Making Your Gray Matter
August 2009
Contents This Month
·
How I Became
“Creative”
·
Refer Madness
·
Brainstorming
Boost
·
Blog or Brog
·
Idea Mapping for
an Interview
·
Quotation and a
Story
·
Update Your
Email Address
How I Became “Creative”
If you had known me
before 1990, “creative” would not have been an adjective that would have come
to mind. My jobs had been in market research, market analysis, and life
insurance. My high school education concentrated on math (calculus) and science
(physics). In college I majored in Management Science, partially because I miserably
failed in English.
In 1990, I attended a
workshop at EDS that focused on Mind Mapping, creativity, and how our brains
operate. After the two days, the only tool I used on a weekly basis was
mapping. I used color liberally in my maps and many symbols. I didn’t use too
many pictures as I distrusted my ability to draw well.
Many of my co-workers
saw me using … [gasp] … colors and
equated that to being creative. So
whenever a job or task came up that required and developed creativity, it was
given to me because I used [gasp] colors. It was a case of the [gasp] colors
wagging the tail.
Refer Madness
Is the economy taking
all your spending money? Want to get some of it back? If you give me a referral
that leads to me getting business, I’ll give you $300*. So who would be
grateful that you connected me to them?
Do you know of a group,
company, or person that’s missing opportunities because of…
·
A lack of
creativity?
Brainstorming or creativity sessions often generate very few new or innovative
ideas. My workshops, seminars, and presentations give participants the
opportunity to become familiar with and practice many techniques that are
proven to free up individual and group creativity.
·
Forgotten
details or disorganization?
Most of us learned to take and make notes in a very linear, left-brained only
manner. Unfortunately, notes taken that way are often easily forgotten, are
disorganized, don’t enable communication, or creativity! Idea Mapping can help
anyone to take notes from an outside source or make notes of their own thoughts
that do meet those objectives.
Participants who attend one of my Idea Mapping workshops or seminars will learn
how to use this accelerated learning technique and use more of their brain’s
abilities.
·
Boring
uninteresting presentations?
Presentations delivered to co-workers or corporate executives need to capture
and keep audience attention. Through skill-building workshops, interactive
seminars and presentations, or one-to-one coaching, I help people to infuse
their presentations with professional passion.
Have your contact get
in touch with me at 972.378.0937 (office), 214.457.0937 (mobile) or dgunby@mindimensions.com or go to www.mindimensions.com for more
information.
*If the engagement is
less than a full fee, I’ll give you a percentage of my fee.
Brainstorming
Boost
It happens during every brainstorming
session I’ve been a part of – the flow of ideas slows to a trickle. The good
news is that you may not need to come up with any more ideas just yet! Simply
work with the ones you’ve already got. Take the ideas you’ve already generated
and minimize, maximize, or combine them.
Minimize. Take some of the ideas
generated and find ways to make something about it smaller. Sometimes when I
lead a seminar at Southern Methodist University’s
Maximize. Take ideas, products, or
services and make something about it larger. For example, during a brain
warm-up activity recently, I challenged a group to improve on a shower. One of
the ideas was to incorporate an iPod into the shower. Maximizing this idea
could become making one whole wall of the shower the iPod controls, or making
opposing walls of the shower be the speakers.
Combine. Take two or more ideas already
generated, or parts of ideas already generated and combine them. The printing
press was a combination of parts from a coin press and from a wine press.
Blog
or Brog
After prompting from many of you, I’ve finally
entered the world of blogging. I’m at http://mindimensions.ideamappingsuccess.com/IdeaMappingBlogs/.
I’ll write something about once a week and will generally stay on my favorite
topics of creativity, Idea Mapping, and presentation/communication skills.
There may be times when I veer off of that track, but I’ll try to relate back
to my areas of interest. I won’t ever brog – which is defined as a “soup-like
amalgam consisting mostly of barley and molten cheese.” Sounds yummy.
Idea Mapping for an Interview
Unfortunately,
many of you reading this are interviewing for jobs. Consider using Idea Maps as
part of your preparation.
Start
by mapping all of the questions you have already been asked in past (recent or
distant) interviews. Then start adding questions you might ask of yourself.
Allow yourself to be a little crazy and have some fun with questions you might
be asked. Also include questions that you want to ask interviewers.
Once
you’ve got an exhaustive map of interview questions, start generating responses
to those questions. Don’t write out complete sentences; write down “trigger”
words. Those are words that will trigger your response. Now for the key to all
of this … practice your answers several times. Your answers should be a little
different each time; this ensures that you are being natural and conversational.
Quotation and a Story
“If I have a thousand ideas and only one turns out to be good, I am
satisfied.” – Alfred Nobel (Swedish chemist and inventor)
Several years
ago I saw a man teaching his wife to golf at a driving range. With her first
swing she hit the ground about a foot behind the ball. The husband said, “Don’t dip down at it.” She missed the
ball with her second swing. He said, “Don’t
pick up your head.” She swung a third time with frustration and a little
bit of anger and topped the ball. “Don’t
swing so hard.” She actually sat down on the ground and started crying, “I’ll
never get this game.” He said, “That’s your problem, you’ve got to get rid of
those negative thoughts.” When I heard him say that I thought to myself, “That
would mean she’d have to divorce you.”
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