person in your mind.
4. Recollect all your past experiences with this person in your mind.
5. Now, close your eyes and try to BE that person. Assume that you are him/her with all the history, baggage, relationships, education, experience, desire, motivation, beliefs etc. Don’t just pretend, become this person. You are now, this person X.
6. Now, imagine that the original you is interacting with you (person X). What did you (person X) understand from this conversation?
7. What does person X think about A? What does he/she like and dislike about A?
8. If person X was to give advice to A about improving their relationships, what would it be?
9. Now, come back to being person A. Did you like and appreciate the advice? What will you do about it?

(5) The Reversal Method

The reversal method for examining a problem or generating new ideas takes a situation as it is and reverses it! (turns it around, inside out, backwards, or upside down)

A given situation can be “reversed” in several ways; there is no one standard way. For example, the situation “a teacher instructing students” could be reversed as:

• Students instructing the teacher.
• The teacher uninstructing students.
• Students instructing themselves.
• Students instructing each other.
• Teacher instructing himself.
• Students uninstructing (correcting?) the teacher.

Example: A motorist came up behind a flock of sheep in the middle of the road and told the shepherd to move the sheep to the side so that he could drive through. The shepherd knew that on such a narrow roadside, he could not easily keep all his sheep off the road at once. Reversal: Instead of ‘driving around the sheep’, ‘drive the sheep around the car’! Have the car stop and drive the sheep around and in back of it.

Sometimes it’s easier to think negatively first and then reverse the negatives.

(6) Provocation

Provocation is an important lateral thinking technique. It works by moving your thinking out of the established patterns that you use to solve problems. As explained earlier, we think by recognizing patterns and reacting to them. These reactions come from our past experiences and logical extensions to those experiences. Often we do not think outside these patterns. While we may know the answer as part of a different type of problem, the structure of our brains makes it difficult for us to link this in. Provocation, originally developed by Edward de Bono, is one of the tools we use to make links between these patterns.

We begin by making deliberately stupid statements (provocations), in which something we take for granted about the situation is not true. Statements need to be stupid to shock our minds out of existing ways of thinking. Once we have made a provocative statement, we then suspend judgment and use that statement to generate ideas. Provocations give us original starting points for creative thinking.

As an example, we could make a statement that houses should not have roofs. Normally this would not be a good idea! However this leads one to think of houses with opening roofs, or houses with glass roofs. These would allow you to lie in bed and look up at the stars.

Once we have made the provocation, we can use it in a number of different ways, by examining:

• The consequences of the statement.
• What the benefits would be.
• What special circumstances would make it a sensible solution.
• The principles needed to support it and make it work.
• How it would work moment-to-moment.
• What would happen if a sequence of events was changed.

Example: The owner of a video-hire shop is looking at new ideas for business to compete with the internet. She starts with the provocation ‘Customers should not pay to borrow videos’.

She then examines the provocation.

Consequences: The shop would get no rental revenue and therefore would need alternative sources of cash. It would be cheaper to borrow the video from the shop than to download the film or order it from a catalogue.

Benefits: Many more people would come to borrow videos. More people would pass through the shop. The shop would spoil the market for other video shops in the area.

Circumstances: The shop would need other revenue. Perhaps the owner could sell advertising in the shop, or sell popcorn, sweets, bottles of wine or pizzas to people borrowing films. This would make her shop a one-stop ‘night at home’ shop. Perhaps it would only lend videos to people who had absorbed a 30-second commercial or completed a market research questionnaire.

After using the provocation, the owner of the video shop decides to run an experiment for several months. She will allow customers to borrow the top ten videos free (but naturally will fine them for late returns). She puts the videos at the back of the shop. In front of them she places displays of bottles of wine, soft drinks, popcorn and sweets so that customers have to walk past them to get to the videos. Next to the film return counter she sells merchandise from the top ten films being hired.

If the approach is a success she will open a pizza stand inside the shop.

(7) Using Random Words

Random words is an idea creating technique in which we bring in an unrelated idea into the problem and forcing connections or similarities between the two.

Example: Get a friend who is behind in his payments to the store to catch up and pay regularly.

Random word: Potato

Ideas: Feed him, peel him, slice him up–divide his payments into smaller pieces, as in every week, and send in the monthly payment made up from that. Fry him when he doesn’t pay, plant him in the ground. Salt him–give him some “flavorful” incentive to pay, as in some gift or verbal reward. Baked potato, butter and sour cream. Potato-eyes growth–convince him his credit rating will grow and be valuable to him if he pays regularly.

Choose one of the following items and use its assigned random word to stimulate ideas for improving the item.

1. Improve an automatic dishwasher using the trigger concept of stone.
2. Improve a toy store using the trigger concept of hair.
3. Improve a library using the trigger concept of candy.

(8) The ‘what if’ question

A major block to creativity for many of us is the mind’s fierce grasp on reality. This very factor that keeps us sane also keeps us from thinking beyond what we know to be true. What-iffing is a tool for releasing the mind, for delivering us from being blocked by reality.

In its simplest form, what-iffing involves describing an imagined action or solution and then examining the probable associated facts, consequences, or events. Instead of quickly saying, “That sounds dumb,” or “That would never work,” and leaving our criticism vague, we trace as exactly as our reasonable minds can generate the specific implications or consequences of the newly imagined fact.

In more practical terms, though, thinking about what does not exist is about the only way we have of eventually making it exist. In other words, the first step to implementing a new reality is to imagine it.

Some what if examples:

• What if we could read other people’s minds (and they could read ours)?
• What if all marriages were automatically cancelled by the state every three years?
• What if anyone could set up as a doctor?
• What if each home could run the television only one hour a week?
• What if exams and grades were abolished in college?
• What if our pets could talk?
• What if petrol cost $100 a litre?
• What if we never had to sleep?
• What if everybody looked almost exactly alike?
• What if clocks and watches didn’t exist and daylight lasted six months?

Can you think of 5 what-if questions related to a problem or issue that you are dealing with currently?

(9) SCAMPER

SCAMPER is a checklist that helps you to think of changes you can make to an existing product to create a new one. You can use these changes either as direct suggestions or as starting points for lateral thinking.

Developed by Bob Eberle, the changes SCAMPER stands for are:

S – Substitute – components, materials, people.

C – Combine – mix, combine with other assemblies or services, integrate.

A – Adapt – alter, change function, use part of another element.

M – Modify – increase or reduce in scale, change shape, modify attributes (e.g. colour).

P – Put to another use.

E – Eliminate – remove elements, simplify, reduce to core functionality.

R – Reverse – turn inside out or upside down, also use of reversal.

Example:

As an example, imagine that you are a manufacturer of nuts and bolts, and you were looking for new products. SCAMPER would give you:

Substitute – use of high tech materials for niche markets, such as high speed steel? Carbon fiber? Plastics? Glass? Non-reactive material?

Combine – integrate nut and bolt? Bolt and washer? Bolt and spanner?

Adapt – put Allen key or Star head on bolt? Countersink head?

Modify – produce bolts for watches or bridges? Produce different shaped bolts (e.g. screw in plugs)? Pre-painted green bolts?

Put to another use – bolts as hinge pins? As axles?

Eliminate – eliminate nuts, washers, heads, thread, etc.

Reverse – make dies as well as bolts, make bolts that cut threads for themselves in material, etc.

I hope you find this useful!

I don’t know about you but I can’t take it anymore. So I have written this piece to reassure others that they won’t be subjected to the same misery when I am presenting. See if you can find something useful for yourselves here.

I must say that I am equally fed up of the numerous ‘rules for making presentations’ that we stumble across every few days either in a presentation or on the net. When you google ‘rules for making presentations’, you get more than 8 million results! Most of them are standard clichés that irk me no end.  So I have created my own set of presentation rules. I follow my rules to the last detail and I have rarely been disappointed. I implore you, urge you and beg you to follow my rules as well.

Are you ready to see my rules? Are you sure? Do you promise to follow them? Okay, okay, here goes. The following is my list of rules:

Rule No. 1 There are no rules for making presentations. If you have some already, flush them down the toilet. Now.

Rule No. 2 Have your own (personal) set of guidelines for making presentations. Keep them flexible and change them often.

That’s it. That’s my list of rules. If you follow this you will never be in a situation where you torture others with your presentation. Okay, that is the end of the article. Move on to the next one.

—

Oh! Wait. You are probably thinking, ‘If there are no rules, what do I do the next time I need to present?’  Well, sorry. I cannot tell you that. That is for you to figure out. But I can and I will share some ideas and guidelines that I have created for myself to help me prepare a presentation or deliver it.

But remember that while these ideas work for me, they might not work for you.  Ultimately you will need to have your own rules for presenting. All good presenters have them. Look at the following examples.

• Lawrence Lessig: He is a monster slider! He can use up to 200 slides for a 10 minute presentation and he makes them really good.
• Seth Godin: He follows a style which has a lot of visuals, little text and likes to surprise the audience.
• Guy Kawasaki: 10 slides, 10 ideas, one idea per slide, not more than 20 minutes.
• Takahashi: Super size font sizes (more than 120) and obviously very little text.

It’s okay if you don’t have your own ideas ready now. Work on this and develop them over time. Here are the ideas that work for me.

1. Don’t use too many words. Better still, don’t use them at all! I don’t like to use words in my presentations. I use pictures instead. If I have to, I will restrict the number of words to 3-5 (in font size 100+). If your slides contain the full text of what you want to say, you’ll be tempted to just read from them, rather than communicating with the people in the room, and most of your audience will be reading them instead of listening to you. My personal challenge is to go through an entire presentation without using any words at all! I will update this post when I am able to do that.

2. Don’t be professional. Get personal. I try to ‘connect’ with audience. I have found through experience that projecting a professional image that is workmanlike and stiff does not work especially if the presentation is long, say, a half-a-day program.

3. Don’t use PowerPoint templates. Use the blank screen like a canvas. I hate using ready-made PowerPoint templates. I feel that built-in templates are ‘tacky’ and most of them are not suited to my no-rules style of making presentations. If you use these standard templates you will necessarily end up with presentations that are clichéd, riddled with bullets (pun intended) and those that will induce yawns.  Most of the times, I do not use any template. I don’t need to since I mostly use pictures and big font sizes.

4. Don’t dress up. Strip down. Stripping down means removing all the fluff and padding to get to the essence of the message. How to strip down?

• Be present 100%. Do not think of the consequences of your presentation, or the preparation or anything else. Not being present 100% in every moment of speaking is cheating the audience.
• Do not keep the focus on your performance. Instead focus on trying to sell, inspire, help, inform, teach, persuade, train, motivate, provoke…
• Do not present in a dark room where the focus is on the screen. The screen is just one component of the presentation. The audience came to see you as well as hear you.
• Be as near your audience as possible. Let them feel your energy and passion. Use a remote.
• Be yourself. Your core personality should come through in the presentations. Do not pretend to be someone you are not. Your quirkiest habits could turn out to be your strengths.
• Cut out the jargon. You fail the test if you have anything remotely close to the following phrases:

Proactively create enterprise-wide e-services without turnkey systems. Seamlessly enhance resource maximizing technologies for premier infrastructures. Objectively matrix revolutionary meta-services via optimal architectures. Credibly promote adaptive e-business without prospective innovation. Globally visualize worldwide e-markets vis-a-vis business solutions. Assertively disintermediate scalable materials with B2B platforms. Uniquely re-engineer progressive solutions for B2B synergy. Compellingly empower visionary metrics and equity invested portals. Appropriately incentivize professional strategic theme areas through user-centric infrastructures.

5. Don’t love the audience. Provoke them. Your objective is to make them think. That won’t happen if they are not stretched, or if there are no areas of disagreement. The greatest learning happens when people think. It is as simple as that. You need to make them think. To be able to do that, you need to pull them out of their comfort zones.

6. Don’t encourage participation. Encourage co-creation. Rather than just have the audience make meaningful comments, get them to contribute creatively to taking your agenda further. In a presentation about training programs, you could ask the participants to contribute one idea that is not covered by you. Suddenly, a dozen participants will come up with an idea each and you have a dozen more ideas.

7. Don’t hide the nervousness. Share the joy. Presenters spend too much effort and use up every trick in the bag to ‘avoid’ looking nervous! Well, thinking, planning and preparing for not being nervous is a surefire way to ensure that you will be nervous. Instead focus on the positive side. Focus on how happy and thrilled you are to be making the presentation and to have this opportunity to share! Focus on what you have to share rather than your ‘performance’.

8. Don’t can it! Flow with it. I have been victim of over preparation. In such situations, I usually end up making a stiff, workman-like presentation. However, in situations where I am well prepared but not overdone, I seem to flow into the presentation naturally.

9. PowerPoint is not the presentation. You are. PowerPoint is just a tool to present. You are at the core of the presentation. Without you, a PowerPoint deck is just a bunch of facts and figures. You may as well email it and then cancel the meeting. Next time, someone asks you to mail the ‘presentation’, tell them, you cannot travel by email.  You can only forward the PowerPoint deck through email, not the presentation!!

10. Communication is not WORDS+BODY LANGUAGE+TONE. Communication is the transfer of emotion. Facts, numbers, data, charts and logic can be emailed, emotions cannot. Your job as a presenter is to add emotion to the presentation. You can do so by being passionate and by believing in what you are presenting.

11. Never give out handouts before the presentation. Give notes later. Don’t give the slides as handouts in the beginning or everyone will get down to looking at the stuff while you’re talking and ignore you. Instead, your goal is to get them to sit back, trust you and take in the emotional and intellectual points of your presentation. Also remember, since your slides now have only pictures, it may be a better idea to prepare a separate document to give as a handout rather than the slides with pictures.

12. Do not stick to your story. Make the story sticky. Try to follow at least 4 out of the 6 essentials that Chip and Dan Heath talk about in their book Made to Stick. Here is a quick summary.

a. Keep it simple! Find the core of your idea and focus on the core. Only. You cannot find the core of your idea by ‘dumbing’ it down. You can do so by finding what is essential to your message. Strip your idea down to the bare essential. A successful defense lawyer says, “If you argue ten points, even if each is a good point, when they get back to the jury room they won’t remember any.” To strip an idea down to its core, we must be masters of exclusion. We must relentlessly prioritize.

b. Violate people’s expectations by doing something unexpected. The objective is to

• Surprise people and GAIN ATTENTION.

• Create interest to SUSTAIN ATTENTION.

Make your ideas concrete by adding vivid images and sensory information.

c. Make people believe your ideas by making them credible. Vivid details boost credibility. Present statistics in a human context. Find a source of credibility to draw upon.

d. Get people to care about your ideas by adding emotion. Associate ideas with emotions that already exist in others. Bridge the emotional gap between your idea (that they don’t care about Рyet) with something they already are emotional or care about. Research shows that people are more likely to make a charitable gift to a single needy individual than to an entire impoverished region. We are wired to feel things for people, not for abstractions and extrapolations. Sometimes it can be tricky to find the right emotion to harness. For instance, it’s difficult to get teenagers to quit smoking by instilling in them a fear of the consequences, but it’s easier to get them to quit by tapping into their resentment of the duplicity of Big Tobacco.

e. Make people act on your ideas by telling them stories. Use stories as stimulation (tell people how to act) and as inspiration (give people energy to act).

Avoid clichéd presentations. Don’t bore your audience to death. Make your presentations worth their while.

Check out Shalu’s follow up article – PowerPoint is my slave!

That is how the phenomenon of serendipity is generally defined.

But I am not quite at ease with this definition because it implies that serendipity is passive and we cannot do anything about it apart from just sitting back, doing our work and waiting for a eureka moment to pop up!

I look at the phenomenon differently. The key point here is who makes the discovery and how. It is a certain state of mind which registers a discovery when it is ‘primed’ to do so. Else the discovery would go unnoticed.

So there are really two elements – the discovery and the discoverer. They are not mutually exclusive. They do not happen in isolation. They arise together. That also explains why everyone is not ‘lucky’ enough to make happy discoveries.

