Great Articles and Blogs

• What Controls Your Happiness at Advanced Life Skills . This is a great article about the attitude of happiness, similar thoughts to my previous article about having happiness now !
• 100 Edifying Talks for Self Improvement and Lifehacking
• The Value of Positive Working Relationships at Advanced Life Skills
• An excellent series on Perfectionism at Embrace Living .  I loved this part 2 called, Why Being a Perfectionist Leads You to Failure
• 25 Ways to Enrich Your Brain Experience and Top 10 Ways to Grow Your Brain .  Both are excellent and useful to keep your mind’s ability to learn high!
• Happiness is Best has another great 5 part series, this one on mentoring , definitely worth checking out!
• Armen at TimelessInformation has his first ebook summary available on powerful quotes and the analysis of them.  Definitely worth checking it out and his blog!

Recommendations

• Regular commenter/reader, Jonathan at Advanced Life Skills has a new book available called, 7 Simple Steps  – Life Transformation Guide .  Do check it out and if you want to see a detailed review, you can find one here at RatRaceTrap .

Resource Sites and Content

• I’ve made the list at Ace Online Schools, COOL!  Check out this great resource list called 20 Must Read Education Technology Blogs
• I was recommended to check out this site with tips on how to interview .  It’s a useful list for sure.

Posted by Mike King under Life | 8 Comments »

A couple weeks ago I read an interesting article by Tim at A Daring Adventure about what the key to self development is and I felt a longer response was needed to explain my perspective here.

Kindness and Self Confidence

Tim wrote that he believes the key is being kind to yourself.  He mentioned how a number of actions you could do or learn or improve are then destroyed if you don’t be kind to yourself to prevent those.  Well I see the advantages when you are kind to yourself and there are certainly some truths in that but I’ve experienced the key to personal development is belief.

The Key is Belief

Belief feeds change and it even feeds your self confidence and so therefore, belief also feeds how you treat yourself, or your kindness to yourself so kindness cannot possible be the key to personal development.  I think it is belief.  I’ve experienced it personally and seen many others advance in personal development because of belief.  It has nothing to do with actions until there are actions to put in place.

Belief Is the Power to Change

Not only does belief change your thinking and attitude towards things with personal development, it directly impacts your ability to accept change, including building self confidence and being kind to yourself.  Personal development is changing and improving oneself and that starts at a different point, unique to every individual depending on where they are at in their lives.  This could be at a point in their life where change is desirable and being sought after like I suspect anyone working with a life coach would already be doing, yet it might also be starting with a person who is at a point with no desire, no self love and certainly not showing kindness to themselves.  That kindness won’t appear on its own and that kind of person requires a significant change in beliefs to step up and even hope for some kind of personal improvement.  The other thing I have seen is that a person can easily improve themselves without being kind in the process.  Some people can make drastic changes by hating the things they do and capturing pain to motivate themselves.  This clearly is not driven by kindness, it is driven by what they believe will change or what pleasures and pains impact their future.  So, this is all based on belief.

Belief Builds on Itself

As well, the more small improvements and accomplishments that a person experiences in developing themselves, the more and more they will believe future change is possible.  This allows beliefs to develop further and be strengthened for even more personal improvements.  Beliefs really have a simple, yet strong foundation that is based on expected pain and pleasure.  That impression and belief guides our decisions for action which includes any personal development actions.

Your Own Personal Development

All of this may be something you believe or not but I absolutely think it is worthwhile exploring and considering for your own improvements.  What beliefs do you have or lack to motivate you enough for the changes you want?  What are the pains and pleasures you associate with the things you’ve considered changing.  What people, experiences and influences are impacting and changing your beliefs?  Perhaps it’s those beliefs you need to analyze and change in order to progress with your own areas of personal development.  If you are interesting in exploring your pains, pleasures and beliefs further, please have a look at my Goal Setting Step – Setting and Identifying .

Posted by Mike King under Learning | 27 Comments »

Author: Norman Doidge, M.D.

Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science

Well I read this book on several recommendations after a brief bit of research on the plasticity of the mind.  I was definitely not disappointed and to be honest, I really loved this book. It was a fascinating, revealing look at how how thoughts and actions can truly change the structure of our mind and it does so in a hopeful examination of many brain changing breakthroughs.

Doidge is an amazing Canadian author and he simplifies the most complex of sciences into clear, vivid stories and experiments that demonstrate the astonishing changes the brain can make and in turn, transform the people housing them.

