Category Archives: Creativity

Reading for Pleasure

So you’re sitting there, reading this, wondering how you got here. You may be wondering whether or not you can find this useful, or you may be wondering if you will find this interesting. I know the feeling. You start to do this, and wonder how much you are going to get out of it. Sometimes you find benefit, sometimes you don’t. It can be a metaphor for life, if you think about it. You wonder exactly what it is you’re doing, and if you can really find this useful. Many others that regularly read this blog, like you, have been able to find really cool stuff here. Like book reviews.

I have a friend who works at a bookstore. He doesn’t really make that much money. In fact it makes barely above minimum wage. Despite the less than stellar pay, he is able to find it really interesting. He just loves to read. He finds it fascinating looking through all the books, arranging them on the shelves, picking up the ones people leave on the table when they are sitting around drinking coffee. (I love doing that.) He says just picking up the books and reading the backs as he is returning them to the shelves is the second best part of the job. He has this cart that he wheels around, and he takes his time, so he can read this and that. And he finds some really fascinating things that he didn’t even know existed. Cookbooks, exercise books, photography books. It’s absolutely incredible the amount of information you can find in a book store. And like I said, that’s not even the best part.

I actually met him a few weeks ago after he finished working. We met in the cafe section, and there happened to be a Toastmasters group that was meeting. And this guy gave a speech about goals. He was talking about setting goals, and how you need to make sure you know what is really important when choosing the things that you want to make come true in life. He said that it starts by thinking of something, now, that you want to achieve in life. Something really nice that you want to achieve. And when you think of that, you can ask yourself, what’s important about that? What is really important about having that thing that you want to achieve? And when you really start to imagine what is important about that, you can really begin to imagine how nice it will be when achieve that. And as you read this, you  might be able to do that yourself. I don’t know if you are able think of that now while you read this, but you can really find value in this, because doing this can help you achieve many things in life.

So after the guy finished his speech, my friend told me the absolute best part of working at a bookstore. He gets to talk to all kinds of different people each day. Especially when they come in to his shop, but they aren’t sure exactly what they want. He can help them make a decision, find something that they can really enjoy. And then he takes them and guides them to where the book is, and shows them how to choose from many options, so they can be sure that this is what they really want, and they can be really happy that they’ve chosen this. And since my friend is single, and half of the customers are females, well, you get the idea.

Which is what many people find when they read this blog on a regular basis. Because I like to write on so many different subjects, you can find many things here to read and enjoy. And reading things that you can enjoy is one of the greatest pleasures in life.

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The Expression of Desire at the Third Stage

I was taking the train downtown this evening to pick up a pair of shoes I’d ordered. I found a pair last week that I’d really liked, but they didn’t have my particular size, so they had to call another store to get the right size. Tonight was the first chance I’d had since then to go back and pick them up. On the way there, I saw an acquaintance that I talk to sometimes.

He was telling me about this book that he was reading, it sounded like a personal development book of some sort, because the guy in the book was talking about different ways to look at life. He likes to read those kind of books. Come to think of it, I wish I would have written down the title, although if I see it again I’ll probably remember it. You know how that goes. You notice something, and you tell yourself that you really like this, and you want to see it again, but for some reason you don’t take the time to write it so that you can later remember it.

I can’t remember how many times I’ve really wanted to look at this or that on the internet, based on what I hear or read, but by the time I get home, I can’t remember what it was. Perhaps I should carry around one of those small note pads to write myself messages. I kind of like getting messages from myself.

Anyways, the guy was saying that humans go through three stages in life. Well, not exactly. He was saying that there are three stages that are possible for us to go through, but most of us only go through two, maybe two and a half. Some of us can glimpse the third stage. And one of the great things about being able to glimpse the third stage, even once, is that because you can see what’s up ahead, you will never fall back to your old ways.

The first stage is infancy. We have desires, and we express them the only way we know how. We cry and scream, and if that doesn’t work, then we scream and cry. It works ok if we get picked up right away, but if there is a time lapse, we start to wonder what the heck is going on. And that creates confusion, and since the mind hates confusion, it comes up with a reason why our expression of desire isn’t being immediately met.  So we start to develop anxiety about expressing our desires, because sometimes they get fulfilled, and sometimes they don’t. Since we can’t make any words, or can’t move around much, we don’t have much options except to lie there passively and hope.