Let us first see what stops us from making happy discoveries. We have been conditioned to see what we expect. Our preconceptions creep into whatever we come across. We don’t see things as they are but as we expect them to be.

Secondly, we force our preconceptions into whatever we do and want a task to go along predetermined lines. Too obsessed with how things should be, we don’t recognize lucky turns of events and new possibilities.

As a result, we block the unexpected, turn a blind eye to the unfamiliar and miss out on serendipitous happenings.

All the wonderful people who made wonderful discoveries were able to find a connection between the outcome of an experiment and something which was bubbling in their brains because they had an open mind.

If we have an open and receptive mind, we will start seeing what we generally don’t see. Then we will let a task proceed the way it wants to by its own momentum instead of forcing our preconceptions into it.

Then the possibility inherent in the situation will come to surface. Noticing that possibility is what serendipity is about. What we get in this way can be much more than what we were looking for.

What it boils down to is this. The happy discovery does not happen by itself. It is brought into being by a mind that is able to notice it. It co-arises with an open mind.

In other words, an open mind evokes serendipity. Serendipity is therefore not really a passive phenomenon. It is not an accident but an art that can be cultivated. That is how I look at serendipity.

I must admit I am a bit tired of it all. Why should I get up early in the first place? What have I got to prove?
So here are 10 points about why you should stay up late and still not feel bad when you come across another article by the self-help gurus who preach getting up early in the morning!

Why you should stay up LATE!

1.    There is nothing ‘natural’ about getting up early in the morning. It perhaps made sense a few hundred years ago when sunlight was the only source of light and you could only get your work done when the sun was shining – so getting up early was required to maximize working time. This argument does not hold anymore – at least in places that have electricity. (If you are reading this, your house/office has electricity).
2.    It is a myth that you ‘save time’ by getting up early. Well, each day has 24 hours and if you sleep for 6 hours, you have 18 hours to do everything else, irrespective of when you sleep and when you get up.
3.    If you get up early, you’ll need to sleep early. If you sleep early, you miss out on all the exciting stuff that happens late at night! Most people start winding down around 8pm and are off to bed soon after. Most people have 1-2 hours of leisure time in the evening before they sleep. But this amount of time is not really enough to plan anything meaningful. On the other hand if you know that after finishing dinner at 9pm, you still have another 3-4 hours, it just opens up so many possibilities. You can read a book, watch a movie, work or simply talk.
4.    Toiling away late into the night while the rest of the world sleeps is such a beautiful feeling! It is so still and quiet.
5.    To just look out of your window or balcony at 3 am is such a moving sight. The whole city is bathed in a warm yellow glow, everyone is peacefully asleep, even your noisy neighbour. I would not miss the feeling for anything.
6.    Some of the meals that I have enjoyed the most have been the late night snacks that I had while I was studying at IIMA. We used to get very hungry when we studied till late and either we used to cook up something around 3 in the morning or walk down to the NR (night retreat – a late night in-campus restaurant). If you haven’t had a meal at 3 am, you’ve been missing something.
7.    There are few things as surreal as a late night jog through an otherwise crowded place (during the day). It is a wonderful feeling to go for a jog around 1 am and just notice the stillness around you. It is amazingly peaceful and you get great ideas as well!
8.    I am at my productive best when I work late. There are no distractions, no noise, no school bus to miss, no newspaper headlines to read. Knowing that there is nothing else between now and sleep time except what I am working on right now is a nice feeling.
9.    When you sleep late, you will usually get up late and that can be so effective because you will do the boring/usual/essential stuff very quickly indeed. It is so much fun to get ready in a hurry. You find out just how quickly and efficiently you can shave among other things.
10.    It is an amazing end to the day if you have been working late and have been able to do some good work. The feeling of satisfaction and contentment that you get as you lie down and close your eyes is not matched by anything else.

So, stop fretting about what time to get up in the morning. Getting up early seems to work for a lot of people, but it is not for everyone. The only way to find out the hours when you are most productive is to experiment. So try getting up early for a few days and try moving to a different pattern every few days. Stick to the one that feels most natural and productive.

Read another point of view here - Addicted to the snooze button?

The challenge is in uncovering the hidden self of a person by ways and means other than the obvious. One of the newer trends is in Mess Analysis. The human mind is very simple. It zeros in on the obvious. The guy whose drawer is in a mess is seen as having a disorganized pattern of thinking too. This is as crude as it can get. The human psychological make-up is rather complex and a given tendency may not reflect presumed truth. Take for instance the people who like cleanliness and order as predicted by astrology for Virgo people. My experience is that they are so concerned with cleanliness and order that they become a pain in the neck for everybody; there is very little left in their lifestyle to accommodate others.

A spic and span attitude shows them as intelligent, capable and of course better than others; so they really expect appreciation. Even the slightest hint that their decisions and methods may not be the best usually puts them in a defensive mode and they will then argue to justify themselves till they browbeat you into silence. Now if this were true, of what use is the orderliness? Perfection for perfection’s sake is difficult to digest in this imperfect world. I have lived with such people and found them to be intractable and difficult to make friends with. They are very intelligent but use their intelligence to find fault with everything and everybody around them. Order and cleanliness are wonderful things and we should live by the highest standards but they make one so predictable and boring.

On the other extreme of the spectrum is the unruly creative person who has so many possibilities jostling in his head and has many projects at any given time. Then it is not always easy or practical to complete every project in one go so it presupposes that he would have incomplete projects lying around that seem a mess to the uninitiated. If the visitor jumps to the conclusion that this man would not amount to anything then he would be totally wrong because he would have failed to see the genius behind it all. I am personally very comfortable with this kind of a person. I have this nephew who is rather a remarkably intelligent person. He is into quality control which means he is always learning new trends, techniques, technologies and processes. That keeps his mind sharp. Add to this his ability to converse well and get his point across. The flip side of all this is that he has many things on his plate at any given time and the chances are that whatever can be made to wait keeps going down on the list of to-do’s. So out necessity and somewhat by temperament he has become a ‘procrastinator’. He is kind-hearted to a fault and has not learnt to say ‘no’. So people make demands on him because they know that he would do the job well. The poor fellow has little time as he travels and is out of town quite often; then there are pressing needs of his own family when he does happen to be home.

I must admit that if I wanted my letter to be posted, I would certainly not trust him. But if I were seriously sick, he is the first person I would want around me.

Ask any homicide detective: the obvious is almost a worthless indicator of anything. Until we learn to go behind the veil that all of us create about us, the façade will mislead us every time. Predictable facades are the most misleading.

In this case the traditional manufacturing frame emphasized such things as cost reduction, profit enhancement, efficiency, etc. Issues like how customers use and store the product were in the shadows of the frame and ended in a disastrous decision.

Years of conditioning and training can lead to a freezing of frames. These frames help us to simplify the world but the danger lies in oversimplification and holding on to frames after they are no longer relevant. Albert Einstein admonished his colleagues, “Make it as simple as possible but no simpler.”

A winning decision maker has the ability to look at something through several frames. Scott Fitzgerald says, ‘The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposite ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.’

The ability to frame a problem is itself a key to its solution. There is a story about a Franciscan priest and a Jesuit, both being heavy smokers. This troubled them especially since they could not resist smoking while praying to the Lord. The Franciscan decided to see the prefect and asked him, ‘Father, would it be permitted to smoke while I am praying to the Lord?’ The answer was a resounding no. The Jesuit also sought counsel but framed his question somewhat differently. ‘Father, when in moments of weakness I smoke would it be permitted to say a prayer to the lord?’ The answer ‘Yes of course my son.’

This story demonstrates the power of frame control. Decision makers have a responsibility to consciously control their frames rather than being controlled by them.  They should attempt to overcome as far as possible the inherent limitations of any single frame. An approach to becoming a better decision maker in the context of frames is to follow these three rules:

1. Notice what frames you are using
2. Evaluate whether your frame fits the problem. If not then,
3. Find yourself a better frame or build one if necessary. Help others change their frames if you are working with a group.

K.R. Ravi is South Asia’s first Dr.Edward De Bono certified public trainer in lateral thinking, and a pioneer in spreading lateral thinking in the Indian corporate sector. For more details, visit http://www.krravi.com or contact him at createravi@hotmail.com.

I know what I’m asking you to do is hard. I’m asking you to change what could be lifelong patterns of behavior. I know it is not easy. But here’s the deal‚Äîcontinue on your current path and your situation will only get worse. The latest statistics on obesity are shocking‚Äîin less than 8 years, 75% of Americans will be overweight and 41% will be obese! We are turning into a nation of fat people. Why? Because of our habits‚Äîwe eat too much, we exercise too little. Think you’re heavy now? Guess what, unless you change those leaves, you’re going to be a whole lot heavier in eight years.

I just put together a seminar called “Kicking Your Own Buts” on how to change this type of behavior. I studied different methods of change and researched changing the most difficult behaviors‚Äîaddictions’ to see if there were lessons for the rest of us. There were:

1.) Know thyself. Truer words were never spoken. You know what is going to work for you and what isn’t. If you’ve been a night owl for 40 years and hate exercise, getting up at dawn and running is not going to work for you. Craft a plan you can live with. Forever.

2.) Oh yeah, baby‚Äîwe’re talking forever. The deal is not the change itself‚Äîmost alcoholics are great at quitting. It’s the staying sober part that’s hard. Dieters can lose weight‚Äîthey’re good at that‚Äîit’s keeping it off that’s hard. If you can’t do it forever, it’s no good.

3.) You have got to want to change for you. I watched many, many episodes of A & E’s series Intervention and only those who really want to get better have a chance. Most bail out as soon as their family is out of sight. Change is hard as hell‚Äîif you don’t really want to do it for yourself, don’t bother trying.

4.) Try Kaizen. Kaizen says take tiny steps. I did this with my backlog of e-mail. I have serious perfectionist issues‚Äîif I can’t do it all and do it right, I’ll put it off. (See #1) My inbox was getting to be a nightmare. E-mail needed to be deleted or filed or dealt with. Then I tried Kaizen‚ÄîI would just aim to have 10 less in the inbox at the end of each day. Then I went to 25 less, etc. I got through the backlog and now have a cap (no more than 50) that can be allowed in my inbox at the end of the day. You can do this with anything‚Äîwalk in place for 5 minutes while watching your favorite TV show. Build up gradually. Leave one bite of food on your plate. Kaizen is all about taking small steps to change. You’ve been practicing your bad habits for a lifetime‚Äîstop expecting to change them overnight!

5.) Get smart. Dean Ornish observed that even when told if they did not change they would DIE, heart patients did not change their eating and exercise habits. He discovered that doctors were just telling patients to exercise and lose weight, not telling them how to do it. You have to learn about whatever change you are trying to make. Many of us eat without really paying attention. I noticed my jeans feeling a little snug and realized the scale was moving toward my‚ÄîOHMYGOD weight. So I started writing down everything I was eating. Everything. A cookie here, a piece of candy there, a roll at lunch‚Äîit adds up faster than you realize. Start writing. All I want you to worry about is calories. Do you even know how many you need JUST TO MAINTAIN your current weight? Find out ASAP if not‚Äîgo to mayoclinic.com and look under health tools for their calorie calculator. Don’t lie about how active you are. The number you get (maybe around 2,000) is all you should eat if you don’t want to gain any weight. I’m not talking about losing‚ÄîI’m talking about staying where you are today. Guess how many calories are in one slice of P.F. Chang’s Great Wall of Chocolate cake? One piece = 2,000 calories. Wake up! Look at serving sizes. You may think a bowl of your favorite cereal has only 70 calories. But that’s for 1/3 cup and you’ve been pouring a bowl of two cups (420 calories). Knowledge is power. Ignorance is not bliss. In this case, ignorance is obesity. Apply the knowledge plan to any change you want to make. What you know now is clearly not enough.

6.) Ask for help. We Americans are tough and we believe we have to go it alone. AA and other programs work for people because they give them a support group. Ornish found in his work with patients that if they had others to offer them support, their efforts at change were much more successful. This could be a mentor, a therapist, a family member, a friend or a teacher. There are also thousands of groups on the Internet‚Äîjust search and see. Having other people trying to make the same change as you are supporting and encouraging you can be a huge help. The key here is fit‚Äîit has to be a person or a group you are comfortable with and you trust and respect. Change is hard, but it’s much easier if you have some support along the way.

A tree is not its leaves any more than you are your habits. Have the courage to let go of what’s not working. Nothing says fall like the smell of burning leaves.

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Denise Ryan, MBA, is a Certified Speaking Professional, a designation of excellence held by less than 10% of all professional speakers.  She is a blogger http://motivationbychocolate.blogspot.com
Her website is http://www.firestarspeaking.com

Once upon a time, many years ago, in prehistoric times, at a time when there were no cities, no buildings and perhaps even no villages, there was a hunter. He had had a successful day and was walking through a forest back to his tribe. He had slung a deer across his shoulder with some homemade rope. He was walking fast because it was close to evening. He came across a branch of tree lying on the ground. He casually picked it up and held it in his other hand for support. To his surprise, the branch was not as sturdy as some of the other sticks he had used for walking. It was a bit flexible. Whenever he put his weight on the stick, it bent a little. The hunter kept walking but did not throw away the branch. Then, suddenly he stopped. Something occurred to him. On an impulse, he threw down the deer, freed the rope, picked up the branch and looked at his rope again. He examined them for a moment and tied the two ends of the branch with the rope, thus inventing the bow. The hunter saw the connection between two seemingly unconnected things. He saw something which no one else had seen. He saw something which he himself had never seen before.

A branch of a tree is a branch of a tree. It has certain uses and that is that. A piece of rope is a piece of rope. It has certain uses and that is that. The preconceived notions about the branch of a tree and the piece of rope prevent us from seeing more into these objects and find some new connection. When we are free from our preconceptions, we have fresh perception and new possibilities open up in our thinking. That is what creativity is about – having fresh perceptions.

That fellow saw something which nobody else had seen. There are so many invisible connections around us and connections between hitherto unrelated things can be the source of new ideas!

Creativity is about making connections – as we saw in the example of the hunter. The ability to see a connection between seemingly unrelated things is a big advantage.

In everyday life we use metaphors to make connections between unrelated things. Metaphors are used to explain complex situations in an easy manner. Many metaphors are parts of our everyday usage Рroot of problem, heart of city. Most of us now recognize our heart as a ‘pump’ but that is a metaphor as well. Mind map is a metaphor! Metaphors help to communicate complex ideas in a short and sweet manner. A computer is a metaphor for our brain. It is so popular that we talk of processing power and our memory being short term or long term even though the way our brain works is very different from how the PC does. It helps to take ideas from one context and apply them to another context.

Metaphors provide us with a new way of looking at things. It is like watching a Manchester United Vs Liverpool match on TV with only ONE CAMERA feed and then suddenly we have more camera feeds as well! The two experiences are incomparable. Using metaphors provides us with new insights, leading to more ideas and better decisions.

Try and provide 5 different answers to each one of the following statements/questions.

And I am really looking forward to hearing what you have to say on this one:

Smoking a cigarette is like talking to your mother in law because…

(If you recognise any of these in yourself then you might like to alter your behaviour unless of course you control nuclear reactors for a living. If you recognise any of these in your boss or colleagues then start job hunting.)

The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposite ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. – F.Scott Fitzgerald

All behaviour consists of opposites…learn to see things backward, inside out, and upside down. – Lao Tzu

The Green Tortoise bus line operating with about a dozen old vehicles, made scheduled runs up and down the US West Coast and into the interior at about half the price of the Greyhound. Its owner Gardner Kent gave up trying to compete with Greyhound on price in the low fare business. Instead of hopelessly trying to reduce the journey time he did the contrary—he increased the journey duration – six rather than four days! He used the extra two days to build more ‘ fun’ into the trip Рgames, walks in the woods, fishing, etc. His business multiplied and he was able to take over
another bus service. His idea, a product of paradoxical contrarian thinking, produced extraordinary results. His fun trip strategy led him to a new segment, a niche opportunity made possible by the socioeconomic changes that turned travel into a pleasure industry.