Neuroplasticity

Neuroplasticity has been formed by the discovery that the human brain is extremely malleable. Scientists have long known this is true with infancy, but the science now extends well into old age. In classical neuroscience, the adult brain was considered to be hardwired and a continuous working machine once formed.  Specific brain areas and maps were labeled with a specific purpose and little was known about if or how these areas could be replaced or repaired so it led to the common belief that you can’t easily mold the brain.

Who is the Book For?

This book drives home a paradigm shift in brain study and it has great value not only to those with a neurological disease, but for any human being with the curiosity and willingness to discover more about the makeup of their own abilities to learn, which is what interested me so much!

Doidge has numerous examples of neurologically diseased patients who gain from this revolutionary science to improve their condition.  Cases are studied from many severe conditions:

• Strokes
• Cerebral palsy
• Schizophrenia
• Learning disabilities
• Obsessive compulsive disorders
• Phantom limbs
• many more…

Each of these demonstrate the adult’s innate ability to alter the mind and how specific methods can be applied to reshape the brain.  Whether you know someone with these conditions or are purely interested in the marvel behind this new science, anyone can take away insight about learning and shaping the mind in a positive way.

The Learning Mind

Doidge also covers how the plastic nature of the mind affects not only mental mind maps in trauma but even in every day activities.  Societal differences and behaviors can have as much impact on the mind as a brain injury which he explores several examples of human abilities and specifically, the brain’s ability to mend itself due to social differences or environmental affects.

These implications of rewiring the mind however, are also to be cautioned.  The brain is actually so malleable it is also quite vulnerable to its surroundings and seemingly little impact input to the mind can make a drastic change to the way we perceive and handle the world around us.  The impact of media and television are showing significant impact and damage on the mind leading to disorders become more and more prevalent in today’s young people. This is something to be cautious of as people can highly influence and shape the mind as well.  Parents, peers, and leaders all make a significant contribution to the structure of our brains and while it can be changed, it is not always easy to do so.

Despite these risks of manipulating the mind, Doidge keeps a positive outlook through his fantastic stories of triumph and he walks through cases and ideas on how our thoughts can switch on specific genes and alter our brain anatomy.  He shows how intelligence can be improve with brain exercises, how people can improve their cognition, perception, muscle strength and music talents among others, all by letting the imagination shape our minds for us.  I found these areas and really the whole book, absolutely fascinating, uplifting and amazing to see and put into practice the thoughts, imagination and input for my mind that let me shape it the way I want to.  I can’t recommend this book enough.

Norman Doidge, M.D., is a research psychiatrist and psychoanalyst on the faculty at the Columbia University Psychoanalytic Centre in New York and the University of Toronto, as well as an award-winning writer. He has presented his scientific research at the White House.  Website: http://www.normandoidge.com

Posted by Mike King under Book Reviews | 12 Comments »

Please jump back to the first two articles in this series if you missed them.

• The Imaginative Mind: Mental Creativity
• The Imaginative Mind: Social Creativity

This article explores how the mind and it’s imagination is useful for innovation.  Innovation to me is about the pollination of ideas. Not only that they are spread to others but also how that innovation provides gains and benefits compared to what was used or available before hand.  I’ve explored how your own mind’s creativity can be enhanced as well as the creativity powered by a social atmosphere and now this explores how that kind of creativity can be put to use for improvement through innovation.

Incremental

The first area of application where creativity from an imaginative mind can drive innovation is in incremental improvements and change.  This is a popular one for me and obviously through my writing here at LearnThis since personal development is largely about incremental change.  Those active in it strive to innovate new methods and teaching styles to reach and expand their influence to bring that incremental change both into our own lives and the lives of those we connect with.

Many businesses also look to gain from incremental innovation by building continuous improvement programs and training.  It’s a crucial part of change and adaptation that every strong business should have.

Radical

The next level of innovation intensity is that involving more radical change.  This is needed when larger systems / beliefs change or when a change has a much bigger impact to a person or organization.  The radical aspect of this is sometimes seen as shocking or unexpected as well since it requires outside the box thinking and improvements to be put into place.  It is much more than simple or continuous incremental changes and it requires a major step change to jump from one way of doing things to another.

Radical innovation is something that is risky and requires some courage to create.  It’s far outside any comfort zones and it isn’t something you can hide under the surface whether its a personal innovation or not.  Radical innovation will be seen by others and have enough impact on your life that the change will be a significant one.

