Updated 2/5/00
Wisdom can turn wallpaper into riches
In the former Soviet Union, an old widow suffered from the ravages of poverty, constantly forced out of her humble housing for failure to pay the rent. Each succeeding apartment was poorer and smaller, but each in turn had rent too high to keep up with. Finally, in a tiny two-room shack, a concerned neighbor came to call on the old lady.
"Don't you have any family?"
"Yes, I have three good boys, who have grown up and emigrated to America!"
"Have they been able to find work there?"
"Oh, yes, they have very good jobs!"
"Do they ever try to help you, or send you anything?"
"Yes, they send me many pictures of American presidents! I have them all pinned up on the walls of my bedroom. Would you like to see?"
On the walls of her bedroom were pictures of American presidents. Enough cash to buy a house! Available, if she would only recognize the value of what she had.
Most people are like that. They have within their possession enough creative power to help others, to help themselves, to make their wildest dreams come true… if they only knew.
Our greatest natural resource is the underutilized mind. One key to developing this resource is through creativity training.
First, we must define creativity (this is not filler material. This is very important concept to understand!):
Creativity: Combining of known facts into new ideas.
Creativity is not magic. It's not limited to the lucky few who have it by an accident of birth. Creativity is a skill that is learned and is available to anyone.
Creativity usually consists of three simple steps:
1. You must know some general facts (you pick the subject)
2. You combine these facts into new ideas
3. You pick the new ideas that have value and birth them into the world.
There are no bad ideas. The totally irrelevant may succeed in pulling your mind out of the rut and open wide new vistas.
Sometimes it's even easier. You simply use successful ideas from other fields. A greater amount of modern creativity draws its raw material from the biological sciences than any other science. Nature solved many of our modern day problems long before we were aware of the need.
This has been a quick overview of the creativity course. If you'd like more detail, check out the following topics:
Basic Creativity
1. The Conscious vs. the Subconscious Mind
3. What's Acceptable and What's Unacceptable
5. Steps for Creation (Sorry, not connected yet)
6. Conclusions (Sorry, not connected yet)
Advanced Creativity Topics
1. The Power of Paradigms (Sorry, not connected yet)
2. Paradigm Busting (Sorry, not connected yet)
3. (More to come)