Paradoxical thinking involves, among other things, switching to the opposite of what is conventional.

One of the most brilliant displays of paradoxical thinking is by scientist Faraday in the 1830’s. He had observed that a current of electricity passingthrough a wire could have the effect of causing the magnetized needle of a compass to deflect, that is, move in a rotational direction when a compass was located close to the wire. This was the basis of his invention of the electric motor. Faraday did not stop with this. He took a mental leap Рa gigantic one as it turned out. He reasoned that if an electric current could make magnets to move, maybe the reverse could also happen. Could a moving magnet cause electricity to flow? He found that it did. Thus was born the generator.

Typically our NRI relatives buy fancy things including gadgets at duty free shops elsewhere in the world on their way to India. The Government of Philippines had a similar situation at hand. Millions of their countrymen and women work all over the world. Noticing the huge gifts visiting Philippines were seen carrying across the arrival hall at Manila airport, the Government opened duty free shops at that airport so that NRP’s could buy gifts after their arrival home!! At the Manila shop one could buy even tractors. This shop has catapulted that country into the fourth largest seller
of such goods in the world.

The Philippines government reasoned that no matter what the world is doing one may gain enormously by doing the opposite – paradoxical thinking. Opposites are everywhere. Yet we hardly stop to think about these omnipresent opposites. Because opposites are in the background we do not see them. To be creative, we have to pull opposites out of the background and put them in the foreground where they will be clearly visible. It is said that a fish does not know that water exists – because the fish takes water for granted. We are like fish – we see so many opposites that we
take them for granted and do not notice them anymore. If we notice and handle opposites imaginatively we could all become creative.

Let us look at some commonplace ‘opposites’. Is a straight line the opposite of a curve? Of course, one may say. Yet a scientist will tell you that a curve is but an infinite number of straight lines. Is a square the opposite of a circle? ‘Obviously,’ is the answer. Yet it can be proved that both are polygons. If you keep adding sides to a square it turns it into a hexagon, an octagon and so on. The more sides you add the more it comes to resemble a circle!

The two opposite things are deep down the same thing. Can we learn paradoxical thinking? Of course, we can. Here is how.

Be open in your thinking. Openness, courage and curiosity are essential. Be particularly aware of the so-called absurd ideas floating in your mind. Note them down, dwell on them, play with them refine them. Openness also means you are open to learning new subjects unconnected with your profession. Listen, explore, be curious. Pay more attention to things you
have been ignoring or taking for granted. When you look at something, say a gadget, visualize how they would look and function if it were different in shape, size, etc. Ask yourself, can I change this into the exact opposite? Look at the rug on the floor. How would it be if we had rugs designed for the roof? Look at the lights on the roof and ask, how would it be if we had
lights on the floor? Recall that such products exist.

It pays to be sceptical. The more sceptical you are the better a paradox thinker you will be. You do not take for granted what others accept as a matter of routine. Examine customs, practices, rituals, conventions, fashions, etc.

Paradoxical thinking is one of eight skills related to intelligence. The others are memory, logic, judgement, perception, intuition, reason, and imagination. Paradox is perhaps the least used of these skills. It involves the ability to reverse, manipulate, combine, synthesize opposites.

In their path-breaking book Built to last РThe successful habits of visionary companies, authors James Collins and Jerry Poras write that companies that survive are those, among other things, that do not oppress themselves with the ‘tyranny of the or’ Рthe rational view that cannot easily accept paradox, that cannot live with two seemingly contradictory forces at the same time. The ‘tyranny of the or’ pushes people to believe that things must be either A or B, but not both. The authors have demonstrated that organizations that have liberated themselves from this tyranny go on to
grow exponentially and are seen as extremely innovative.

One last example: Is it possible to make a car that is as exquisite as a BMW or Mercedes Benz but does not cost a bomb? Quality and affordability – a paradox is what many thought but not in a Japanese company that came out with the Lexus which was a great example of paradoxical thinking.

KR Ravi is also South Asia’s first Dr. Edward De Bono certified public trainer in Lateral Thinking.

Well Business Burps are a little like this. They have the following characteristics:
• Something unexpected happens following a period of high energy.
• There is excitement.
• There is resentment on the part of competition i.e. that’s not fair.
• There is some embarrassment on our part to exploit the situation.
• The event is likely to be totally ‘left field’.

A recent example of this is Sacha Baron Cohen’s character Borat, the sixth most famous man in Kazakhstan. This is viral marketing at its very best. It is embarrassing, offensive to the Kazakhstan government (at first), completely unexpected and well thought out (Borat has his own website, mySpace, etc) and many, if not most, people are talking about him.

So what has this got to do with business. First of all Borat is business for his creator. Secondly his appearance is at odds with what has gone before. So if, like many businesses, Sacha Baron Cohen had adopted ‘Best Practice’ we would have just got yet another mediocre comedy film. Instead we got the product of ‘Next Practice’. Like Borat, our new business ideas must be the product of ‘Next Practice’, a ‘Business Burp’. Not only should your idea be different, its method of delivery or production should be future looking too. So when you are next considering a strategy of innovation or business growth or ‘burping in the boardroom’ then consider
the following:
• Is your idea unexpected (for the marketplace)?
• Does the energy exist to see it through?
• Does it have the impact for competitors to scream ‘its not fair’?
• Can you avoid the fear and other barriers that could stop you exploiting the situation?
• Can this be delivered through new processes or working practices that make it even harder for competitors to copy?
• Are you forward and outward looking?

Integrating this awareness into your daily life is to develop the bipolar vision. Looking at the opposites together does not mean that the truth lies somewhere in-between but that both extremes are equally true depending on the context.
Developing the bipolar vision is to recognize that there are no neat, clear-cut, easy answers in life. Here are some everyday paradoxes. Enjoy them!

1. I am a dynamic go-getter pursuing my goals with full force. At the same time, I am fully contented and happy with the way things are.
2. I am an insignificant creature in this huge universe. At the same time, I am the centre of the universe.
3. I am the wave. At the same time, I am the ocean.
4. I am equally comfortable being a prince and a pauper. I enjoy my possessions and when I lose them, I don’t feel sorry at all.
5. If I get the job, it’s fine. If I don’t, it is fine too.
6. If the train arrives on time, it’s fine. If it doesn’t, it is fine too.
7. Nothing is random and arbitrary. Nor is it fixed and predetermined.
8. While it’s important to have self-confidence, it’s equally important to have self-doubt.
9. Life is tough. It’s a breeze too.
10. While discipline is important for growth, too much discipline can kill my creativity.
11. When I add condiments to a dish, the taste improves. But if I overdo it, the taste deteriorates.
12. When I sharpen a knife too much, it becomes blunt.
13. Finally, the unipolar vision is one kind of vision and the bipolar vision is another kind of vision. Both are okay.

However when it comes to creative thinking, ambiguity is a good thing, even a great thing. If we are too specific with guidelines and rules to solving problems, it doesn’t give us much leeway to generate new ideas.

Generally we are uncomfortable with uncertainty. When we are in this state, we feel irritable. We try and resolve the uncertainty and become comfortable again quickly. We feel compelled to appear more certain, confident and decisive than we really are at that time. So we would rather leap to a conclusion and then focus our energies in defending it. This, most of the time is the sub optimal solution.

By its very nature, life does not lend itself to close scrutiny. It is fuzzy, indeterminate and paradoxical. There are contradictions everywhere. Wanting to understand life is to expect it to be straight, neat and orderly which it is not. We can say just one thing for sure about the world: “I don’t know.” When we are okay with the ambiguity and paradoxes of life, we know that there are no standard answers in life. We break loose fresh perspectives and look for several possible answers. In the process, we turn more creative.

In fact this article itself is paradoxical – We started by saying that ambiguity is bad and then we said it is good! That’s how life is. Learn to enjoy ambiguity.

So what should we do to get comfortable with uncertainty?

1. Accept that uncertainty is certain

2. Enjoy being confused. Be comfortable without a solution!

3. Be a ‘find outer’, not a ‘knower’

4. ‘I don’t know’ is a GREAT ANSWER!

I happened to meet a friend of mine, a successful banker in California who had migrated from India to the US more than a decade ago. He was talking about violence in India and gave that as one reason for his disappointment with his home country.

Let me use this argument as a starting point of a simple insight into thinking skills.

One of the first lessons in thinking skills is:

• Ask/look for reason.
• Ask/look for logic.
• Ask/look for credible evidence.
• Remember that anecdotes do not constitute evidence.

Take my friend’s lament about murders.

I looked up possible sources of evidence regarding incidence of murders in various countries in the world.  I came across THE MURDER MAP which shows graphically the incidence of that crime in most countries. What did I find?

India’s record is more or less the same as that of the USA! I am not saying that we can be smug about our record. All that I am saying is that once you respect and base your thinking on evidence, figures and logic you will become a better thinker.

In looking at figures there are two other points to be remembered:

• When given a figure always ask ‘Is this big or small, significant or not?’

• This figure has to be analysed in relation to what denominator?

Let us take another common lament: How is it that a country of one billion cannot produce a Wimbledon champion?

Let’s look at this statement in the light of the above guidelines.
This lack of tennis champions is sad but is a billion the appropriate denominator?

What is the base, the bucket, of the number of families that have access to tennis courts?

Is the denominator, the figure of one billion or the number of kids who have tennis playing facilities within access? If you feel as I do that very few families can access such facilities and this ought to be the denominator, it is indeed creditable that we produce some very  good players of the likes of the Krishnans, the Amritrajs, Bhoopathy, Paes, and Sania Mirza.

As for the murder rate in the U.S and in India, how does one measure the rates credibly? In terms of the number of murders per 100000 of population per annum? That’ s how  the Murder Map is constructed .

A Bihar based friend of mine boasted about five years ago that the  Bhojpuri film industry was  the fastest growing film industry in India. To which I replied that in the case of Bhojpuri films ANY GROWTH WILL SEEM ASTRONOMICAL! The reason why I said this? The same old little matter of the denominator—in this case zero base.

When I moved to the city of Washington DC three years ago I was looking at various places to rent an apartment in. I knew that every city in the U.S (maybe all over the world) has parts that are unsafe .I looked at the figures for crimes in each part of the city and made an informed decision to move into the locality where I now stay.
Often we tend to go by hearsay. In most cases we tend to form opinions on the basis  of subjective judgments. These tend to be prejudiced.

I have evidence to prove this!

If all this is obvious the question remains: Why do we miss the obvious?

Transcript

I am a writer. Writing books is my profession but it’s more than that, of course. It is also my great lifelong love and fascination. And I don’t expect that that’s ever going to change. But, that said, something kind of peculiar has happened recently in my life and in my career, which has caused me to have to recalibrate my whole relationship with this work.

And the peculiar thing is that I recently wrote this book, this memoir called “Eat, Pray, Love” which, decidedly unlike any of my previous books, went out in the world for some reason, and became this big, mega-sensation, international bestseller thing. The result of which is that everywhere I go now, people treat me like I’m doomed. Seriously — doomed, doomed! Like, they come up to me now, all worried, and they say, “Aren’t you afraid — aren’t you afraid you’re never going to be able to top that? Aren’t you afraid you’re going to keep writing for your whole life and you’re never again going to create a book that anybody in the world cares about at all, ever again?” So that’s reassuring, you know. But it would be worse, except for that I happen to remember that over 20 years ago, when I first started telling people — when I was a teenager — that I wanted to be a writer, I was met with this same kind of, sort of fear-based reaction. And people would say, “Aren’t you afraid you’re never going to have any success? Aren’t you afraid the humiliation of rejection will kill you? Aren’t you afraid that you’re going to work your whole life at this craft and nothing’s ever going to come of it and you’re going to die on a scrap heap of broken dreams with your mouth filled with bitter ash of failure?” Like that, you know.

The answer — the short answer to all those questions is, “Yes.” Yes, I’m afraid of all those things. And I always have been. And I’m afraid of many many more things besides that people can’t even guess at. Like seaweed, and other things that are scary. But, when it comes to writing the thing that I’ve been sort of thinking about lately, and wondering about lately, is why? You know, is it rational? Is it logical that anybody should be expected to be afraid of the work that they feel they were put on this Earth to do. You know, and what is it specifically about creative ventures that seems to make us really nervous about each other’s mental health in a way that other careers kind of don’t do, you know? Like my dad, for example, was a chemical engineer and I don’t recall once in his 40 years of chemical engineering anybody asking him if he was afraid to be a chemical engineer, you know? It didn’t — that chemical engineering block John, how’s it going? It just didn’t come up like that, you know? But to be fair, chemical engineers as a group haven’t really earned a reputation over the centuries for being alcoholic manic-depressives.

We writers, we kind of do have that reputation, and not just writers, but creative people across all genres, it seems, have this reputation for being enormously mentally unstable. And all you have to do is look at the very grim death count in the 20th century alone, of really magnificent creative minds who died young and often at their own hands, you know? And even the ones who didn’t literally commit suicide seem to be really undone by their gifts, you know. Norman Mailer, just before he died, last interview, he said “Every one of my books has killed me a little more.” An extraordinary statement to make about your life’s work, you know. But we don’t even blink when we hear somebody say this because we’ve heard that kind of stuff for so long and somehow we’ve completely internalized and accepted collectively this notion that creativity and suffering are somehow inherently linked and that artistry, in the end, will always ultimately lead to anguish.

And the question that I want to ask everybody here today is are you guys all cool with that idea? Are you comfortable with that — because you look at it even from an inch away and, you know — I’m not at all comfortable with that assumption. I think it’s odious. And I also think it’s dangerous, and I don’t want to see it perpetuated into the next century. I think it’s better if we encourage our great creative minds to live. And I definitely know that, in my case — in my situation — it would be very dangerous for me to start sort of leaking down that dark path of assumption, particularly given the circumstance that I’m in right now in my career. Which is — you know, like check it out, I’m pretty young, I’m only about 40 years old. I still have maybe another four decades of work left in me. And it’s exceedingly likely that anything I write from this point forward is going to be judged by the world as the work that came after the freakish success of my last book, right? I should just put it bluntly, because we’re all sort of friends here now — it’s exceedingly likely that my greatest success is behind me. Oh, so Jesus, what a thought! You know that’s the kind of thought that could lead a person to start drinking gin at nine o’clock in the morning, and I don’t want to go there. I would prefer to keep doing this work that I love.

And so, the question becomes, how? And so, it seems to me, upon a lot of reflection, that the way that I have to work now, in order to continue writing, is that I have to create some sort of protective psychological construct, right? I have to, sort of find some way to have a safe distance between me, as I am writing, and my very natural anxiety about what the reaction to that writing is going to be, from now on. And, as I’ve been looking over the last year for models for how to do that I’ve been sort of looking across time, and I’ve been trying to find other societies to see if they might have had better and saner ideas than we have about how to help creative people, sort of manage the inherent emotional risks of creativity. And that search has led me to ancient Greece and ancient Rome.

So stay with me, because it does circle around and back. But, ancient Greece and ancient Rome — people did not happen to believe that creativity came from human beings back then, OK? People believed that creativity was this divine attendant spirit that came to human beings from some distant and unknowable source, for distant and unknowable reasons. The Greeks famously called these divine attendant spirits of creativity “daemons.” Socrates, famously, believed that he had a daemon who spoke wisdom to him from afar.