The second stage of life is when we develop motor and vocal skills. We can move around, talk, walk, form sentences. When we have a desire at this stage, we can articulate it in a number of ways. We can move around and ask other people. We can even ask in different languages if we want. The problem with this stage is that we still carry that anxiety from long ago, when the mere expression of desire caused anxiety. Before, we really had no control over when or even if the desire would be fulfilled. Scientists have done plenty of experiments that show uncertainty is one of the greatest sources of anxiety, adversely affecting both mental and physical health. So for most of us, the mere expression of desire is linked with anxiety deep within our subconscious. It’s nobody’s fault, it’s just the way our brains grow.  Unfortunately, many people stay stuck in this level their whole lives. The best strategy for some people is to blame some aspect of the outside world for not getting the good stuff in life.

The third stage of life is the best part. This is when we realize that the expression of desire is but the starting point to a life full of abundance, happiness, wealth, fantastic relationships, and every other cool thing you can imagine. The trick is to begin to notice on a deep level that if our desires aren’t fulfilled, it means nothing about us personally, only that we have about a million other ways to keep expressing your desire until it gets fulfilled.  Fully adult, you can realize that simply because you can walk and talk, and read and write, you really do have the power to create whatever life you want. And creating the life you want is merely a matter of tapping into your natural genius creativity, and plugging away until you eventually make all your dreams come true.

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Follow Your Brains Advice to New Realities

If you’ve ever wondered about something that might have caused anxiety concerning an event that may or may not happen, I recently found out something that might help. For example, let’s say you have a meeting with your boss that afternoon. Something important, like your annual review, or you are going to ask for a raise or something else that you’d deem something a little bit less than a walk in the park.

If you are like most normal people, you might start to imagine all kinds of things that will happen. And I’m sure if you take the time to think back, now, about those times before when you used to imagine things that might come to pass, you might realize that they never did. Like if you had a big golf game or something with your boss’s boss, you might have imagined accidental hooking the ball into his head or something. Ok, maybe not that bad, but you get the idea.

And I’m pretty sure that you’ve heard the old saying “Most of the bad stuff that you imagine never happens.” Well, even if you understand that basic principle about the human mind, it doesn’t really help when you are laying in bed and are unable to sleep due the horrific images your brain keeps delivering to you against your consent.

But I was listening to this internet radio show the other day, and there were these two guys talking about the human mind and how it works. Unfortunately I didn’t remember which internet radio station I was listening to, as I was aimlessly surfing like I sometimes do.  Like when you are surfing around the web and find this really cool blog, and you think, wow you really need to read this everyday, but then you can’t remember where it is, so you can’t come back and read it everyday like you’d like to.

So anyway this guy was saying that when people imagine all those horrible things that might happen in the future, it’s really an evolutionary manifestation of a brain early warning system. It’s thinking about all the possible things that might happen, and just kind of giving you a heads up, so you can prepare for the worst. Then he said that if you pay attention to the messages that your brain is giving you, you can kind of imagine how you’d handle whatever situation that you were afraid might come up. As soon as you imagine handling it from a few different angles, it satisfies the brains warning system, and your brain will settle down.

And the other guy was commenting that is evidence of the other old saying: “If you can imagine it, you can create it.” Because why in the world would your brain imagine up something that wasn’t possible to come true? And that simply means, that you can use your anxiety as a starting point to create whatever future reality that you’d like. Just use your imagination to take care of whatever your brain is warning you about, and then just imagine the best possible outcome by preventing it from happening by doing the opposite.

For example, if you imagine your boss yelling at you for being late on a project or something, simply come up some really good reasons why the project is late, and then come up with a few benefits for the project being late, and then hit your boss with these benefits before he gets a chance to even remember that it’s late in the first place. He’ll not only see you as being proactive, which is highly valued in today’s economy, but he’ll think of you as somebody that he can depend on when things get rough.

And it all starts with  having a solid respect for the images that your brain delivers to you, all the time. Once you can tap BOTH the positive and the negative images, which you will start to realize aren’t so negative after all when you use this technique, your world will really open up.

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Pay Attention to Expanding Neural Networks

I was chatting with a friend of mine from overseas last night on Skype. It’s been a while and we were catching up on old stuff, like you do when you haven’t done that in a while, because it’s a natural thing, right? And she was telling me about this new guy that she’s dating. I think she mentioned in passing that he was English, although I can’t be sure. I say in passing, but I’m I don’t know if that’s the correct grammatical description of what happened. She mentioned something that sort of led me to believe that he was English, although she didn’t say what specifically. Like his uncle who lives next door owns a fish and chips shop that has been in the family for several generations, or something else random like that. 

