The Secret to Creativity

The Secret to Creativity The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanely sensitive. To them… a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create — so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, their very breath is cut off… They must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency they are not really alive unless they are creating.” - Pearl Buck “F@*# self-doubt. I despise it. I hold it in contempt, along with the hell-spawned ooze-pit of Resistance from which it crawled. I will NEVER back off. I will NEVER give the work anything less than 100%. If I go down in flames, so be it. I’ll be back.” -Steven Pressfield “Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work.” -Rita Mae Brown “Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution”—Clay Shirky “I am not afraid…I was born to do this.” - Joan of Arc “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” ~Antoine De Saint Exupery “It takes a great deal of courage to stand up to your enemies, but even more to stand up to your friends.” - J. K. Rowling “Do not be critics, you people, I beg you. I was a critic and I wish I could take it all back because it came from a smelly and ignorant place in me, and spoke with a voice that was all rage and envy. Do not dismiss a book until you have written one, and do not dismiss a movie until you have made one, and do not dismiss a person until you have met them. It is a f@*$%load of work to be open-minded and generous and understanding and forgiving and accepting, but Christ, that is what matters. What matters is saying yes.” - Dave Eggers “Adversity is just change that we haven’t adapted ourselves to yet.” -Aimee Mullins “The secret of life…is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.” - Paulo Coelho, from The Alchemist “Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.” - Helen Keller “Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get — only what you are expecting to give — which is everything. What you will receive in return varies. But it really has no connection with what you give. You give because you love and cannot help giving.” - Katharine Hepburn “Far better to live your own path imperfectly than to live another’s perfectly.” -Bhagavad Gita “I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others… I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent” – Thomas Edison “The soul should always stand ajar. Ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.” - Emily Dickinson “To get the truth, you want to get your own heart to pound while you write.” - Robert McKee “There is something deep within us that responds to those who level with us, who don’t suggest or compromise for us.” -Susan Scott, Fierce Leadership “Each moment of our life, we either invoke or destroy our dreams.” -Stuart Wilde “I don’t wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.” -Pearl S. Buck “Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.” -Goethe “When I was in the middle of writing Eat Pray Love and I fell into one of those pits of despair that we will fall into when we’re working on something that’s not coming and we think ‘this is going to be a disaster, this is going to be the worst book I’ve ever written — not just that but the worst book ever written … So I just lifted my face up from the manuscript and I directed my comments to an empty corner of the room and I said aloud ‘ Listen you, thing! You and I both know that if this book isn’t brilliant that is not entirely my fault, right? Because you can see I am putting everything I have into this, I don’t have any more than this, so if you want it to be better then you’ve got to show up and do your part of the deal, OK? But you know what? If you don’t do that then I’m going to keep writing because that’s my job and I would please like the record to reflect today that I showed up and did my part of the job!” — Elizabeth Gilbert ?”We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality. It cannot lead; it can only serve” -Albert Einstein “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can chagne the world.” - Margaret Mead “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking, and don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart,…you’ll know when you find it.” — Steve Jobs “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” -Soren Kierkegaard “I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in.” -Virginia Woolf “People who don’t take risks generally make about 2 big mistakes a year, people who do take risks generally make about 2 big mistakes a year” -Peter Drucker “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” -Maya Angelou “It’s not about breaking the rules. It is about abandoning the concept of rules altogether” - Paul Lemberg “Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.” -Leo Burnett “You can make mistakes, but you are not a failure until you blame others for those mistakes.” -John Wooden “There’s only us, There’s only this, Forget regret, Or life is your to miss” - Mimi, Rent “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” -Marianne Williamson “Don’t hire a dog, then bark yourself” -David Ogilvy “Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance. Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.” - Martha Graham “The only thing all successful people have in common is that they’re successful, so don’t waste your time copying “the successful strategies” of others.” -Seth Godin “…before a dream is realized, the Soul of the World test everything that was learned along the way. It does this not because it is evil, but so that we can, in addition to realizing our dreams, master the lessons we’ve learned as we’ve moved toward that dream. It’s the point at which most people give up. It’s the point at which, as we say in the language of the desert, one ‘dies of thirst just when the palm trees have appeared on the horizon.’” -Paulo Coehlo “Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.” - Erica Jong “The day you say “that SOB stole my idea” is the day you need to face your own inability to execute” - Jonathan Fields “The only thing I fear more than change is no change. The business of being static makes me nuts.” -Twyla Tharp “A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.” - George Bernard Shaw “Everything we say signifies; everything counts, that we put out into the world. It impacts on kids, it impacts on the zeitgeist of the time.” -Meryl Streep “What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson “Before you agree to do anything that might add even the smallest amount of stress to your life, ask yourself: What is my truest intention? Give yourself time to let a yes resound within you. When it’s right, I guarantee that your entire body will feel it.” -Oprah Winfrey “To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.” — Aristotle “Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn’t have the power to say yes.” - Eleanor Roosevelt “Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.” - Mark Twain “I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.” – Diane Ackerman “It’s easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out of date.” — Roger von Oech “We all operate in two contrasting modes, which might be called open and closed. The open mode is more relaxed, more receptive, more exploratory, more democratic, more playful and more humorous. The closed mode is the tighter, more rigid, more hierarchical, more tunnel-visioned. Most people, unfortunately spend most of their time in the closed mode. Not that the closed mode cannot be helpful. If you are leaping a ravine, the moment of takeoff is a bad time for considering alternative strategies. When you charge the enemy machine-gun post, don’t waste energy trying to see the funny side of it. Do it in the “closed” mode. But the moment the action is over, try to return to the “open” mode—to open your mind again to all the feedback from our action that enables us to tell whether the action has been successful, or whether further action is need to improve on what we have done. In other words, we must return to the open mode, because in that mode we are the most aware, most receptive, most creative, and therefore at our most intelligent.” -John Cleese “The things we fear most in organizations—fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances—re the primary sources of creativity.” — Margaret J. Wheatley “Too much of our work amounts to the drudgery of arranging means toward ends, mechanically placing the right foot in front of the left and the left in front of the right, moving down narrow corridors toward narrow goals. Play widens the halls. Work will always be with us, and many works are worthy. But the worthiest works of all often reflect an artful creativity that looks more like play than work.”— James Ogilvy “In my experience, if you steer clear of dogma and muster up more love than you thought you had to give, then your vitality increases, satisfaction sets in, sweetness surfaces. I believe in the creative power of good feelings. I’m convinced that the desire to be real is everyone’s divine imperative.” -Danielle LaPorte “Don’t worry, be crappy. Revolutionary means you ship and then test… Lots of things made the first Mac in 1984 a piece of crap – but it was a revolutionary piece of crap.” -Guy Kawasaki “Clarity of painting comes from clarity of vision. A painter has to be emotionally right out there and present, both to perceive and to express.” -Kate Palmer