The Romans had the same idea, but they called that sort of disembodied creative spirit a genius. Which is great, because the Romans did not actually think that a genius was a particularly clever individual. They believed that a genius was this, sort of magical divine entity, who was believed to literally live in the walls of an artist’s studio, kind of like Dobby the house elf, and who would come out and sort of invisibly assist the artist with their work and would shape the outcome of that work. So brilliant — there it is, right there that distance that I’m talking about — that psychological construct to protect you from the results of your work. And everyone knew that this is how it functioned, right? So the ancient artist was protected from certain things, like, for example, too much narcissism, right? If your work was brilliant you couldn’t take all the credit for it, everybody knew that you had this disembodied genius who had helped you. If your work bombed, not entirely your fault, you know? Everyone knew your genius was kind of lame. And this is how people thought about creativity in the West for a really long time. And then the Renaissance came and everything changed, and we had this big idea, and the big idea was let’s put the individual human being at the center of the universe above all gods and mysteries, and there’s no more room for mystical creatures who take dictation from the divine. And it’s the beginning of rational humanism, and people started to believe that creativity came completely from the self of the individual. And for the first time in history, you start to hear people referring to this or that artist as being a genius rather than having a genius. And I got to tell you, I think that was a huge error. You know, I think that allowing somebody, one mere person to believe that he or she is like, the vessel you know, like the font and the essence and the source of all divine, creative, unknowable, eternal mystery is just a smidge too much responsibility to put on one fragile, human psyche. It’s like asking somebody to swallow the sun. It just completely warps and distorts egos, and it creates all these unmanageable expectations about performance. And I think the pressure of that has been killing off our artists for the last 500 years.

And, if this is true, and I think it is true, the question becomes, what now? Can we do this differently? Maybe go back to some more ancient understanding about the relationship between humans and the creative mystery. Maybe not. Maybe we can’t just erase 500 years of rational humanistic thought in one 18 minute speech. And there’s probably people in this audience who would raise really legitimate scientific suspicions about the notion of, basically fairies who follow people around rubbing fairy juice on their projects and stuff. I’m not, probably, going to bring you all along with me on this. But the question that I kind of want to pose is — you know, why not? Why not think about it this way? Because it makes as much sense as anything else I have ever heard in terms of explaining the utter maddening capriciousness of the creative process. A process which, as anybody who has ever tried to make something — which is to say basically, everyone here — knows does not always behave rationally. And, in fact, can sometimes feel downright paranormal.

I had this encounter recently where I met the extraordinary American poet Ruth Stone, who’s now in her 90s, but she’s been a poet her entire life and she told me that when she was growing up in rural Virginia, she would be out working in the fields, and she said she would feel and hear a poem coming at her from over the landscape. And she said it was like a thunderous train of air. And it would come barreling down at her over the landscape. And she felt it coming, because it would shake the earth under her feet. She knew that she had only one thing to do at that point, and that was to, in her words, “run like hell.” And she would run like hell to the house and she would be getting chased by this poem, and the whole deal was that she had to get to a piece of paper and a pencil fast enough so that when it thundered through her, she could collect it and grab it on the page. And other times she wouldn’t be fast enough, so she’d be running and running and running, and she wouldn’t get to the house and the poem would barrel through her and she would miss it and she said it would continue on across the landscape, looking, as she put it “for another poet.” And then there were these times — this is the piece I never forgot — she said that there were moments where she would almost miss it, right? So, she’s running to the house and she’s looking for the paper and the poem passes through her, and she grabs a pencil just as it’s going through her, and then she said, it was like she would reach out with her other hand and she would catch it. She would catch the poem by its tail, and she would pull it backwards into her body as she was transcribing on the page. And in these instances, the poem would come up on the page perfect and intact but backwards, from the last word to the first.

So when I heard that I was like — that’s uncanny, that’s exactly what my creative process is like.  That’s not all what my creative process is — I’m not the pipeline! I’m a mule, and the way that I have to work is that I have to get up at the same time every day, and sweat and labor and barrel through it really awkwardly. But even I, in my mulishness, even I have brushed up against that thing, at times. And I would imagine that a lot of you have too. You know, even I have had work or ideas come through me from a source that I honestly cannot identify. And what is that thing? And how are we to relate to it in a way that will not make us lose our minds, but, in fact, might actually keep us sane?

And for me, the best contemporary example that I have of how to do that is the musician Tom Waits, who I got to interview several years ago on a magazine assignment. And we were talking about this, and you know, Tom, for most of his life he was pretty much the embodiment of the tormented contemporary modern artist, trying to control and manage and dominate these sort of uncontrollable creative impulses that were totally internalized. But then he got older, he got calmer, and one day he was driving down the freeway in Los Angeles he told me, and this is when it all changed for him. And he’s speeding along, and all of a sudden he hears this little fragment of melody, that comes into his head as inspiration often comes, elusive and tantalizing, and he wants it, you know, it’s gorgeous, and he longs for it, but he has no way to get it. He doesn’t have a piece of paper, he doesn’t have a pencil, he doesn’t have a tape recorder. So he starts to feel all of that old anxiety start to rise in him like, “I’m going to lose this thing, and then I’m going to be haunted by this song forever. I’m not good enough, and I can’t do it.” And instead of panicking, he just stopped. He just stopped that whole mental process and he did something completely novel. He just looked up at the sky, and he said, “Excuse me, can you not see that I’m driving?” (Laughter) “Do I look like I can write down a song right now? If you really want to exist, come back at a more opportune moment when I can take care of you. Otherwise, go bother somebody else today. Go bother Leonard Cohen.” And his whole work process changed after that. Not the work, the work was still oftentimes as dark as ever. But the process, and the heavy anxiety around it was released when he took the genie, the genius out of him where it was causing nothing but trouble, and released it kind of back where it came from, and realized that this didn’t have to be this internalized, tormented thing. It could be this peculiar, wondrous, bizarre collaboration kind of conversation between Tom and the strange, external thing that was not quite Tom. So when I heard that story it started to shift a little bit the way that I worked too, and it already saved me once.

This idea, it saved me when I was in the middle of writing “Eat, Pray, Love,” and I fell into one of those, sort of pits of despair that we all fall into when we’re working on something and it’s not coming and you start to think this is going to be a disaster, this is going to be the worst book ever written. Not just bad, but the worst book ever written. And I started to think I should just dump this project. But then I remembered Tom talking to the open air and I tried it. So I just lifted my face up from the manuscript and I directed my comments to an empty corner of the room. And I said aloud, “Listen you, thing, you and I both know that if this book isn’t brilliant that is not entirely my fault, right? Because you can see that I am putting everything I have into this, I don’t have anymore than this. So if you want it to be better, then you’ve got to show up and do your part of the deal. OK. But if you don’t do that, you know what, the hell with it. I’m going to keep writing anyway because that’s my job. And I would please like the record to reflect today that I showed up for my part of the job.” Because — in the end it’s like this, OK — centuries ago in the deserts of North Africa, people used to gather for these moonlight dances of sacred dance and music that would go on for hours and hours, until dawn. And they were always magnificent, because the dancers were professionals and they were terrific, right? But every once in a while, very rarely, something would happen, and one of these performers would actually become transcendent. And I know you know what I’m talking about, because I know you’ve all seen, at some point in your life, a performance like this. It was like time would stop, and the dancer would sort of step through some kind of portal and he wasn’t doing anything different than he had ever done, 1,000 nights before, but everything would align. And all of a sudden, he would no longer appear to be merely human. He would be lit from within, and lit from below and all lit up on fire with divinity. And when this happened, back then, people knew it for what it was, you know, they called it by it’s name. They would put their hands together and they would start to chant, “Allah, Allah, Allah, God God, God.” That’s God, you know. Curious historical footnote — when the Moors invaded southern Spain, they took this custom with them and the pronunciation changed over the centuries from “Allah, Allah, Allah,” to “Ole, ole, ole,” which you still hear in bullfights and in flamenco dances.

In Spain, when a performer has done something impossible and magic, “Allah, ole, ole, Allah, magnificent, bravo,” incomprehensible, there it is — a glimpse of God. Which is great, because we need that. But, the tricky bit comes the next morning, for the dancer himself, when he wakes up and discovers that it’s Tuesday at 11 a.m., and he’s no longer a glimpse of God. He’s just an aging mortal with really bad knees, and maybe he’s never going to ascend to that height again. And maybe nobody will ever chant God’s name again as he spins, and what is he then to do with the rest of his life? This is hard. This is one of the most painful reconciliations to make in a creative life. But maybe it doesn’t have to be quite so full of anguish if you never happened to believe, in the first place, that the most extraordinary aspects of your being came from you. But maybe if you just believed that they were on loan to you from some unimaginable source for some exquisite portion of your life to be passed along when you’re finished, with somebody else. And, you know, if we think about it this way it starts to change everything.

This is how I’ve started to think, and this is certainly how I’ve been thinking in the last few months as I’ve been working on the book that will soon be published, as the dangerously, frighteningly overanticipated follow up to my freakish success. And what I have to, sort of keep telling myself when I get really psyched out about that, is, don’t be afraid. Don’t be daunted. Just do your job. Continue to show up for your piece of it, whatever that might be. If your job is to dance, do your dance. If the divine, cockeyed genius assigned to your case decides to let some sort of wonderment be glimpsed, for just one moment through your efforts, then “Ole!” And if not, do your dance anyhow. And “Ole!” to you, nonetheless. I believe this and I feel that we must teach it. “Ole!” to you, nonetheless, just for having the sheer human love and stubbornness to keep showing up. Thank you.

Young Man (YM): Master, how long will it take for me to achieve enlightenment?
Gautama Buddha (GB): It all depends on you.
YM: If I put in ten hours of meditation every day, how long will it take?
GB: Maybe ten years.
YM: What if I put in fifteen hours meditation?
GB: Maybe fifteen years.
YM: (getting irritated) What if I meditate for twenty hours?
GB: Maybe twenty five years.
YM: I cannot understand your logic! The more effort I put in the more time it will take ….this is ridiculous! Please explain.
GB: As long as you are fixated and obsessed about your goal you will not achieve it. Just do spiritual practice without one eye on the goal. Let events take their shape.

I was reminded of this story when I saw a TV interview of Nobel Laureate, V Ramakrishnan, an Indian American. The new laureate was the very epitome of humility and one of his statements was eye opening. He said that he embarked on his research, not out of a desire to win laurels but out of curiosity to solve a scientific problem. He was not working with one eye on the Nobel Prize.

My understanding of life is that the things we desire most: money, power, status etc are best left to shape themselves. What we must keep as our main goal, is best exemplified by what a friend of mine, told his young sons. He told them, “It does not matter what you do in life. I request you to aspire to be the very best in terms of excellence in whatever you do. If you choose to be a janitor, try and become the best janitor in town.”

In other words, excellence ought to be our ideal and everything else ought to be a side effect.

Now that we are talking about outstanding Indians, readers might like to know about another illustrious Indian American who figures among the people of excellence in his chosen field. He is Dr.V Ramachandran, an outstanding neuroscientist. He is respected all over the world on account of his pioneering work in understanding the human mind. What is striking about him, apart from his commitment to excellence, is his humility. He travels frequently to India to meet his aged parents at his humble home in Chennai. My friends tell me that he can be spotted sitting in his verandah sporting a lungi and banian, sipping kaapi (coffee) and reading The Hindu paper. He is known to be accessible to anyone who chooses to meet him.

That raises another point. It is time that our media gives extensive coverage to those among us who have excelled (not necessarily in financial terms) so that they might inspire youngsters to not only aspire for world class efforts but to imbibe the personal qualities that go into the making of a Nobel Laureate namely: curiosity, vision, sustained endeavour, without an eye on the perquisites and of course….humility.

Working in the software field, I face this situation many times. While working on complex codes, I always have the choice of either following the well-designed set way of programming or to be creative and challenge the accepted standards and myself. Needless to say, like most of the corporate zombies, most of the times I preferred to chicken out and stay hidden among the masses, hoping to somehow win the rat race unnoticed by anyone, and without answering any questions.

Then one day someone mentioned the story of Aristarchus, the Greek guy who had the brains to prove that Sun and not Earth, was the centre of the Solar System but not the ‘guts’ to say it out loud because the Church and its followers might not have liked it. It was on his deathbed that his genius came forward and his work was published. Unfortunately the usual set of tomatoes didn’t spare the head of the dying genius, but the point is, here I am writing about him even after a gillion years of his death! Anyhow, coming back to contemporary times, when someone mentioned this story to me, immediately the same thought materialized in my head as in any loser’s head….”Aww what a waste”… but…..yes there is big hairy “but” here….. I did something about it, unlike the other losers.

A fortnight later, I was given the task to prepare a quote for a client and was asked to use a set template, which was the standard since the CEO’s grandpa used to wet his diapers. I went about my merry way to fill out some silly little boxes in the Excel sheet and came up with a figure at the bottom. Quite pleased with my work, I was about to submit the report, when I had a Buddha enlightenment moment sitting under the glare of my computer screen. I thought of a way that might have been more useful than the current way, and in the heat of the moment, went ahead and prepared it, my way.

Sorry, to have an anti climax — instead of being appreciated for my effort (as expected obviously), I was ridiculed and was forced to do it the ‘great grandpa’ way by my manager. The funny part is, this apparent failure gave me a greater sense of accomplishment than ever before, and even after being yelled at for wasting precious time, I went home that day grinning and with a weird sense of pride. I may have failed that day but no failure is final and permanent. I went home with the overwhelming Clint Eastwood feeling of “I will be back as the final victor!”

My point is, next time you think you can challenge someone, and have the conviction in your work, go ahead. So what, if it isn’t the way world wants you to be? So what if it upsets the greasy old procedures which have been unchallenged? Set a trend, challenge them, and see how it feels.

If you feel that Einstein’s E=MC2 is not good enough, go ahead challenge the old weirdo, after all he flunked school while you completed it. Who knows, some time in the future, I will be written about for discovering that new template for quote, which modern people think is trash, and you might join my league for discovering a better formula for the mass energy equivalence.

CREATIVE PRODUCTIVITY THAT WORKS FOR BOTH ARTISTES & A-TYPE PERSONALITIES:

1. APPROACH EVERYTHING AS A CREATIVE OPPORTUNITY. There is no separation between life and work. The same opportunities to express yourself or get great ideas are at the dinner table, in the stock exchange, and on the subway. Put yourself out there.

2. OBSESSION IS ESSENTIAL. Know your art and your science. Immerse yourself in the cultures you love and work in: read industry news, the teachings of spiritual masters and successful entrepreneurs, listen to what the people you serve are longing for, asking for, and leaning toward.

To foster obsession:

3. Read a LOT of magazines. And then read some more – about things related and unrelated to your work, Scientific American and Vogue, Dwell and Rolling Stone. Magazines are intensified viewpoints that can expand your perspective in just a few pages.

4. Create a style file or inspiration box of stuff that you love. Photos, articles, fabric swatches, postcards. I have an antique sake box filled with strange and lovely stuff. Sometimes I close my eyes and reach in to see what comes up – an Elvis coaster, a Zen koan torn from a divinity school program, an old essay or concert ticket.

5. Watch dox. I’m a documentary-phile (always looking for versions of the truth,) which gives me all sorts of weird, tragic, breathtaking imagery, inspiration, and facts to work with.

6. Engage with people that you don’t hangout with. Ask them big questions. Ask the cab driver what crazy stuff he’s seen as a cab driver, ask your friend’s teenager what they think about the future, ask your bank teller what it’s like to work with money all day.

To keep moving forward:

7. GIVE UP QUICKLY. If something feels like a drag and is not generating the right response – drop it like a hot potato. As Seth Godin says in his book, The Dip, “Fail fast.”

In order to give up quickly, you have to…

8. COURAGEOUSLY EXPRESS YOUR FEELINGS. When something feels very wrong, totally uninspiring, say so – to yourself and your team. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you give up, it may spin you off into a better solution.

So that you can:

9. STICK WITH IT. If something feels fun, glimmering, exciting, and even one person has expressed wanting it from you – explore every angle about how to make it work.