Revolutionary

The final kind of innovation is a revolutionary one.  This level of innovation is so large that it causes change well beyond your direct environment or self and causes a wave of change well beyond the circle of direct influence.  Revolutionary thinking is of course thinking that encompasses each of the other types but what sets it apart is that it is for an innovation that affects a wide group of people, an entire region or perhaps a whole industry or market.  It is such a massive change that once it is in place, its very difficult to go back since the new innovation engrains itself into society and the lives of those within.

Take Creativity Personal

So, I hope this short series on the imaginative mind and creativity sparks you to look at where you allow your creativity to surface in your life but also how far you are willing to take it.  We all have creative thoughts and so its what you do with them and how you let them work in your mind that will drive change around you and in your life.  Don’t settle in and suppress your imagination, instead, embrace it, activate it in your own mind, in your social sphere around you and turn those innovations into action!

Please, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic or any of your own creations or innovations.

Posted by Mike King under Learning | 14 Comments »

This article continues with the topic of the imaginative mind and today I’ve cover another look at creativity, but from the social aspect this time.  If you missed the last article, here it is:  The Imaginative Mind: Mental Creativity

Cycles of Creativity

Creativity is very much a process, not a single event and so there are cycles of creativity in our actions and thoughts.  Some days creativity just flows and others, it seems so distant.  These cycles exist within our minds in all the same areas covered from the previous section on mental creativity but now we’ll look at it these cycles in a larger social environment.  The same type of cycles where creativity is obvious, encouraged, built on, extended and heavily supported occurs in all kinds of social arenas.

• friendships and relationship
• organizations and clubs
• businesses and work groups

Even larger segments like geographic regions, industries, municipalities or media exposure groups can experience these up and down cycles of creativity.  All of these cycles occur because of creative influence that either inspires or suppresses creativity throughout that social sphere and it cascades the effects.  The same reasons why brainstorming is useful to the mind to spark new ideas and keep associations active in the mind applies here to social creativity.  Each idea feeds the ideas of others, expanding the creative impact to larger groups.  Things that stifle creativity make a similar impact by slowing down or eliminating the connections for creativity to grow.

Impact on the Mind

Understanding how these cycles impact our work, lives and environment gives us a more accurate model to predict and control the swings that social creativity is impacted by.  Keeping active with the actions that spread creativity and avoiding some of the typical problems areas that kill creativity works in a social environment to ensure the imaginative mind has a sandbox to explore.  I believe the mind is at its best when learning, growing and building itself and it can only do this to its fullest when the imagination is active with as many options for creativity as possible.

Contributing to Creativity

There are a number of ways to contribute to socially boost your creativity.  The ones I think have the biggest impact are the following:

Eliminate Criticism and Complaining

Criticism and complaining are really the quickest things that kill creativity.  Criticism can emotionally shut down a person so quickly that the only creative thoughts they will have is of escape or revenge.  It is something that naturally transforms our minds into a completely new state unless we learn to handle criticism and control our response and state of mind consciously.

The social impact this can have can reach many people at once and unfortunately this bad behaviour can also be quite contagious.  The best thing you can do with these items to contribute more to social creativity is to eliminate criticism of others, of ideas and of actions.  The same goes for complaining since it encourages a very negative thought process not helpful in activating the imagination in any way.  Obviously eliminating these is not easy, but they can certainly be reduced and they can definitely be done in private at least in order to minimize the influence to any audience available.

Brainstorming

While I covered this in the previous article on mental creativity it is certainly applicable here in a social atmosphere as well.  Brainstorming in a group activates the imagination of the whole group and quickly allows ideas to germinate with each other and spread between everyone’s minds.  It can be done as a group on purpose with a specific topic or goal in mind or it can happen through other media with no initial intention of doing it!  Social media and viral systems are perfect examples of this as a group gains access to shared thoughts and ideas, they become enabled to share more themselves which continues to feed the process.  This type of social brainstorming happens a lot with online social groups like twitter and stumbleupon , as with all the other social networks.

Asking Questions – Question everything

Questions come about from curiosity and of course curiosity broods creativity.  Therefore, questions are a powerful action to contribute more to creativity as well.  Everything a person questions, they can learn from and gain some kind of insight from.  Questions about how and why something is how it is, leads to seeing more pieces of any puzzle and that puts the mind into a state where it has to think beyond the logic to imagine the solution before all the pieces are understood.