It’s weird when that happens. You’ll be talking with somebody, and you’ll make all kinds of inferences about what was said, but you don’t really don’t pay attention to the underlying intention of the conversation. Like somebody will mention their boyfriend, and then they’ll switch topics completely, and you think they are still talking about their boyfriend, but they’ve switched referential indexes completely so you don’t know exactly who they are talking about.

Like once my other friend was explaining to me the grammatical structure of the Laotian language. They generally don’t use grammatical modifiers, like past tense or familial references. Everything is modified by context. If they start talking about something that happened last Tuesday, everything in that conversation from then out is referenced from Tuesday unless otherwise indicated. I suppose in different languages you develop the ability to pay attention to different levels of intention.

Which I guess it’s a good reason to learn several things, like languages, because they can really help you to develop a rich outlook on life. It’s been proven that an easy way to really have the ability to see things from a different perspective is to learn another language. And not only just words, but to actually think that way. They’ve shown it actually creates new neural pathways that are used differently from other ones. Some of the smartest people in the world can speak several languages. And one tends to wonder, do they speak several languages because they are smart? Or do you become smarter than you already are because you can speak several languages?

Well, at any rate, I hope my friend can get along well with her new boyfriend, regardless of how the fish and chip restaurant pans out.

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Once I Caught One This Big!

I was talking with my friend this morning, and he was telling me about his golf game. He said that he needs a new full set of woods, and perhaps even a new set of irons. I asked him how long he’s had his current set of golf clubs, and he said only about six months. I asked him if his game had improved enough to warrant buying a new set, and he said it didn’t really matter, that his game was ready.  I didn’t know what that meant, so I asked him. He said it had something to do with being on the cusp, or the apex or something else that sounded like an excuse to buy a new set of clubs. Sometimes I think he likes to argue just for the sake of arguing.

Like this other friend of mine that I go fishing with sometimes. He has a gigantic tackle box with about eighteen million different lures. Once when the fish weren’t biting, he gave me the entire history and theory behind each type of lure. All I I know is I usually lose two lures for every fish that I catch. He was telling me that he has this system. He can tell what kind of fish are in the area, and he uses a specific type of lure and other set up (I’m not sure of the proper fishing lingo,) based on the type of fish and their current temperament. I, on the other hand, usually grab the first lure I see, which naturally is the closest. He kept telling that I didn’t know what I was doing. And although I agreed, I suggested a wager to see who would catch more fish.

I am of the philosophy that you can take whatever you have, throw it out there, and then let whatever fish that happen to like that kind of lure come and get it.  Maybe I’m lazy, but I don’t see any reason to change whatever you are doing to try and match the environment you’re in. I think it’s easier just to throw out what you got, and see how much you can attract. 

It’s like an old friend of mine that used to be in door to door sales. He swore by using the exact same sales pitch to every single person that opened the door. Others in his company would try to vary their pitch based on the gender, age, ethnicity, color shirt (I kid you not,) and all kinds of other stuff.  He said it was a lot easier to memorize only one pitch, and then just throw the same pitch time after time. He was able to be more successful than anybody else for quite a while.

So we each fished for two hours with our respective lure methods. And we each caught the same amount of fish. While that sounds like a tie, when my friend was fished with his method, he was studying the lures and prepping his next strategy. When I fished using my method, I read Moby Dick.

And I convinced my friend to only allow himself a new set of clubs after he’d managed to consistently improve his score to lower than a hundred.

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I’d Like to Change My Order

I was having dinner with a friend the other night. I was in a pretty good mood (as I usually am,) but he seemed to be out of sorts. I could tell because he usually orders a mixed cocktail (he has a really strange system based on the day of the week and the general weather pattern to choose his drink. Either that or he’s been pulling my leg all this time,) but that night, he ordered a beer. Not just any beer, well actually, yea, he just told the waitress “whatever’s on tap is ok.”

I asked him what was wrong. He said that he was having second thoughts about going forward with his business that he’s been planning on starting. “What changed?” I asked.

He said that he’d been talking with another guy that his advisor had put him in touch with, that had successfully started a business in the same general line of work. He said that he had worked 7 days a week, about 12 hours a day for the first two years. He had a supportive family, and finally after two years, his business was successful enough that he could hire other people to manage it for him.

“So what’s the problem?” I asked. He said he wasn’t really prepared to put in 12  hours a day for a year before he saw a profit. He seemed to think that all businesses need that level of commitment to get off the ground and become profitable.