And be assured that:

10. BACKWARDS IS FORWARDS. Know that there is no such thing as waste. A painted canvas that didn’t turn out, a pilot group that fizzled, it’s all useful. I trash stuff and start from scratch often. Sometimes, especially in terms of web development, you start knowing that you’ll have to scrap half of what you build down the road – starting over is never really starting over. It’s life.

Which allows you to:

11. CELEBRATE OTHER PEOPLE’S CREATIVITY AND PROSPERITY. Honoring other people’s creativity and success helps shake loose our own brilliance. Whether it’s a hot website, a terrific outfit on the street, or a well known author – go out of your way to say, “You’re great!” “Way to go!” “I love what you’ve created.”

And then keep on creating for yourself. Ever so productively.

It’s tricky stuff because I’m also deeply private. I ask more questions than I answer. I struggle with privacy issues and interruptions make me mental. Most of the time, I prefer to be invisible. And yet I’m very upfront about the fact that, vocationally speaking, I’ll be thrilled to be a household name someday. I consider contradictions a hobby.

When your persona starts to wag your person, you’ve got trouble.

So with all that introvert-extrovert creative tension I have to keep my persona in check. And it occurred to me that ever so subtly, I might be setting myself up to hide behind my brand. That I might be creating products and images that hemmed me in in the future. And while good branding makes for good commerce, it can be a real drag for freeing your art.

When I changed my Twitter name last week from @whitehottruth to @daniellelaporte I got some questions. (If you tweet, twit, twitter, then you know that your twitter handle is a very big deal.) @stephendavis02 wanted to know if my name was taken before and just got freed up? @ealvarezgibson wondered if my account had been hijacked. When @chrisguillebeau asked what was up, I told him I just got out of the witness protection program.

Names are hugely important. And yeah baby, White Hot Truth is damn sexy. That’s why I named my site that. But I’m not my site. Or my books. Or the stuff I make.

As Paula Cole puts it:

I am not the person who is singing
I am the silent one inside
I am not the one who laughs at people’s jokes, I just pacify their egos.
I am not my house, my car, my songs
those are only stops along they way
I am like the winter
I’m a dark cold female
with a golden ring of wisdom in my cave.

Okay, that’s a bit dramatic. But so am I. Stay with me.

3 KEYS TO GENUINE BRANDING…or UN-BRANDING. YOUR CHOICE.

1. Keep it pointed to where you want it to go. What do you want to be known for next year, and for years after that? If Twyla Tharp were on Twitter I think she’d go by twylatharp, not “creativehabit.” @EckhartTolle tweets, and he’s not “PowerOfNow”. Think like a legend.

2. Live artfully. I couldn’t bare to lock myself into a “brand” that I felt restricted by. I’ve done that and it hurts. A lot. I want to live like as an artist and it’s the “designer” kind of business model that works best for me. Donna Karan is “Donna Karan”. That leaves her free to do cashmere, fragrances, and Urban Zen. Keep your essence at the helm and you can’t go wrong.

3. Walk proud. Take deep breaths when you need to – it’s not always easy being authentic. Within a day of changing my Twitter name I got all strange and unsettled about it. Zoinks. Was that a bad move? Are my re-tweets going to plummet? I emailed my (amazing) virtual assistant and asked her if I’d screw up anything by reversing it…then quickly emailed her back and told her to ignore me.

Learning to trust that you’re enough, without a gimmick or a sidekick or a discount offering takes some faith and practice.

If you’re selling widgets or scaling a company that you want to sell off someday, then packaging is paramount. If you’re selling your soul – in the best possible way, remember that a little theatre goes a long way, but you still need to show up on stage as the real you. And when you do, applause will follow.

You cannot not create. I know…many of you just don’t feel creative. Maybe your definition of “creative” has been too narrow. Creativity isn’t a gift given only to artists, sculptors, musicians, or dancers. It’s something you do naturally. Question is…what are YOU creating? You are always creating with your thoughts. Every product, every service in the world started first in someone’s mind. So “mind your mind” and direct your thoughts to things you really want to create…like abundance and good service and joy.

You are absolutely unique. There is no one quite like you. So the way you look at the world, through your eyes, your mind is different than any one else’s. Successful entrepreneurs embrace this uniqueness.

Even though there are many people who cut and style hair, each does it in their own way – haven’t you had a favorite hairdresser or barber who just always got it “right”?

So don’t waste time worrying that you have nothing new to offer. You do. Yourself. Discover what it is that you enjoy about yourself and incorporate those qualities into your business. When you do, you’ll love your work and your customers and clients will love you.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a psychologist has written extensively on the topic of creative flow. He says when we are engaged in an almost effortless yet highly focused activity we experience “flow.” Here are the characteristics of being in “flow”:

1. Completely involved in what we are doing – focused, concentrated.
2. A sense of ecstasy – of being outside everyday reality.
3. Great inner clarity – knowing what needs to be done, and how well we are doing.
4. Knowing that the activity is ‘doable ‘– that skills are adequate to the task.
5. A sense of serenity – no worries about oneself, and a feeling of growing beyond the boundaries of the ego.
6. Timelessness – thoroughly focused on the present, time seems to pass by in minutes.
7. Intrinsic motivation – whatever produces flow becomes its own reward.

When have you felt that? Whatever you were doing at the time, do more of that! I celebrate and honor your creativity. Don’t hide it from the world…let it shine.

You have to cut out the best part.
You have to detach from your brilliance.
You have to trust that the whole piece is better the individual shiny parts that make you seem clever or wise.

So that sexy slogan … That rapier wit one-liner … That fancy feature or added customer service … if those gems are throwing the whole package or project or intention off kilter, then they probably need to be slashed.

Final works of art find harmony. In even vulgar, dramatic, and absurd works of art there can be a high degree of cohesion and that’s what accounts for its impact. That’s where skill comes in. You can be as wildly inspired and as daring as you want, but if you don’t know the rule of thirds, or a bit of colour theory, or how to help the members of your jazz trio be heard in fusion, then you run the risk of tampering with the objective, which is to create art that conveys.

It’s easy to get attached to our inspired moments and what they produce. Those aha’s are a rush. And the rush is good, it’s essential in fact. Let it move you forward instead of rooting you to one place, or one ray of light. Let your clever bits and genius fuel your courage rather than your ego. Diamonds shine only after they’ve been cut.

Saraswati is my #1 Goddess. She rules what I dig most. I’m surprised she’s not up there with Kali and Aphrodite in mass popularity. Saraswati is regarded as the Goddess of knowledge and the arts. She represents consciousness and wisdom, is regarded as the goddess of sound and speech, and is revered as the dispeller of chaos and confusion. As she is the wife of Brahma, she is also seen as the co-creator of the universe. Her name means ‘the flowing’ or ‘the beautiful one’. Yeah baby.

My Saraswati story…
Years ago in Santa Fe, my friend Navjit and I went to a gathering for Guru Karunamayi. New Mexico is to gurus what New York is to rock stars – they all pass through eventually. So catching a Hindi lecture on a Friday night and then heading to the club was par for the course.

So there we were in our leather pants and Timberlands, gold eyeshadow and Betty Paige bangs…in lotus position. Karunamayi spoke of a love that carries all. The God Head Love that bears everything for its creation. “My children, my babies” she said in her high-happy Indian accent, “When you are angered, give your anger to Mama. Mama will carry it for you. When you do not know, give your confusion to Mama. Mama will carry it for you.”

When it came time to be blessed – the touch of her hand to my forehead – I went flush…turned to mush. It was confusing. I’m not wired for guru devotion or public displays of emotion. But I felt a sense of love emanating from Karunamayi that was expansive and warm. I felt forgiven, cradled, curious. When she touched me, tears fell from my eyes as if there was tap at the crown of my head that she gently twisted.

I left with one of her devotional chanting tapes – $8 bucks was the least I could do for having my head spun ’round. One chant burned itself into my memory and for years, even tho’ I never knew what it meant, I instinctively hummed it to myself. The chant would come into my mind before a speaking gig, or a big meeting; while on the acupuncture table or when I was sick. When my son was being born (at home) my mother accidentally flipped the stereo from “CD” to tape cassette (which hadn’t been played in years,) and there it was, the scratchy Karunamayi chant looping ’round for ten hours while I laboured:

Om Aim Srim Hrim Saraswati Devyai Namaha

I finally decided to look into the origins of the chant – for all I knew it could be a blessing for the fertility of camels. As it turns out, it is a devotion to Saraswati. My Sistah of speech. My Mama of the Arts. The Goddess of clear, calm strategy.

Goddesses always show up when you need them to.

Who’s your favourite goddess?

We were all day dreamers once. Who can forget sitting in class in the middle of a hot summer afternoon, daydreaming about the previous year’s cool mountain vacation, or which games we would play when we got back home. We daydreamed about what we wanted for our birthdays; how cool we would look in the new pair of jeans, and sometimes even how somebody who looked and behaved exactly like Raj of DDLJ would come over and sweep us off our feet.

Well, those were just daydreams you would say, especially because it wasn’t something to be proud of. Weren’t we told that daydreaming meant that you were absolutely lazy, inattentive and bored and had nothing better to do with your life? Well, well, all of us daydreamers are going to be absolved of the ‘lazy tag’ thanks to a recent study by a group of University of British Columbia researchers. The study led by Prof. Kalina Christoff, UBC Dept. of Psychology, suggests that daydreaming is in fact, an extremely active, cognitively complex mental state of our brain.

Until now, the brain’s “default network” which is linked to easy, routine mental activity and includes the medial prefrontal cortex (PFC), the posterior cingulate cortex and the temporoparietal junction, was the only part of the brain thought to be active when our minds wander. However, the study finds that the brain’s “executive network” associated with high-level, complex problem-solving and including the lateral PFC and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, also becomes activated when we daydream. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds that activity in numerous brain regions increases when our minds wander. It also finds that brain areas associated with complex problem – solving, previously thought to go dormant when we daydream, are in fact highly active during these episodes.

The findings suggest that daydreaming is an important cognitive state where we may unconsciously turn our attention from the tasks at hand to sort through more important problems in our lives. “When you daydream, you may not be achieving your immediate goal – say managing the account book or paying attention in class – but your mind may be taking that time to address more important questions in your life, such as advancing your career or personal relationships,” says Christoff.

In simple terms, daydreaming is a fundamental feature of our minds, quite like the brain’s default mode of thought. Many scientists are validating the fact that daydreaming is a vital tool for creativity, a thought process that allows the brain to make new associations and connections thereby enhancing creativity.
The ability to think abstractly that flourishes during daydreams also has important social benefits. Mostly, what we daydream about is our essential social and personal interactions, our career goals, etc. While we are playing out these scenarios, the mind retrieves memories, contemplates “what if” scenarios, and thinks about how it should behave in the future.

Think about it, while we go through our days on auto-pilot, we are mostly responding to events, many a times not giving any thought to our reactions. Daydreaming in this situation can become an effective feedback and therapeutic tool. Many of us have had episodes when we have said or done something we are not particularly proud of and then while replaying the scene in our minds have conjured a different, more pleasant outcome. The immediate benefit is an immediate sense of relief, well being and emotional freedom. What’s fascinating is that often, the situation does turn out the way we envisioned it to be. In this sense, the content of daydreams often resembles a soap opera, with people reflecting on social interactions both real and make-believe. We can leave behind the world as it is and start imagining the world as it might be, if only we hadn’t lost our temper, or had listened to our intuition. Or, just as well, we could be sipping an iced latte in a café in New York (I’ve even taken long walks in Central Park).

It is this ability to tune out the present moment and reflect on the make-believe that gives the human mind its uniqueness. In case your wondering how daydreaming changes reality, look at it from the law of attraction or energy matrix point of view. The universe does not distinguish between what is real or what is make believe, it only responds to our thoughts and its underlying emotions.

A daydream is an emotionally charged fantasy experienced while awake, especially one of happy, pleasant thoughts, hopes or ambitions. For those of us who have difficulty attaching emotions to our thoughts while we visualize future outcomes, a guided form of daydreaming can and will do wonders. It helps us align ourselves to the energy flow by offering vibrations of high intensity which will only then attract experiences which are vibrating at similarly high frequencies. Are we not more creative when we are relaxed? Don’t we get ideas when we just go with the flow; well a guided daydream is just the process to get into that flow.

Research suggests that people typically spend a third of their waking time daydreaming and if we are able to guide our thoughts and emotions toward more positive outcomes, we are in a position to turn those dreams into our waking reality.

For those of you who have forgotten the art of daydreaming, just close your eyes, take a deep breath and think of a situation you would like to be fulfilled today. Then daydream about how you would like it to feel, get in touch with the emotions you would have, hold conversations, and see yourself living the outcome NOW. For example, you are neck deep in work with the deadline around the corner. Now imagine yourself asking your co-worker for assistance, him saying yes, and the work getting done on time. The first benefit of this short exercise is that you feel relaxed and calm almost immediately.

Beginning the day with even five minutes of a guided daydream will help you to ‘turn on’ your feel good vibes and you can start your schedule of activities on the right note. A quick five minute session in the evening will help in the course correction of the events that didn’t make you happy. A guided daydream is your best visualization tool for the future and a good therapeutic tool for past events, so go ahead, dream on. The more you can daydream, the more creative you will feel. Daydream your way into reality and live the life of your dreams !!

Original People, Thoughts, Ideas, Products, Efforts, Plans,
Campaigns, Features, Creators and Entertainers….
They originate to dominate.
Their origins are original,
Never duplicated.
Always original! To be duplicated and replicated after they happen.
As they do happen once in a while.

Oscar Wilde who was one of those rare originals, wrote: “Most people
are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinion, their
lives a mimicry, their passions – a quotation.”

That is the best example I could think up of to cite on originality.

Origin must be having its origins too.
It has for sure….
Within talented individuals who make and break records.
Who leave an indelible mark on sands of time.
Originality! Where and how does it originate?
How does it originate and then slowly permeate?
To obliterate the duplicates!
In all walks of life.
Through relentless struggle and strife.
All through life.

How does it get to substantiate itself with the ides of time.
How does originality ultimately substantiate itself and
make itself stand out as a one time great?
Rather than get common and kind of, out of date.
As most of the times we ordinary mortals are extraordinarily late….
Late in arresting and sustaining originality within us.
Thereby instead of being before time and original, we tend be, late….
Late in arresting nurtured. original thoughts,
Morphing them into actions.
Bold and brave,
As we internally yearn and crave,
Since we were naive, slaves.

We are late…only and to duplicate everything! Including our own
thoughts, lives and well being!
Duplicate, triplicate, as we replicate and propagate,
Through repetitive, non progressive education and experiences.
Through our inert inability to arrest that annoying inefficacy….
Like a concubine thought!

Thereby we are not an original being of our original thinking.
Our Being as such is duplicated due to such and other several
concubine-thoughts.
Concubine thinking within our cocooned, educated brick-in-the wall
types of minds,
Matured through education that is solely pursued for materialistic
lives and lifestyles.
Mundane, shallow, selfish and short lived….
Always duplicated and never original.
Clinging concubine thoughts.

Originality originates in original mindsets,
That do not get set as such through worldly education and experiences.
I know and am convinced that the origin lies in our mind sets, in what
is now recognized and acknowledged as “Superconsciousness.”

That word has now found a solid ground and following.
There are more believers and in-tillers in that form and feel.
More takers. More mind tillers.
More stakers too.
As it is no longer a secret.
Now that it is out, I hope and pray that originals are on the anvil
always, and in the making, all the time.
More surreal and sublime than ever.
Free to duplicate and replicate originality.
Free to emancipate and accelerate….
To bloom and to fructify.
Originality.
Selflessly and perpetually.
Like eternal original music and unlike short-lived duplicate echoes!
To elate and elevate.
May be levitate too.
Life, lives and life styles.
As minds and mindsets are indeed originals and should be allowed to
remain that way.

Are you a mundane or an original ?
Do you believe in yourself ?
In your original mind ?
In change?

