10 Imaginitive Ways to Pump your Mind for Ideas

Ever play with Tinkertoys as a kid? This toy where you had wheels with peg holes in it, and wood stems of various sizes in which you could create anything. Well, I ran across this book, Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques, by Michael Michalko, has inspired my creativity… I’m only about 28 pages into it!

He has ten ways to help drive your creative juices. I have paraphrased them for us to use.

1. Set an Idea Quota. - Give your mind a workout every day. Set yourself a n idea quota for a challenge you are working on, such as finve new ideas ever day for a week. you’ll find the first five are the hardest, but these will quickly trigger other ideas. The more ideas you come up with, the greater your chances of coming up with winner. Having an idea quota will force you to actively generate ideas and alternatives rather than waiting for them to occur to you.

2. Get Tone. - Fighter pilots say, “I’ve gone tone” when their radar locks onto a target. That’s the point at which the pilot and plane are totally focus on the target. “Getting tone” in everyday life means paying attention to what’s happening around you.

Ordinarily we do not make the fullest use of our ability to see. We move through life looking at a tremendous quantity of information, objects, and scenes, and yet we look but do not see. Paying attention to the world around you will help you develop the extraordinary capacity to look at mundane things and see the miraculous.

3. Don’t Be a Duke of Habit. - Stretch yourself and take a the road less traveled occasionally. Deliberately program changes into your daily life. Make a list of the things you do by habit. Try driving a different route to work. Change your sleeping hours, Read a different newspaper, Try different recipes. Take a bath instead of a shower. You would be surprised how your mind reacts to new things in this way.

4. Feed Your Head. - Leaders are Readers. So are creative people. Lets feed our heads full of amazing information, and have a larger database in which to pull ideas from. Read Magazines on varied subjects. Read Nonfiction. When reading them, practice thinking up solutions for any problems presented in the book, before they reveal it in the book. Think as you read, and take notes. Write in the margins of your book, write in a notebook the ideas you have captured from the book, highlight passages. Also, feel free to OUTLINE a book prior to your reading it, to help you know what you are going to learn. Also, maybe you could outline the book after you read it, without looking at the table of contents.

5. Do a Content Analysis. - Check things out! Do a scan of your junkmail before you throw it away, in fact, put all your junkmail in a big box for about a month, then scan it to see if there are any emerging trends or ideas to be gleamed from it. When you are on the road, scan local newspapers for interesting ideas. Observe popular culture and find out what people are interested in and why they are popular. Attend many business lectures and seminars as you can. Listen to different radio stations every week to get a variety of input.

6. Create a Brain Bank. - I love this idea. Collect and store ideas like a pack rat. Keep a container (coffee can, Tupperware, shoebox, etc) of ideas and idea starters. Begin collecting interesting ads, quotes, designs, pictures,questions, cartoons, doodles and words that might triggers ideas by association.

When looking for a new idea, shake up your BrainBank and pull out a couple ideas and free associate, you will be pleasantly surprised how this will help you.

7. Be a Travel Junkie. - When you are bored, GET UP AND GO SOMEWHERE! Go to a trade show, a quirky store, an antique shop, museum, or flea market… just go. And when you are there, walk around with an open mind and allow yourself to be DRAWN to something. Once there, use your mind to make a connection to something else in your life, and it may creatively help you solve some problem.

8. Capture your Thoughts. - Record your thoughts, Carry around a little moleskin in your back pocket. Scientists say that we can keep 5-9 ideas actively in our mind, then they float away. We remember some, and some are gone. By, keeping the notebook in your backpocket, you will capture the thought when it is there. Then you can review it, and perhaps your mind may be able to make a better connection with it later on.

9. Think Right. - Consciously work to make your thinking more fluent with your thinking. So, making descriptive lists as a way to capture thought fluency.

10. Keep an Idea Log. - Take a Moleskine or a Composition book, and divide it into sections that you want to captures ideas. Marketing ideas, Home Improvement Ideas, special projects, planning ideas, comedy skits, or whatever you wish to capture.

After you read the book, you may want to consider purchasing the accompanying Thinkpak: A Brainstorming Card Deck which gives you additional exercises to help you tap into your creativity.