I told him about this book I read (I forgot the title) about a kind of study they did on successful entrepreneurs. Now that I think of it, I think it might have been a tape program, and I’m pretty sure I got it from Nightingale Conant. If you’ve never had a look, I recommend it. They got some good stuff there. If you find something you like, you might check ebay first, because lots of times people buy stuff, listen and get great benefit, and then sell it at a pretty cheap price.

So what this program said was that there was a huge range of variables that went into successful business creation. Some people were successful right from the start, some had to work at it over several years, others had all kinds of loans and help from family. It really didn’t matter. The term ‘work’ is really a relative concept. What might seem like ‘work’ to some, may be totally enjoyable to somebody else. Some people might consider putting two weeks of effort to get a ton of money a huge burden, but others might consider three or four years total enjoyment, even if you don’t make a lot. So long as you enjoy what you do.

I asked my friend if he enjoyed doing what he thought he was getting himself into. He thought about, an decided that he really did enjoy it. Then I asked him if he would enjoy doing what the other guy did for two years, 12 hours a day for, and he said no way. Then he confessed that the other guy said the only reason he quit after two years, well not really quit but hired other people to take over, was because his wife had their second baby and really needed his help around the house. So it turned out my friend was imagining himself doing what the other guy was doing and imagining not enjoying it, while in reality the other guy was enjoying it so much it took a second baby and his wife’s demands that he ease off a bit.

When he put it into that perspective, it made total sense to him. Although the waitress was pretty confused when he sent back his beer and asked for a Vernal Equinox.

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Third Chakra

Move through life with power. Consider the opinions and judgements of others while maintaining the complete freedom to disregard them at will. Spin your mind in new and directions for incredibly insightful creativity. Have a supreme autonomy of will to resist even the strongest of temptations.

All this can be yours when you accept the power of the Third Chakra. The Third Chakra, known in some circles as manipura, is centered just below the sternum at the solar plexus. The color is yellow. The Third Chakra is responsible for mainting emotional stability, individuality, and creativity. And because you are naturally capable of being able to tap this source, you can begin to imagine the power that will come when manipura is your ally. Ask yourself the following questions before you begin your meditation. Keep in mind that you don’t need to find answers right away, simply because you are able to honestly ask these questions of yourself and to remain open to answers in whatever form, you will receive benefit.

Who are you?
Who are you before you ask this?
Before you were born, who were you?
Who are you that answers this question?
What if?
How can project safety and calm the emotions of others simply by being near?
What else is there?
Are you?

Breath deeply, in, out. In. Out. Imagine a small ball of bright yellow light emerge just where your stomach meets your ribs. Slowly. In. Out. Breath in the source emotional energy with your inhale, and as you hold it for a brief moment, allow it to charge the yellow ball. As you exhale slowly, allow the yellow ball to slightly increase in size. Slowly. In. Out.  Repeat this process until the yellow ball is surrounding you.  Protecting you. Keeping you safe and separate. Your own thoughts. Your own beliefs. Your emotions obeying your wishes. Sit inside this ball for seven long, slow breaths. That’s right. In. Out. Allow the yellow ball to slowly shrink down, until it returns into your solar plexus.

How does that feel now, knowing that you have such incredible power and safety and strenth,  Just below your heart, ready for you whenever you need it? When you walk through the world now, what will people see in you that is different? What will people see in you that they are now naturally drawn to because of your subtle yet powerful increase in strength? How many ways can you think of to connect with them?

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This Mind For Rent

I had an interesting thought this morning while I was out for my daily walk. I make a trip through the neighborhood, and then finish up on a small hill hear a temple where I do my daily Ki Qong. As I was on my way back home, I passed by an apartment complex,  with a big sign out front saying “For Rent.” For some reason, it immediately reminded me of a line from the song Tom Sawyer, by Rush:

“…though his mind is not for rent, to any god or government, always hopeful yet discontent…”

Which naturally caused my mind to drift, as it usually does after a nice walk, to thoughts and where they come from. I’ve read and heard form a variety of sources that fully ninety percent of our thoughs are a rerun of thoughts from before. Yesterday, the day before yesterday, and so on.

I started to think about memes, which are thoughts but follow a certain set of rules, or patterns. They were first described by Richard Dawkins in his book “The Selfish Gene.” Memes can be described as self replicating bits of information passed on from person to person, or even to a whole culture.

Religious doctrines, political propaganda, cake recipes, and even The Macarena are examples of memes. Ideas or concepts passed through different levels of groups and culture. There has been much debate on what makes a good meme.  What makes some memes replicate, what makes others die off quickly. What makes some easy to believe and keep in your brain, and others to seem foolish and ridiculous. How much thought have you given to your thoughts? Are they yours? Do they really serve you? Do they make your life easier? Do they make your life happier? Where did you learn them from? Who taught them to you?