Do you also believe and delve in Superconsciousness ?
Then let go of the mundane.
To gain through pain and perseverance.
To happen as yet another original,
To rule and remain.
Through refrain….
To originate as your own original self.

What about challenging Newton’s laws and Einstein’s theories?

Can you listen to people whom you dislike, love your enemies and watch for one hour the TV channel you hate most? Well, it’s time we are prepared for all these. Traditionally creativity is considered as conceiving of new ideas and converting them in to reality. With the unprecedented growth (read: explosion) in every field, even outlooks are changing.

Gillette’s market leader Excel was superceded by the Sensor and Sensor 2, and then by Mach 3 and Mach 3 Turbo.

3M has a policy that 30% of their revenues should come from products introduced in the market during the last 6 months. And how do they achieve it? – by making their own successful products obsolete.

Intel’s philosophy is to cannibalize its own business by constantly bringing out better processors to replace the ones that are already market leaders.

Any new product in consumer electronics always comes from Sony (of course, except for iPod,) and in a couple of months Samsung and LG bring out the same product at 40% less cost (again, that’s a different story.)

When the companies launch a new product, they are already working on the product that will replace it. Microsoft launched Windows Vista in January 2007, but they had already started working, from October 2006 onwards, on the next operating system that is going to replace Windows Vista.

Despite being the number one in the market as the largest selling vehicle in SUV category, Toyota stopped production of the model “Qualis.” In the Indian business scenario, this is simply unheard of and never an option to be considered.

Gravity for instance, is taken for granted, as a fact of life. But it was recently reported that Boeing, the world’s largest aircraft manufacturer, is working on experimental anti-gravity projects that could overturn a century of conventional aerospace propulsion technology if the science underpinning them can be engineered to hardware. Boeing’s Phantom Works advanced research and development facility in Seattle is trying to solicit the services of a Russian scientist who claims he has developed anti-gravity devices.

3M’s corporate philosophy describes, “We have continued to accept mistakes as a normal part of running business. It’s important to add, however, that we expect to have originality in our mistakes. We can afford almost any mistake once.”

It used to be ‘black boards’ for several centuries, and people accepted. Yes, black boards ought to be black, how can they be white? If asked why is a black board black, someone would respond, “The chalk we use to write is white.” A reasonable man is content with this answer and stops there as things are in order. An unreasonable man challenges the logical answer, “Why should you write with only a white chalk? Why not with blue or black or red or green?” He then comes up with the brilliant idea of the white board which is suited for writing with any colour.

An optimist invented an aeroplane, while a pessimist (read: dissident) helped put a parachute there. Had there been no dissidents, there would not have been any safety devices, no security departments, no defence services, no emergency lights and no standby arrangements. The earth would still be at the center and the sun revolving around us. We would still have to travel thousands of kilometers to watch the cricket match being played in Australia or New Zealand, black boards would still be black and Neil Armstrong landing on the moon, a hoax.

To spur imagination and ignite discovery research, DuPont as a company, have defined a set of large, “unreachable” goals. Some of those goals do indeed seem unreachable: immortal polymers, zero-waste processes, elastic coatings as hard as diamonds, elastomers as strong as steel, materials that repair themselves, chemical plants that are run by a single chip, and coatings that change colour on demand. Nevertheless, they are entirely serious about these “stretch” programmes. They publicise them widely. The specifics are not important as the expression of such goals. Goals like these convey an attitude – DuPont is a company that believes its people are extraordinary achievers whose achievements know no limits.

People accept things as they are known at that time and our lives revolve around those accepted principles. About 400 years ago it was believed that Earth was at the centre and the sun and others planets revolved around us. It was true at that time and life was based on that belief, and everything went very well. Suddenly this belief was challenged, and the sun was put at the centre. Now everything is going smoothly with this new belief.

During the 1940s, Juran and others proposed that there will be some unknown factors in our manufacturing processes and they will affect the quality of products. By analysing the past data we can estimate them because of their random occurrence and we have to accept things within those limits. In other words, we have to accept and live with things, with varying qualities. It was true at that time and with this knowledge some of the major developments took place – transistors were made, televisions and computers became popular, Neil Armstrong landed on the moon and satellites were put in orbit and used for communication purposes. However during 1980s, Deming and others challenged these beliefs and asserted that everything is happening with our knowledge and by properly designing systems we can get the same quality without any variations.

When young children start colouring, they often go beyond the boundaries. It is believed that this is due to the poor muscle control or undeveloped hand movements. However, some psychological research shows that it is also due to their open outlook – not getting bogged down by boundaries. They ask, “Why should one be limited within the boundaries?” That child, who challenges even the real boundary, when he/she becomes an adult, creates an imaginary boundary of his/her own, even when there is none. Most of us take for granted that what the rules say, or what is written in the hand book is final. That is the imaginary boundary we have built and we continue to remain within that boundary.

What we are not aware of is that what the rules say or what is written in the hand book is true, but not final.

Final is yet to come and will, likely, never come. Challenging the status quo has been going on ever since man first walked the earth. However, the actual changes have been happening occasionally ‘just like that.’ Now it is time that we integrate it as a basic necessity of our existence and even, accelerate the process. So go ahead and colour outside the lines, but be certain that you are staying on the same page.

(Dr N Annamalai, Creativity & Innovation Consultant – Trainer, Chennai.
Email: annamalai_n@vsnl.com, Website: WWW.Creativitysphere.com)

Call it what you want: the zone, the flow, the magical gap, the illuminating silence….there is a place in space and time where we tend to think and feel most clearly. And in that place, aha’s, creative genius, strategies, and revelations tend to flow our way.

Notice when and where the Idea Fairy likes to visit you.

Notice how solutions enter your being.

Maybe it’s when you’re talking to a particular friend or associate (interaction). When you’re cruising down the highway or walking to work (movement). Or in the bathtub or washing the dishes (water). Some people’s Idea Fairies like to show up after a good meal or great sex, first thing in the morning, or just as they’re drifting off to sleep.

The Idea Fairy can be slightly unpredictable. She won’t always show up when you’re in the zone. But she really appreciates being invited.

Being a part of a team which was working with an NGO to put up an art show, I was organizing and coordinating the installation of panels. This show was being held in a leading 5 star hotel, where use of the hall was being allowed, free of charge. Hence, it was made available at the last possible moment as a paying guest’s function went on later than scheduled.

The artist was a famous modern artist and the patron of the show was a leading personality, well known for a volatile temper. So, one can imagine the stress levels of people putting up the panels who were desperate to avoid any mishap that could trigger a temper tantrum. Given the time constraints, instead of standing around, I decided to help by hanging some paintings. Just when I was through with two or three of the paintings, the patron walked in with the artist. Their flight had arrived early, confirming my conviction that Murphy’s law does in fact exist and affects my reality.

Thankfully most of the work was done and there was not much chance of any unexpected problems popping up. The artist was walking around admiring his work when suddenly he gave a yell and shouted, “Who has done this?” We all feared the worst and rushed to his side, expecting to see some tear or damage to the painting. After a few minutes of tense silence, during which we could discern nothing, someone ventured to ask what was was disturbing him.

Full of emotion, he very informed us of the tragedy…. someone had hung his painting upside down! That’s when I realized that the culprit was none other than yours truly. While I was trying to figure out how he knew that the painting was upside down, someone else voiced my question. The artist very scornfully pointed to a scrawl and said, “That’s my signature and it is always on the right hand bottom side of my art.”

I almost felt like Buddha as enlightenment dawned on me. I now knew how to discern if a painting were right side up. This meant, I would actually get to understand what the artist wanted to portray and not get a distorted, upside down perspective. Imagine that!

Once I got past my initial discomfiture, I actually began to look forward to helping organize an art show again. Unfortunately, I have never had an opportunity since then to use my newly minted education. I suspect that my ignorance was detected and has been telegraphed to all the artists, advising them to avoid my help.

My friend has had no formal education or basic training in art. She just happened to see some unused acrylic tubes on her neighbor’s trash and decided to try them on a canvas and boom – she created one amazing artwork. Her newly discovered talent came as a surprise not only to me, but especially to her. Who would have known for certain that Rebeka has this hidden talent waiting to be discovered after 57 long years.

Rebeka’s story reminds me of an article I read in a newspaper last month. There is a seven year old boy from the province of Pangasinan (northern Philippines) who regularly drives a backhoe! Yes a backhoe which is a piece of heavy equipment used in construction. Amazing isn’t it? But this was quite an early self discovery.

For me, I can say that I’m lucky. Because of this great willpower in me, I never had problems perfecting a new experience to my advantage. When I tried scribbling a short story ( I was nine at the time), I surprised my parents and teachers. When I did my first sketches (at the age of 11), it was really a discovery for me. When I tried song writing (at 15), it worked. When I tried paper clay art (at 26), it was marvelous. And when I tried swimming (at the age of 28, huh), I didn’t drown.

One can never be too old or too young for self-discovery or rediscovery.

Life is constant learning and human talents are limitless. One just needs some concentration, inspiration, encouragement and cheers to be able to realize that hidden talent waiting to be expressed.

So whether you’re five years old or in your twilight years, the opportunity and power to explore the undiscovered you is in your hands. Learn new things like playing a new sport; singing new kinds of songs; doing exotic dances; experimenting with cooking; trying some artwork (like Rebeka did); starting your own vegetable garden; embarking on some eco-friendly practices (for Mother Earth) or simply indulging in a totally new experience. But do it now, so you’ll have some time for improvement in order to become a master or expert (wow!).

Explore. Experience. Learning is always fun. And constant self-discovery is not only exciting and stimulating, it is really a never-ending experience.

A week later he returned, dropped by my home and gave me a wrist watch. I was pleased. After we shared some coffee and snacks, he got up to leave but not before asking me to pay him Rs 129.75. Yes Rs 129.75 !

I was taken aback but I paid him .

My neighbor once asked me to drop by at his office to give a talk on “Lateral Thinking” to his colleagues. I did so and enjoyed the tea and snacks that he offered me at the end of my one hour talk. I enjoyed the opportunity to talk on a subject that I am passionate about. A month later he again requested me to give a full day’s talk on the same subject but this time it was the senior management team that would my audience.
I again agreed and at the end of a grueling day my friend again offered me tea and snacks.

I came home furious.

In an experiment, psychologist Ariely divided a group of people into three subgroups. One sub-group was offered five dollars to participate in a task, another was offered fifty cents for identical tasks and the last was requested to do it for free. To the surprise of Ariely those who received 5 dollars completed 159 tasks, those who received 50 cents did 101 tasks, and those who did it free of charge performed 168 tasks !

What was happening in these cases ?

Let’s take the watch incident.
I was emotionally forced to request that my friend get me a watch. This, as far as I was concerned, was a ‘social’ transaction – I thought he was giving me a gift. Thus when he asked me to pay Rs.129.75, the exact amount it cost him, I realised that as far as he was concerned it was a ‘market’ transaction,

In the second instance I did the one hour talk as a social transaction. My friend also treated it as such, offering me tea and snacks. But the one day programme was to me a market transaction, after all I was a professional trainer and this was my only means of earning money. But he treated it as a social transaction .

In the experiment referred to, those who did it free of charge, (social norms) did it with more enthusiasm than those who were paid (market norms) .

Now look at another instance .

In our judiciary, there is a provision for free legal aid to be provided to these who cannot afford to hire a lawyer. I am told that some lawyers who are pressurized to take up such cases do so half-heartedly and in the process the poor litigant does not always get justice. Why? The lawyer – there are honorable exceptions – expect market norms to apply but the situation calls for social norms.

It seems that wherever the parties to a transaction are in actual or tacit agreement about the norms to be applied, there is no tension. But where the norms clash there is likelihood of a misunderstanding, to say the least.

There are instances where lawyers who are offered a small sum to take up a case show a reluctance to do so. But when they are asked to do so free of charge, out of compassion say, for a poor battered woman, they have done so enthusiastically. Apparently when money is offered, it brings market norms into play and if the money offered is small then the lawyer feels offended .

The case of gifts is interesting. Ariely writes that small gifts are treated by the recipient as part of social norms, hence the popularity of ‘honorarium’ in India . Psychologists say that even thinking about money can make a person apply market norms. This probably happened in the case of my traveling friend. Perhaps he was talking about money with his wife as he dressed up to visit me!

In business and even in government many people work for social and not necessarily market norms. The best motivators for many employees are often social norms.

Money cannot extract loyalty and creativity from an employee.

Doubt it ? Ask the poor parents of a soldier who died in the Kargil war.
When television journalists visited them at their hut somewhere in North India, the aged father, now with no able bodied person in the family told them, “I wish I had many more sons. I would have asked all of them to die for India.”

‘You   charge a fraction of this amount for your public  speaking courses.  Why are you charging so much for your lateral thinking workshop?” was  the common  refrain. I realized that a certain psychological phenomenon was  at work. I reacted creatively.  I lowered my fees for my public speaking  workshops and even accepted a small honorarium and sometimes did  it free. I then raised my fees for my lateral thinking  working again in keeping  with my expertise  in that subject and its possible beneficial impact on my trainees.

It worked.

What was happening here ? Here I was,  lowering my fees in one workshop and starting  to get  higher fees for my other  offering! 

Our mind is susceptible to anchoring .The initial impression or opinion or experience influences  later developments even  though  the latter  may  be  unconnected with what happened in the past. 

Let me give you another example. In a class on lateral thinking I asked my trainees to write down on paper the first 3 digits   of their mobile phone number.  Then I placed before them a bottle of perfume and asked them what according to them was the price of the bottle. I found that all of them had suggested a price that was not very different from the  3 digit  numbers they  had jotted down . The actual price was in fact in double digits !  The telephone numbers had obviously no  relationship to the perfume bottle price .

The minds of my trainees were  anchored by the 3 digits. 

To add to the fun when I showed them other perfume bottles  and found that   they were willing to pay prices not very different from their offer for the first bottle irrespective of the actual price of the product. The later bottles were of much better quality and much  higher prices. This reminded me of my predicament when I quoted much higher fees for my lateral thinking workshops.  

You may have noticed in negotiations with  unions –or even your domestic help—that they start with what you may feel is an absurd amount .The latter also  knows that the demand is very high.  Their  intention is to anchor your mind to the figure quoted . Your tendency is to negotiate a figure in relation to that figure on a plus minus basis usually the latter!

When a creative enterpreneur decided to start a chain of coffee shops in Chennai that would sell coffee at more than  double the price at the adjacent Udipi hotel he was considered stupid. After all , the reasoning went , the Udipi price   would serve as an anchor and who in that conservative cost conscious city would pay twice that amount for a cup of coffee. But the entrepreneur  had other ideas. He created a teenage friendly ambience ,with rock music , exotic coffee flavours, unmatched by Udipi hotels. What he  did was   to ‘shift’ the anchor. He succeeded [KWIKY’S] . Thereafter  his  prices became an anchor for other chains.

Have you considered that the first job you accepted influenced your entire career thereafter ? If you took up your first job  without much thinking –say you got carried away by the salary  –you may have found that you were stuck with a boring demotivating situation . You are now at your wit’s end . I had that experience.You find it almost  impossible to change careers and had to suffer in silence for the rest of your active life– bored and fed up.

How can one  avoid  anchored thinking?

Before you buy anything  expensive ask yourself if you have been anchored by anyone or by any advertisement.

Even  a  little thinking on this score will alert you and save you a loss. Examine all your  past decisions for their  long term effect . Resist the temptation to grab the first  thing that comes along. Wait and ponder.

Contemplate the anchors in your life.  Re- examine them and ask if they are relevant today and in the future .

This will open your mind to new avenues.  Many years ago I went to a cinema hall in Mumbai determined to see the film Poonam Ki Raat  a  1960’s  suspense thriller . My thoughts on what price to pay to the blackmarketer—I was aware that the tickets were being sold in black—were anchored by  my  allowance which I knew  was a fraction of the going rate at the blackmarket . I bargained smartly and got the ticket at my anchor rate. I was about to congratulate myself when the ticket seller played spoilsport.