Hope this helps you!

Successfully,

Travis Wright

10 Ways to Develop a Prosperity Consciousness

Prosperity consciousness is based on the idea that our thoughts create the reality we see and experience on a daily basis. By using a specific set of tools, we can root out the negative thinking which is causing us to experience lack and transform our lives on all levels and attract a bounty of abundance.

Steps toward a Prosperity Consciousness

1. Set aside at least twenty minutes a day to study and visualize your new life.

2. Buy a loose leaf binder and label it “Dreams Unlimited.” This is where you will workshop the life you are creating for yourself and get clear on what you really want. This will be the place where you write your affirmations, make notes about the process, collect uplifting quotes, make collages of the things you are manifesting, and keep track of the things you accomplish.

3. Develop an affirmation for yourself based on what you are attempting to attract into your life. It should be present tense and contain only positive statements. An example would be “I am rich beyond my wildest dreams.”

4. Write out your affirmation at least ten times a day and put it in your notebook. When you are tempted to dwell on the negative, repeat it silently over and over in your head while you take deep breaths.

5. Ignore the naysayers, dream killers, and negative people who tell you that it can’t be done. If someone else has ever done it before, then you can too.

6. Spend a few quiet minutes every day breathing deeply and visualizing your goal as already completed. Picture exactly how you want it to be, but be willing to accept something better. Don’t limit yourself.

7. Read books on creative visualization, prosperity consciousness, and positive thinking.

8. Live “as if.” If a circumstance in your life is not how you want it, withdraw your attention from it. Whatever you focus on expands. Live as if all of your dreams are a reality now.

9. “Follow your bliss.” Experience the joy life offers at every turn if you know how to look for it. Share your love where ever you can. Wear comfortable clothes in colors that you love. Drink a wonderful cup of tea and watch a sunset. Do only that which brings you joy.

10. Let it go. Trust that the Universe has heard your request and is doing everything It can to bring it about. Forget about it. Don’t worry or fret. Live in the moment and watch how all of your needs are met. When you lose faith, call on your childlike resources and pretend.
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Keeping Things in Perspective

Mountains have always captured our imaginations, calling us to scale their heights, to circle and worship at their feet, and to pay homage to their greatness. Mountains can be seen from thousands of miles away, and if we are lucky enough to be on top of one, we can see great stretches of the surrounding earth. As a result, mountains symbolize vision, the ability to rise above the adjacent lowlands and see beyond our immediate vicinity. From the top of the mountain, we are able to witness life from a new perspective—cities and towns that seem so large when we are in them look tiny. We can take the whole thing in with a single glance, regaining our composure and our sense of proportion as we realize how much bigger this world is than we sometimes remember it to be.

Mountains are almost always considered holy and spiritual places, and the energy at the top of a mountain is undeniably unique. When we are on top of a mountain, it is as if we have ascended to an alternate realm, one in which the air is purer and the energy lighter. Many a human being has climbed to the top of a mountain in order to connect with a higher source of understanding, and many have come back down feeling stronger and wiser. Whenever we are feeling trapped or limited in our vision, a trip to our nearest mountain may be just the cure we need.
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Skip New Years Resolutions - Create A Life Vision

By Bonnie McFarland

It’s January, a time that many people, hoping to improve their lives, make New Year’s resolutions. Unfortunately experts say that in less than a month the majority of those resolutions will already be broken.

So why not completely skip the resolutions and create a “lights on” vision for 2008 instead? A vision of what you truly want that can energize you and guide you as you make this your best year ever!

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My Vision Became a Reality
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In 2002 I realized how much I would love to have a water view house. I shared my dream with Denny, my husband, who then joined me in looking for a new home.

We drove around countless neighborhoods, searched on the internet, let people know we were looking, checked out any likely possibility, made calls, and wrote letters to property owners. For five years!

During this time, I used my “life tools,” (many of them over and over again): getting clear about my vision, setting my intention, creating a vision map, calling on my allies, following our lights (what energized and enlivened us) and our curiosity, noticing what was and wasn’t showing up, shifting my attention away from Monkey Mind and toward what I wanted, de-cluttering our existing house, and releasing the outcome.
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