Questions are a huge part of a healthy learning process and they will trigger the mind to explore and wonder with curiosity at things.  I’ve written about using questions for learning and training others in this article here, Using the 5W Questions to Provide Training .  Questioning the things around you has other benefits as well, it is a useful tool to expand your relationships as well.  This is because it shows curiosity to another person.  Read about that here, Open Ended Questions .

Avoid Perfectionism

My final point in looking at social creativity and the ways to contribute to it is to avoid perfectionism.  Perfectionism slows down any creative process and it quickly strangles any new ideas from emerging as it keeps the attention on an original subject or topic while it is closely scrutinized and perfected.  There is some room to explore perfecting something with a creative look, but it is usually too focused on one thing where new ideas have no place to be explored until the first topic or item is first perfected.

Getting past perfection so that more ideas can be explored gives way to identify more possibilities and have more options to approach things with.  This applies in everything from simple day to day life plans and tasks, to complex engineering design problems or even social planning. The Pareto principle is useful with social creativity as well and that is where you apply the 80/20 rule.  Perfectionist try to get things to that 100% level and they spend most of their time and effort making very little progress once past that 80% point.

So, next in my next article, I’m going to explore how the imaginative mind is applied for innovation, which I consider to be the application of creativity.  If you are not signed up yet and don’t want to miss any future articles, please sign up for my RSS feed here or by email here .

Posted by Mike King under Learning | 15 Comments »

Creativity is one of my most favored traits and any activity with creative components is one I can easily value.  My engineering role in designing software, developing others as a manager in new and creative ways and my writing and 3D graphics I create on the side are all examples of how I enjoy letting creativity spill out in life.  I personally believe I’ve been crafted with the gift of creativity (as is everyone) and so there is great purpose and value in employing creative tasks in your life.

There are many ways to boost your creativity and it really is a part of any learning experience and new task so its an endless topic, which excites me a great deal because ultimately, the exercise of writing about it is also a creative exercise.  This article looks specifically at how one can build an imaginative mind using creativity.  An imaginative mind is one that can visualize beyond direct input and one that can explore things outside of the immediate reality and vicinity.  To me, this is a great ability and one I am quite passionate about so, lets explore it a bit deeper!

Initializing Thoughts

Our thoughts are nearly continuous and tuning in to them can be done specifically for creative juices.  Often we suppress our own ideas or thoughts in a split second without ever letting it surface to a voice or considered item.  We often put a validation screen on our thoughts and bias everything we let surface by the judgments we assign or expect others to assign to that thought.  This limits our mental creativity and kills a thought that would otherwise become the start of a great associative linking of thoughts and advanced creativity.  We need to let any thought be developed and explored as our mind makes the neural connections and associations with more and more thoughts.  This can happen in moments or it may take hours but it most imaginative if you let a thought continue to build and linger, don’t dismiss it or kill it on purpose.  Ever.

Brainstorming

Putting the mind to an exploratory session like this is also known as brainstorming.  Brainstorming is often considered something you do in groups and while that is true, it needs the same guidelines in your mind to let the imaginative mind explode with its full capacity and creativity available. Brainstorming at its best means that anything thought of on a given topic is valid.  Anything goes. Any idea is considered no matter how obscure or off-base it may first seem to the logical mind.  Logic is often the nemesis of creativity as we tend to judge our ideas and thoughts the moment they begin and we simply don’t give our imaginative mind a chance to develop them.

1. Explore as many possibilities as you can
2. Any idea is worth exploring at least for a short time
3. Sometimes you need to give ideas time and let the subconscious work away

Outside the Box

The other effect our logical mind has is to keep us bounded into what seems reasonable.  This unfortunately has a very negative consequence on our imagination as its very difficult to explore outside this box of reason or box of logic.  The logical mind is bounded by what we know as well so anything outside this box is suppressed by any logic at first consideration.  It’s important to get by this and let the creativity and idea be unbounded and originated from well outside the box.

The imagination is an amazing thing and you can certainly allow it to take hold of you in visualizing, day dreaming or full on dreaming.  We’ve all experienced the power of the mind’s creativity in dreams and its possible to enable that same creativity in waking life if it’s practiced and repeated instead of suppressed.  Let your mind wander, have fun with it, just imagine what that seemingly crazy idea might actually be like if you explore it further in your mind.

Posted by Mike King under Learning | 17 Comments »