‘Saab Kishore Sahu murderer  hai’ he said .It was like your car tyres had been intentionally deflated .

Here is the experiment.

Find out the odd one out in the following:
A cow, a stack of hay and a pig.

Most people point out that the pig is the odd one.

Westerners tend to point out the stack of hay instead. Why this difference?

Americans tend to be analytical and seek to fit things into slots and classifications. Thus the cow and the pig are animals while the hay is not. Hence the hay is the odd one out.

Indians as well as other Asians tend to see relationships and then find a relationship between the cow and the hay which it eats. Hence the pig is the odd one.

In another experiment it was found that when shown a picture westerners tend to focus on the item that is prominently seen while Asians tend to see much more of the background.

Thus it may be said with some exaggeration that Asians tend to see holistically.

However these findings need to be further researched. I have observed that Indians are not really thinking contextually especially in matters that involve some degree of emotion or where there is some ignorance or arrogance. In such instances I notice that many of us think that what I do not know may not be important. Alternately what I see is the whole situation. Also what is good for me ought to be good for others. 

Take for example the annual India International Film Awards. Notice that this seeks to acknowledge Indian films. This event has been held for some years now in various locales all over the world. Amitabh Bachchan is the brand ambassador.

I have written letters in the media pointing out one serious error in these awards. Not once in all these years has cinema other than Bollywood been even considered for recognition.

This is an instance of what I do not know (cinema other than Bollywood) is not worth knowing. This is arrogance and insensitivity. Surely we need to either call it the Bollywood International Film awards or acknowledge the other cinemas in India.

Contextual thinking is an art that needs to be deliberately cultivated. This calls for empathy that is somewhat rare.

I help trainees to try and see any event, phenomenon, behaviour in CONTEXT. This yields rich perspectives.

On one occasion a friend remarked that he found it silly and absurd that some communities in south India actually seem to celebrate with dance and song the death of a loved one. This he felt was contrary to the norm.

I challenged him to try and seek a paradigm shift in thinking – this after all was the hallmark of creative thinking.

Let us see how we can not only challenge our own thinking but can also try contextual thinking.

The caste groups that ‘celebrate’ death are among the poorest of the poor in India – scavengers and those who carry night soil for example. For such people death is in fact a deliverance from a horrifying life—hence a celebration is called for. This is contextual thinking.

Secondly who are we to lay down norms and call any other behaviour as contrary? I remember a scene in the film Madhumati in which the hero Dilip Kumar is shown walking past a tree in a forest when he notices Johnny Walker hanging upside down from a tree. When asked why he was upside down Johnny Walker remarks ‘As far as I am concerned you are upside down.’

Thus it is we who feel that one ‘ought’ to grieve when someone dies. The castes referred to may well reply as Johnny Walker did ‘How is it that you guys cry when someone dies?”

My friend Jean found it strange that Hindus wear white apparel when in mourning. She suggested that white dress was the ‘right’ colour for a wedding—this being the practice in her community of Catholics. Surely being normative has its hazards—you may put off people.

I believe the time has come for all of us to try and understand ‘others’, their thinking, lifestyles, their beliefs and their world view in the light of contextual thinking.

Perspectives can vary enormously. My friend Kavita narrates an interesting experience she had in Oakland in California. Kavita happened to befriend a girl – an Afghan – who was working in a small shop. They got talking.  At one stage Kavita asked her Afghan friend how she found life in Oakland. The reply almost shocked Kavita:

‘Oh, Oakland is a happening place—like Lahore and some cities in Afghanistan!’

Take AR Rehman’s  statement at the Oscar ceremony and at Chennai on his arrival. I reproduce here what he said at Chennai:

“It’s a starting point in my career and will indeed make a difference in fans’ approach towards good music.”

“My award’s message was said clearly in my acceptance speech. In my life, I always had a choice between love and hate and I chose love. That is my philosophy in life and in music.”

“I chose to live a life overriding differences between people, states, language and religion. My fans should do the same.”

As fans congregated outside his home in the south western suburb of Kodambakkam, Rahman was keen to ensure that neighbours were not disturbed in the dead of night.

It is clear that Rehman thinks deeply and has a message for all of us. His message carries authenticity because he is known to practice what he preaches. Thus his modesty is touching when he said “It’s a starting point in my career.”

This is all the more surprising in the context of Bollywood where giant size egos are the norm. His decision to choose love over hate is directed at all those who choose the opposite –these people are too well known to bear enumeration here. Rehman show us all the way to managing multiple identities – Tamilian, bollywood/tollywood star, muslim, Indian, international – all wrapped in one seamless fashion. His music can switch from Carnatic to Sufi to Lebanese to Salsa – all in one song! He himself can switch from talking about Allah to speaking about Iraiavan—the Tamil Hindu word for God. In the face of some consternation among orthodox muslims, Rehman sang –with added gusto I thought – Vande Matram.

Not many may have noticed that he has introduced maybe a hundred new young singers to the Tamil and Hindi screens – his faith in the youth of India is evident in his statement that he would like youngsters to take a different view of music after his winning the Oscar.

His request that his fans ought not to disturb his neighbours in the dead of night attracts attention to a long forgotten quality in India—consideration for others.

As for Resool Pookutty what he said has gone less noticed maybe because sound mixing is too esoteric for the layman. He said that he considered his Oscar award as God’s gift on the occasion of Shivratri. He made another profound statement – there was one ‘sound’ before which there was no sound and after which also there will be no sound. He was referring to the Hindu concept of the cosmic sound OM. The significance of these statements lies in what to me is a rare instance of a Hindu not being shy of his Hindu identity in public. In our perverted understanding of secularism it had become unfashionable for a Hindu to be so in public. I am an atheist by the way.

Both these  achievers together convey anther message to all of us especially the young—humble origins need  not prevent you from aspiring for and achieving great success.
How do these guys covey their message?
Dil se.

 I would then ask each trainees to tell me another three number series based on the rule he had identified. I would merely nod ‘yes’ or ‘no’ depending on whether the new series was consistent or not with the rule.

I found myself answering ‘yes’ almost all the time.

What I observed was that once trainees were confident with their answers they would formulate the rule.

I would surprise them finally by telling them that the rule I had in mind was ‘numbers in an ascending order!’

Rarely did any trainee discover my rule. Why? Because in order to discover my rule one of them had to offer a series in descending order that I would say ‘no’ to.

What comes out of this exercise is this—trainees had a rule in mind and gave me examples to confirm it. They almost never supplied a series that was inconsistent with their hypothesis. They tended to confirm the rules they had made up.

This is widely noticed in our daily lives—this tendency to seek confirmatory evidence and overlook disconfirming evidence.

Thus my friend Ashok asked me if I believed in astrology. I replied in the negative. He cited his experience two years go when his astrologer had predicted that he would be promoted in his company. It turned out that Ashok did in fact get an out of turn promotion.
“How can you explain this prediction when I was not even eligible for a promotion since I had not completed the required service in my current position?” he asked.
 
I told him to recall the other predictions that his astrologer had made at that time. He remained silent but his wife blurted out the truth—he had made seven other predictions none of which had come true.             

Ashok remembered the one prediction that had come true – by sheer chance – and forgotten or conveniently overlooked the many that did not come out true.

Our prejudices  against members of a particular community are almost always based on this tendency to seek confirmatory evidence. Our prejudiced mind tells us that people of that community behave or even dress in a particular way. When we meet someone from that community we unconsciously seek evidence that confirms our prejudiced thinking. Is it any wonder that we will end up noticing only that kind of behaviour?

I recall my experience at Newark Airport   when I first  landed in the U.S. I was received by a friend, a Tamilian. As we were waiting for some clearances we saw a man, his wife and a small child, with a lot of luggage. I noticed that the luggage included a wet grinder – the sort very popular in south Indian homes, to make idlis, dosas. etc.

Seeing the rather unpretentious clothes worn by the threesome we guessed that the man was running an Udidi hotel somewhere in the U.S. My friend decided to find out the truth. He casually walked up to the man, made polite conversation and at one  stage delicately asked “Are you running a hotel?”

“No, I am a post-doctoral researcher in nuclear physics,” he said.
 
We retreated to our base no doubt looking foolish. Little did we notice that the man was carrying under his arm the book ‘Proceedings of the International Conference on New Nuclear Physics with  Advanced Techniques.’

–

K.R. Ravi is South Asia’s first Dr.Edward De Bono certified public trainer in lateral thinking, and a pioneer in spreading lateral thinking in the Indian corporate sector. For more details, visit http://www.krravi.com or contact him at createravi@hotmail.com.

I recall conducting a workshop on lateral thinking for executives of an information technology company in India. The task I gave them was to come up with out-of-the-box ideas to improve the company’s success rate in bidding for large contracts. Not to my surprise the most innovative ideas came from the group that consisted of auditors and accountants, the back office guys!

A manufacturing company faced a serious issue about how to ensure that cigarette cartons that went out of the factory did not go out empty.  Such instances had been occurring and caused embarrassment. Even as engineers tried applying their technical wizardry, a humble worker came up with a low tech but effective solution, viz, place electric fans near the assembly line at the point of packing. The gush of air would simply blow away empty cartons.

The problems that were evident at Nandigram are proof of expertise gone wrong. Urban educated administrators, bureaucrats, economists, development planners ran into a critical problem. Farmers refused to buy the argument that they stood to benefit by industrialization. Urban experts argued that the farmers would be financially compensated, their sons would be given training and jobs – prosperity on a platter, they were told. But in the face of resistance that turned violent the Tata Nano car project had to be abandoned. The experts had failed to understand rural psychology. I can write much about this but that will have to await another blog. But I invite readers to comment below how they would have tackled the Nandigram situation.

In a case of a cobbler being smarter than a Holy man, an incident took place about two thousand years ago. A cobbler, an old extremely poor man, looked up to the heavens and prayed, “Oh God, in case you need a pair of slippers I will make one for you. In case your footwear pinches you I will repair it for you.”

Moses was watching all this. He, being an expert on Godly matters, was aghast at the cobbler’s    ridiculous prayer. He interrupted the cobbler and taught him the right way to pray. Moses then triumphantly turned to the heavens and asked if he had not done the right thing.

“No,” thundered God. “All that is required in prayer is sincerity. The cobbler had that in plenty and I was pleased. You have now taught him a ritual and spoilt his innocence. You have erred.”

NASA scientists faced a crisis. The spacecraft refused to take off. The whole world was watching this fiasco. The U.S. President was fuming. The scientists repaired to the cafeteria in an emergency session to try and get the craft to take off. An Indian worker at the cafeteria offered to solve the crisis. Shocked,  the unbelieving scientists demurred but nevertheless let him have his say.

“Just tilt the spacecraft sideways for a few minutes. Then try your usual procedures for a take-off.”

The idea worked. When the scientists asked our India friend to explain how his idea worked he said, “In India when a scooter does not start, we tilt it to one side. Presto the scooter invariably starts.”

Back pain affects millions of people all over the world. Often costly surgery is recommended which does not solve the problem. An experiment was carried out in the U.S. The MRI reports of healthy people with NO back problems was given to a panel of MRI experts, These experts advised emergency surgery for a majority of these patients.

The medical fraternity admits that before MRI technology was available the only cure for back pain was simple rest for a few weeks. That still remains the best remedy, expert MRI specialists notwithstanding.   

Experts have their limitations. It is called narrow perception.

They also have another problem. They are hi-tech guys but often problems need low tech or no- tech solutions.
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K.R. Ravi is South Asia’s first Dr.Edward De Bono certified public trainer in lateral thinking, and a pioneer in spreading lateral thinking in the Indian corporate sector. For more details, visit http://www.krravi.com or contact him at createravi@hotmail.com.

They had the answer.

They then set about diversifying into a new line – a move that made the company into a worldwide success and the CEO into a business legend. The move from memory chips to microprocessors made INTEL a world leader – a position it still occupies.

In my workshops in creativity I tease trainees and put them into a situation that takes them out of their conventional patterns of thinking. The results are almost always surprising and rewarding.

In the INTEL case the CEO put himself into the shoes of his imaginary and far more successful and enterprising successor.

In one session for executives of a company I asked trainees to write down the name of the ONE person whom they considered their role model. Then I asked them to take up ONE issue of critical importance to their company. Each trainee had to imagine that their role model had taken over as the CEO. They had to write down the answer to the question “What would the new CEO – the role model – do to make my company a market leader?”

I assisted them to make this exercise more meaningful by asking them to be specific about their role model. Thus when someone said that Amitabh Bachchan was his role model, I asked him which film role of the actor he liked most. He replied that the Amitabh of ‘Deewaar’ was his role model. I told him to imagine the Amitabh of ‘Deewaar’ taking over as his CEO. What would he do different?
It was really surprising the number of ideas that came up in the class for the same problem.

The only difference was that each participant had a different role model. What was striking was not just the number of ideas but the different directions in which the minds of the trainees went. This led to a rich repertoire of ideas most of them out of the box.

In another instance I was told that the company had almost finalized a major diversification and this caused much excitement but also many fears. Some trainees wondered if the plan would in fact add to the crisis rather than help matters. I devised an exercise – called pre-mortem – in which the trainees were asked to imagine that three years down the line the diversification plan had in fact led to a disaster and the company was floundering. Fast forward to that day three years down and try to write down the reasons why the plans did not work. In less than half an hour a list of over 3 dozen ‘reasons’ for the disaster had emerged. This list of ‘reasons’ was  critical in  strengthening the plans, in anticipating  possible pitfalls and in keeping plan ‘B’ ready.

At an individual level I provoke executives attending to think creatively by telling them to picture in their mind the following scenario.

You have been given the pink slip for poor performance. Two years later you get some reliable inside information on some remarkable changes and innovations that your successor introduced sitting in the same chair that you once occupied.

Ask yourself – what did he do that you never did?

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K.R. Ravi is South Asia’s first Dr.Edward De Bono certified public trainer in lateral thinking, and a pioneer in spreading lateral thinking in the Indian corporate sector. For more details, visit http://www.krravi.com or contact him at createravi@hotmail.com.

This happens almost daily on many of our arterial roads. The traffic authorities rope in a consultant, a problem analyst, who proceeds to study the “problem” from all angles. He then comes up with recommendations along these lines. Pedestrians to be fined for crossing the road, a fine on drivers who cross lanes, posting of policemen at various points in the road etc. Does this solve the problem? No way. The driver, for example, can hardly be blamed for swiftly changing lanes – after all his is only a reflex reaction to the pedestrians crossing the road. Besides there could be even stray animals, or dug up roads that could cause a driver to take evasive action.

It is in such situations that we need what is called a “solutions focus” which does not dwell on analyzing the problem but proceeds to solution finding through other means. In this case the creative approach would be to observe the periods when there is no traffic jam. This ‘no-problem’ situation happens when drivers have enough time and space to react to other road users, by braking or maneuvering without forcing the vehicle behind to take evasive action and precipitating a jam. This happens when the roads are quiet or when traffic is moving slower and drivers have more time to react. The solution to the problem is to bring in lower speed limits at busy times which paradoxically allows more traffic along the road than faster speed limits!

Traditionally executives are trained to solve problems by analyzing the problem – identifying the root cause and then proceeding to eliminate the root cause – much like the way a doctor diagnosis the disease of a patient. This approach – called the reductionist approach – is necessary and works quite well in many matters. Thus if a computer is down it makes sense to ascertain why it is not working and having identified the source of the problem we could then repair or replace a part for example and thus solve the problem.

However it does not quite work efficiently when we deal with systems, especially involving human beings.

If we are to approach a problem involving people, typically such an analytical approach to problem solving would mean that we would talk to the people and

• Get them to tell us more about the problem
• Say what they feel is causing it
• Identify who is responsible
• Initiate steps to solve the problem

The analysis along these lines takes the form of an inquisition, a commission of enquiry and ends up in blame fixing – counterproductive at the best of times.

