Sit up a Tree

We’re all told to think outside the box. Being creative, coming up with ideas, new solutions, breakthrough thinking - they’re essential in industry. But, largely we brought up to think the same. School is all about conforming, doing the same thing. It can be a pretty hard job then to suddenly pull a bunch of original ideas out of your ear! So here are some tips to help you be creative when you’re feeling at your most uncreative!

• Get random! Remember that old thing in school where you were told to write about anything and you just stared at the page? Even if at that second your head was filled with a host of ideas, plans, schemes, memories and dreams, the moment you’re hit by blank sheet syndrome it’s all gone. You can’t think of a thing. If this happens to you , you’ll probably know the panic that comes with it. So what to do? Get random. Don’t try and think of something, think of anything. The first thing that comes into your head. The goal here is to forget that you’re supposed to be thinking of something in particular. Or the solution to a problem. So just play with it. Don’t be afraid to let your mind wander. Daydream for a couple of minutes and when you come back to it your creative thinking engine will be ignited and idling in your driveway ready for you to take it out for a spin!
• But I really can’t think of anything! OK If I told you to think of anything and you’re saying you can’t it’s probably more of an emotional block, like a rabbit caught in the headlights. But if I said ‘let’s play I-spy you go first’, you’d probably be able to come up with something because you’d pick an object you could see, a chair, a desk, a screen. In other words a visual stimulus to start the game. Looking at something and naming it is a good way to break the thousand mile stare into the headlights. Now wake up the creative part of your brain by putting your head on one side and looking at the object again. What’s different? Now close your eyes and recreate that object in your head. Now change its color. Play with it. If it’s got legs like a table give it an extra one. If it’s got a screen, imagine it with a big eye instead. The trick is to break out of the left brain freeze and free up the subtler more creative right brain.
• If getting random doesn’t work, get more random! If you haven’t got an oracle to hand or a copy of the I-Ching, get your inspiration from anywhere. Take the first noun that the DJ next says on the radio. If you need to come up with the subject for a story and you’re staring at a shelf of books, try picking the 75th page of the 3rd book from the right. Pick the first noun you come to in the 4th line. Now do the same only pick your own numbers and a verb. Build it up that way. Even if the ideas are nonsense you’ll kick-start your creativity.
• Write it out! Very often when we need to be creative it is with a specific problem in mind and we need to come up with a new solution. One way to do this is to sit down and write twenty possible solutions. The first five will usually be the most obvious. The next ten will be impossible and the final five will usually be the most difficult, but also the most productive and likely solutions.
• Free writing. One of the best ways to get creative is free writing. Start writing about the topic for about five to ten minutes. After a little while you’ll find that you’ll begin writing about a particular area specifically and the ideas will start flowing. Sometimes at the very least it helps to clarify the full nature of the problem. This clarity in itself can take the panic out of finding a solution!
• Think how Perry Mason would solve it. It sounds daft but this one works for a lot of people. They pick a fictional character that they know well and think (or write down) how they would solve your problem. It doesn’t even have to be a fictional person. Pick a real person that you know and think about how they would approach it.
• Ask your subconscious. That sounds easy but how? First you start by getting the question right. Asking yourself ‘can i solve this problem’ is going to get a one word answer and probably not the one you want to hear. So ask an open question (how can we? what can I do? what solutions are available?) Asking yourself loaded questions aren’t going to help. For example asking ‘How are you going to find a solution to this, you loser?’ is not going to bring your creativity and self-confidence out of hiding. So make it positive. Tell yourself you can do it!

Now you’ve got the question ask the question. What next? Go do something else. It should be something repetitive that doesn’t need too much thought. Doing dishes, mowing the lawn, waxing the car are ideal because your hands are busy, your conscious brain and self criticism don’t stick around for such menial chores leaving your subconscious to work miracles!

So get creative!  Good luck!!

Do you want to get up earlier?  If you do, here are a series of tips that should help to turn you from a lay-a-bed into an early riser.

• Do you really want to get up earlier?  I mean really want to?  If you’re not committed to getting up early, then you won’t.  It’s that simple.  You have to want to get up.  And remember that applies first thing in the morning, when you’re groggy and sluggish, not say at lunchtime when you’re wide-awake and firing on all cylinders.  Wanting to get up is the key to actually getting up!
• Set a realistic “up” time.  Set a time that you want to be up by, not one that you think you should be up by.  If you set an unrealistic get up time, you’re far more likely to fail.
• Ditch caffeine.  It seriously messes with your system.  If you are pepped up on coffee all day you’ve messing with your body patterns and you’re adversely affecting you sleep patterns.
• Don’t go to bed until you are tired.  You only get the best, most productive sleep when you are actually tired before you go to bed.
• Before you go to sleep, tell yourself that you’re going to get up at whatever time you want to be up by.  For example, if you want to be up at 6am and you’re in bed at 11pm, repeat the following to yourself a dozen or so times:
  “I will be up at 6am, in 7 hours from now.”
  Remember to say it like you mean it.  This will program your subconscious to get up when you want to be up (with practice you can train yourself so you don’t need an alarm clock). 
• Try different styles of alarm clocks – radio, CD, light, beeper.  See which one works best for you.
• Put a system in place to wake you up.  If you need an alarm clock, put it out of your reach so that you have to get up when it goes off.  And when it goes off, get up.  Take a few deep breaths and stretch a little and start the day.
• Maintain your routine 7 days a week.
• Don’t fall into the “snooze” trap.  If you’ve had eight hours sleep and you’re still tired, 10 minutes isn’t going to make any difference.

Work at getting up early for 21 days and you’ll have established the new routine as a pattern and it’ll be a lot harder to break.

See you tomorrow – morning!

The Dilbert Blog is probably one of the most eclectic blogs that I read.  Scott Adams has a knack for going from one interesting and thought-provoking idea to another.  Yesterday he posted a thoroughly interesting and readable article on affirmations and how he has used them in the past to make changes in his life. 

What are affirmations and how do they work?  Scott sums it up as:

The idea behind affirmations is that you simply write down your goals 15 times a day and somehow, as if by magic, coincidences start to build until you achieve your objective against all odds.

An affirmation is a simple sentence such as “I Scott Adams will become a syndicated cartoonist.” (That’s one I actually used.)

I’ve read whole books on affirmations but in those two sentences Scott has told you pretty much everything you need to make use of them.  No, seriously, I mean it.  The basic form of an affirmation sentence is something like this:

“I Joe Bloggs will …”

Make it positive, make it personal and repeat.

Go ahead, read the article!

Scott then goes on to answers some FAQ questions relating to affirmations.  Three of these answers are particularly interesting:

• I’ve never heard of a “monkey paw” affect where you achieve your goal but something horrible happens to you to balance it out.
• I don’t know how long you should try affirmations before concluding that they don’t work for you. But trying it for less than six months probably doesn’t give it a chance.
• Affirmations have not worked every time for me. But the few times they did not work, I must say I wasn’t fully invested in the objective. For example, there are a few cases where if I had achieved an objective it would have caused a lifestyle change that wasn’t entirely positive.

That last point is particularly relevant. You must, on all levels, want the change to happen.  If you have doubts or worries of uncertainties, the affirmation is doomed.