We are all born with a semi blank slate. (There is much debate on the blankness of that slate.) As we grow, we learn much from others.  Thoughts, strategies, languages, gestures, what is important and not important, what is scary and friendly, what we are capable of and not capable of.

There comes a point in our lives, though, when it becomes important to make a decision on what we accept in our brains, and reject.  It becomes evident that you need to stop blindly following others, and choose your own path.  Problems can occur if when we become adults, we still rely on the “I’ll let other people do my thinking for me” strategy that was useful as a child. If we cling to this way of thinking, it can be severely restrictive as we get older. What was a blessing early in life can be a burden later on. Not to say we should immediately reject all other thoughts that aren’t are own, but perhaps we should at least give them a quick once over, and hold them against the scrutiny of our own chosen direction in life. Are they helping us move forward, or are they holding us back?

Imagine for a minute if you could take out each thought and belief, examine it, change it around so it better serves you, and then stick it back into your head. What beliefs would you like to have? Making money is easy? Falling is love is natural and blissful? There are enough resources to go around for everyone? You are capable of achieving anything you set your mind to?

Would you like that? Would it make life more fun and enjoyable? What would be different?

Be sure to check back often, as I will post many more articles related to this subject.  I think this is fascinating. And please share this site with others, because the more you can share, the easier it is to feel better about what is possible. 

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Easily Develop Incredibly Powerful Brain Power

Imagine being the go-to-person when your company has a problem that they need solved. Now. Imagine you are talking with a client or on a date, and you have an almost magic ability to steer the conversation wherever you want it to go, and the other person thinks that it was their idea. Imagine being surrounded by stressed out executives who are almost ready to call it quits when you tilt your head to the side, think for a moment, and say “Why don’t we try…” and they look at you in utter astonishment. “Why didn’t we think of that?” They ask. “You’re a genius! We’re saved!” Would you like that? Would you like to develop the mental dexterity of thought that Bruce Lee demonstrated with his nunchucks?

Well, here I give you two strong tips that when practiced, will allow you to develop so much flexibility and creativity of thought that you won’t know how you managed after you naturally become incredibly smarter.

Since they both work on the same principle of how the brain is physically set up, you’ll probably find yourself able to make up new exercises after you make these a habit.

The first one is simple, but it’s pretty weird, so make sure you don’t do it if anybody is in earshot. Especially at work.  What you do, is look at ordinary objects, but give them a different name. For example, if you look off to the left of your computer, now, and see a pen, look at it and say “apple!” Then look at something else, say a piece of paper, and say “pickup truck!” The key here is to make sure your ‘new’ names for the objects don’t fall in the same category.  Like in the above example, if you called your pen an ‘apple’ and then called the piece of paper an ‘orange,’ it wouldn’t be as effective, because orange and apple fall in the same category of food, or even fruit. So try to pick your new names completely different categories, sizes, colors, uses, as different as possible. Beware, this sounds deceptively simple, but when you start to practice this regularly, you’ll realize it is anything but. The reason it isn’t as simple as it sound is because you are literally building new circuits in your brain.  Be prepared to have some wild dreams when you start this.

The next trick requires a pen and paper, or better, notepad or some other word processor.  Think of anything, any regular object, for example, potato. Then pick something in a different category, but starting with the same letter, in this case, the letter ‘p.’  So let’s say you choose potato, and Porsche. Next, you just start rambling off anything that comes to mind regarding those two objects, AND, whatever comes up after that, just let your brain flow, and everything you think of, write it down.  Don’t worry about spelling, or grammar, or anything like that. Just write your thoughts out as fast as you can. This also literally causes you to build new connections in your brain, so you will be able to connect ideas in ways that will astound your friends.

One word of caution. It’s difficult to see results with these exercises because it takes time to build new neural pathways, and as you build them, it feels normal, and you can’t really notice the results right away. It’s not like you’ll have to change hat sizes or anything. What will most likely happen, is if you put just 5 or 10 minutes a day into either of these exercises, you will have a powerful ‘Aha!‘ moment.  After about a week or so you will suddenly realize that you have an ENOURMOUS amount of data stored up in your brain. And I’m talking about the whole size of the internet enourmous. And trust me, this is a really cool feeling. It will make you feel incredibly confident in a way that you never have before.

Because you will soon be developing your new super brain power, I won’t have to remind you to check back often to see what other articles I’ll be posting on a daily basis. But if you want to share or link this site, please feel free to do so.

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