The tacit assumption about such an approach is that if we knew more about the problem we would be better placed to fix it. My suggestion is exactly the opposite – if we know more about where it is going wrong we shall know more about what is going wrong, period. What is critical is to know more about what is going right. The more you talk about problems the more difficult the issue becomes, leading to the well known phenomenon of “analysis paralysis”. A new and creative approach to problem solution is to adopt a solutions focus rather than a problem focus.

I was approached by a bank manager to help him solve the problem of customers closing their accounts in his branch. He showed me a questionnaire based study across one hundred people who had closed their accounts and sought my advice on how to initiate action to stop the flight of business. I told him that the uncreative mind can spot wrong answers but it takes a creative mind to spot the wrong questions. I talked about the futility of studying the problem and advised him to conduct a study on what was it that the existing customers found satisfying in the branch that made them continue banking with him despite several options available. This study revealed several strengths in the branch. Building on these strengths was the strategy I recommended and to the amazement of the bank, business actually grew significantly! The existing customers marketed the bank on behalf of the branch staff! The moral of the story – identify what works and do more of it.

A school headmaster approached me with a problem – he tried his best but failed to get parents and teachers together to from an association. I studied the issue and found that the ‘problem’ was the headmaster himself. Parents perceived him to be a person who communicated very well with children but could not do so with adults. Clearly the communications skills of the headmaster were the ‘problem’, the ‘underlying cause’, and the solution lay in training him in that skill. I adopted the ‘solutions focus’ approach and sidestepped the problem. I advised the PT master to informally involve the parents in the conduct of the annual sports meet. The music teacher was roped in to involve parents in holding a cultural event. In two months a parent-teacher association came innocuously into existence! The moral of the story – sidestep the search for causes of problems and head straight to the solution.

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K.R. Ravi is South Asia’s first Dr.Edward De Bono certified public trainer in lateral thinking, and a pioneer in spreading lateral thinking in the Indian corporate sector. For more details, visit http://www.krravi.com or contact him at createravi@hotmail.com.

Assemble three dozen people of which roughly half are women. Tell them that you are trying to do a test to confirm research findings that women fare poorly in a test of their math skills when compared to men.

Try another exercise. Assemble another class in which about half are Asians and the rest are white Americans. Tell the class that you are trying to test whether research findings are true that say that Asians are better at math skills than white Americans.

You may find evidence that confirms what is now being extensively documented in social science research in the U.S.—that of ‘stereotype threat’. This says that when people are threatened by negative stereotypes they think apply to them they can be subtly biased to live out that stereotype.

Thus in these two instances you may find that women and whites fare less well than the others in the class.

Research shows that when race, gender etc. are not made salient the stereotype threats can be reduced.

A related phenomenon is that of priming. When you remind a person that as a Sikh he is known to be a fighter (say before a fight with a bully) you will find that he may put up an unexpectedly good fight.

When I remind my trainees that everyone is born creative—which is a fact—they display more creativity in my workshop. I have ‘primed’ them to believe in themselves. This is not the same as motivation. It is a case of putting a person in a certain frame of mind.

‘Priming’ need not be even overtly suggested. Sometimes the environment or context creates the priming effect. Thus you might have noticed the way your frame of  mind and body language change the minute you enter a place of worship.

When you understand the concepts of stereotype threats and priming you can see many new perceptions emerging. That to my mind is a significant play of creative thinking.

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K.R. Ravi is South Asia’s first Dr.Edward De Bono certified public trainer in lateral thinking, and a pioneer in spreading lateral thinking in the Indian corporate sector. For more details, visit http://www.krravi.com or contact him at createravi@hotmail.com.

Young executives can draw much insight into the art of innovative thinking from this Thoreau wisdom.

In World War II, British and US air forces faced a rising number of their planes being either destroyed or having to hastily abandon their missions in the face of enemy fire, with the returning planes badly damaged. A group of scientists was entrusted with the task of advising where to put armor and strengthen the planes. This group closely examined the damaged planes and was about to recommend a ‘solution’ when a young statistician Abraham Wald thought about the planes that did not return!

Wald put a mark on every bullet hole in the planes that returned from battle. He found that two major sections of the fuselage – one between the wings and the other between the tails – had fewer bullet holes. He decided to put the armor in these places, where he saw fewer not more holes. Why? The planes he analyzed had not been shot down! So it was the holes he was not seeing in the planes that were not returning that needed extra protection – a new way to look at old things.

De ja vu, is the feeling that you have had an experience before even though it is brand new. Vu ja de a term coined by author Robert Sutton, is what happens when you feel and act as if an experience or an object is brand new even if you have had it or seen it hundreds of times. In situations where innovative thinking is required it pays to have a vu ja de attitude. It helps us to see the same old things in a new way as the example of Wald shows.

Some people are born with this mentality but all of us can cultivate it. Vu ja de can be a cultural characteristic of companies and groups too. Ettore Sottass is a world renowned Italian designer. Even at 80 he retains the vu ja de approach. His firm takes a radical approach to designing anything at all—from Olivetti typewriters to telephone directories, to a resort in China. For example he and his team designed the commercially successful ‘Valentine’ typewriter in 1969 that was the colour of bright red lipstick. His approach was that while most designs are meant to be bland, rational, functional and not noticeable, the things we use should provoke strong feelings.

Speed is the modern mantra—fast food, quick fixes, fast life, rapid action are everyday terminology. But there is a creative genius who believes that when you look at things more slowly than everyone else does, the same old things look different to you and you can think about them in different ways. Joey Reiman rejects the assumption that faster is better. He tells his clients – Coca-Cola, for example – that he would generate creative ideas for them at the speed of molasses! He openly advertises that his is the slowest company anyone could meet. He bases this philosophy on his understanding that most advertising firms are in a rush to be ‘creative’ and deliver results to multiple clients and this, according to him, stifles creativity. Reiman and his team ever so slowly developed a most unusual marketing positioning for their client, Coty Inc, a top fragrance giant. Reiman created a unique positioning of a ‘ghost myst’ the first perfume to embrace values and spirituality – inner beauty rather than physical beauty. ‘Ghost myst’ became the best selling perfume in 1995 and in fact launched a ‘spirituality in beauty’ movement that many other companies copied. Reiman’s competitive advantage is that his firm is a tortoise in a world filled with speedy hares.

Vu ja de also involves:

•    Shifting our opinions and perceptions in any which way – is it likely that the poor have more children because they are poor?

•    Shifting our focus from objects or patterns that are in the foreground to those in the background – can terrorism be better tackled by looking into the problems of the families of the terrorists?

•    Thinking of things that are usually assumed to be negative as positive and vice versa – is it not more pertinent to consider our mass of poor people as a major business opportunity?

•    Reversing assumptions about cause and effect or what matters most versus least – is slack consumer demand fuelled by redundancies or are redundancies fuelled by slack demand or both fuelled by other forces?

In creativity ignorance is bliss, especially in the early stages of the ideation process. Involving ignorant people in an exercise ensures that they are not conditioned by the baggage of ‘knowledge’ and are able to see the same old      things in new ways. A company would do well to hire novices to come up with creative ideas for problems The most famous case of a novice being brought in and going on to become an internationally renowned expert is that of Jane Goodall . Anthropologist Louis Leakey hired Goodall to do two years of intense observations of apes in Africa. Goodall hesitated because she had no scientific training but Leakey insisted that not only was a university degree not necessary but it had serious drawbacks! Goodall realised that he wanted someone with a mind uncluttered and unbiased by theory who would take up the study for no other reason than a real desire for knowledge. The rest is history as Goodall shocked and awed the world with her pathbreaking revelations of the apes and their behaviour that forever changed the way we view these animals. The other ways of promoting vu ja de is to hire people who have formal training in some area but are not jaded by the historical and arbitrary and outdated customs in the
industry. Dyson Appliances of UK, the makers of the largest selling vacuum cleaners, is a case in point. CEO Dyson believes that his company’s success could be attributed to hiring fresh graduates – unsullied by ‘experience’.

When Daniel Ng an American trained engineer opened Hongkong’s first McDonald’s in 1975, his local food industry competitors dismissed the venture as a non-starter, “Selling hamburgers to the Cantonese? You must be joking!” Ng credits his boldness to the fact that he did not have an MBA and had never taken a business course – quoted by James Watson, Professor of Chinese Studies, reporting that McDonald now has 158 thriving restaurants in Hongkong!

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K.R. Ravi is South Asia’s first Dr.Edward De Bono certified public trainer in lateral thinking, and a pioneer in spreading lateral thinking in the Indian corporate sector. For more details, visit http://www.krravi.com or contact him at createravi@hotmail.com.

What’s with this small, less, stuff? I just don’t get it! Why do people throng/yearn to be part of and take pride in being in a member of a small team, institute, event, company, community or even a country? Is there a problem in associating ourselves with BIG and abundant?

Curious George in me kicked in and I landed on this interesting concept… “Small is beautiful” a movement founded by Leopold Kohr a great economist. He is best known for his work The Breakdown of Nations which in today’s times makes sense more than ever! I quote from the book:

“There seems to be only one cause behind all forms of social misery: bigness. Oversimplified as this may seem, we shall find the idea more easily acceptable if we consider that bigness, or oversize, is really much more than just a social problem. It appears to be the one and only problem permeating all creation. Whenever something is wrong, something is too big. And if the body of a people becomes diseased with the fever of aggression, brutality, collectivism, or massive idiocy, it is not because it has fallen victim to bad leadership or mental derangement. It is because human beings, so charming as individuals or in small aggregations have been welded onto over concentrated social units.”

The section of the book quoted above provided answers to all my questions on a platter.

Everything in this world started small and had a sense of responsibility and sincerity. This brought exclusivity and charm to it. Everybody respected, admired and celebrated all small things until they grew big. The individual responsibility and sincerity of people of the small entity emanated and shone more than the collective negativity of the entity. But once the entity grew big, its demand to consume eventually consumed itself.

Look at the US, its demand to consume energy to keep up the growth has eventually consumed itself. Satyam was consumed by the power and money it was required to create it in the first place. The same applies to artisans; initially they consume less intellectual resources to create a few masterpieces because it is only needed to supplement their genius. But when they start off big on a journey of mass production, they start consuming more intellectual resources that the line between inspiration and plagiarism becomes a blur.

Well, then, does it mean that we cannot produce quality output in large quantities? What is the God in small things that makes them beautiful? How to grow big quantitatively as well and still be as admired as when we were small?

According to me the God which makes small things beautiful is responsibility and sincerity! In the pursuit of growth we should not let responsibility and sincerity to be frittered away, nor overlook the ethics and obligations. Nor consume more than we contribute. Adopt a “responsible growth” path. A growth which is accountable to the environment we live in, a growth which is reasonable and not meteoric and surreal.

These growth stories will not be publicized because they might not be sensational to the media. There might not have been a miracle. It would have been a hard and arduous journey, but we should identify such growth stories in all walks of life, acknowledge, admire and benchmark them for future.

That way we will be able to make everything big – beautiful, exclusive and charming as it should be!

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Sundararaman Viswanathan is engineer by qualification, manager by profession, aspiring writer and a wannabe entrepreneur at heart. He currently works as a Transition Manager, with vast experience in managing the support of mission critical IT systems.

A morning spent teasing out the best strategy…two hours back ‘n forthing on what to name the campaign… and, just as you’re clearing away the coffee cups and packing up your sticky notes, someone says, “You know…what if we just called it Whazam and went direct to whozit?” Silence. Everyone looks at each other and someone exclaims, “That’s it!”

Those innermost feelings that needed to be spoken, the winning formula – they often slip onto stage as the curtain is getting ready to drop, because we’ve stopped performing and relax into the creative high. It’s usually at the end of meeting when people start to joke and goof off. We save comfort and play for last.

Creative quickies are the way to go: 15-minute jam sessons

If the good stuff so often surfaces at the end, then the trick is to end it sooner. Quit while you’re ahead. Short idea intervals work wonders. “Let’s jam on the story line for 15 minutes.” And stick to it. Then you can brainstorm on fund raising for 15 minutes. The pressure gets the energy rising. The bursts of creative focus will start to feed each other. It’ll all weave into a big picture.

Really good ideas often come when

We get distracted. Consider distraction fodder for brainstorming. So go ahead, let your mind wander in meetings and tie it back to the issue at hand. Thinking about what’s for dinner may trigger a great marketing strategy.

Our defenses are down: when you feel like there’s nothing to lose and that you won’t be criticized.
We’ve exhausted the possibilities and give up. “Give up” is the operative term here. When we stop looking so hard, the view expands – and you can see what’s sparkling just within your reach.

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Danielle LaPorte founded www.whitehottruth.com, is lead author of the bestseller, Style Statement: Live By Your Own Design, and co-founder of www.carrieanddanielle.com. A former think tank exec, she helps entrepreneurs rock their careers with her signature Fire Starter Sessions. You can reach her at d@daniellelaporte.com.

Soon after we met, my man and I were getting ready for a party. “I’m not good at parties,” I warned him. “What?! You’re like the public-speaking power chicklet.” “Noooo. I’m the girl in the kitchen who talks to one person all night and leaves without saying goodbye.” Give me a stage and I will rock the house. Give me a house party and you’ll barely know I’m there.
Authenticity is not an either/or equation. Your soul is an all-inclusive package – frills, foibles, and contradictions. It’s your opposing parts that leverage your magnificence into full force.

My extroverted introversion used to cause me great grief. Am I a sincere fake? The Boo Radley freak who doesn’t talk to neighbours? Surely, if I were more genuine and loving I’d be more outgoing. Sigh. None of it’s true. All of it’s true. I’m an outgoing Lone Ranger, a white Canuck who feels like a Nubian Queen on the inside, a fiercely loyal opportunist.

How to spot your contradictions:

•    When has someone said, “That really surprises me about you,” “I can’t believe you did that”?
•    Where do you feel the pull to compromise vs. rebel?
•    Guilt can be a primo indicator for inner truth tugs. What are your guilty pleasures or indulgences?
•    What do you save for special occasions (from your dancin’ shoes to your verbal affection)?
•    What would going “wild” look like for you?
•    What do you deny yourself?

Love your assorted ways

Now, aren’t you a curious critter? The Buddhist who knows every Metallica song by heart. The stay-at-home mom who wants to be a pole dancer. The Pro-Choice devout Catholic.
Don’t resign yourself to your idiosyncrasies. “Accepting” yourself is a passively lame option for full-tilt self love. Exalt your contradictions, celebrate them, go so far as to use them to your divine advantage.

Congratulations! You are large. You contain multitudes.

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Danielle LaPorte founded www.whitehottruth.com, is lead author of the bestseller, Style Statement: Live By Your Own Design, and co-founder of www.carrieanddanielle.com. A former think tank exec, she helps entrepreneurs rock their careers with her signature Fire Starter Sessions. You can reach her at d@daniellelaporte.com.

People embrace change easily, when it comes to their desk for execution. But the same persons, when in a discussion, resist or try to block any such move even when they agree that the change being proposed is the right thing to do.

Why? What do we call this trait in a human being?

Is it just that they accept the change because there is no alternative? Or are they convinced that the change is good?

If it is the former, we can understand why they resist the change in the first place. How do we make them think positively that the change is being proposed for becoming efficient? Then will they get convinced that the change is good, and really participate and contribute?

I always walk into a room, and when I propose a change, I openly tell them that I am going to take an extreme position in this, and everyone else should try to literally drag me from that extreme position to a workable solution. And 80% of the time, I have won the extreme position after pretending to go to the middle of the road. What does it tell us? People are not ready for extreme changes, when they first hear them, but after healthy discussion and exchange of ideas, we can convince them.

Tough days call for tough choices, doing more with less, and if the change is the tough choice, then it takes priority and leadership to drive that change through.