The secret to creative thinking is to start with good problems. Then you need to turn those problems into thought provoking challenges. After that, great ideas will almost invent themselves.

Almost every creative idea is a potential solution to a problem. Einstein's theory of relativity was about solving a discrepancy between electromagnetism and physics. Post-its were about finding a use for not very sticky glue. Picasso's cubist paintings were about solving the problem of representing three dimensional space on two dimensional canvases. And so on and so on.

Before you even think about generating ideas, you need to turn your problem into a challenge. Because if you start generating ideas to solve the wrong problem, you may have great ideas - but they will probably be lousy solutions.

A self-employed woman is window shopping and sees a beautiful dress. She thinks that it would be perfect for an upcoming reception where she hopes to impress prospective clients. Sadly, the dress costs €3000 and her bank account is nearly empty. She thinks to herself: "how could I earn €3000 in order to buy that dress?" She might come up with some great ideas.

But the truth is, her problem has nothing to do with the dress. Her problem is that she needs to develop new business. One way to do that is to acquire new clients. Wearing a stunning dress to a reception might be one method of solving that problem. But there are many more solutions - and a lot of them are probably more cost effective than a €3000 dress, particularly if she hasn't much money.

Instead, she should be asking herself: "How might I acquire new clients for my business?" or better still, "In what ways might I develop more business?"

The latter question or challenge might lead to ideas like offering existing clients new products or services; increasing her prices; asking for referrals and other activities that have very little to do with new dresses and a great deal to do with building her business.

Most people are like the woman in the story above. When they have problems, they immediately look for solutions, sparing nary a thought for the problem itself. Creative people know better. They start by examining the problem and turning it into a creative challenge.

The best way to get started on turning your problem into a challenge is by writing down your problem in the centre of a sheet of paper. Now, try and break the problem down. Ask yourself "Why is this a problem?", "What is causing this?", "What is behind this?", "What other issues are at stake?" and so on. Ask "why?" until you can no longer answer yourself. Write all of your answers on the sheet of paper. At this stage, the core problem as well as key relevant issues will be apparent. Let's call this the big problem.

The next step is to turn the big problem into one or more short, simple challenges. Challenges usually start with

• "In what ways might I/we...?"

• "How might I/we...?"

• "What kinds of... might I/we...?"

Keep your challenges as simple as possible. Avoid:

• Restrictive criteria
  Restrictive criteria block open creativity. Leave them out of the challenge - but use those criteria later when it comes time to evaluate ideas.

• Combining two or more challenges in a single challenge.
  Combining two or more issues in a single challenge (such as "how might we earn more income and work less?") tends to confuse brainstormers and results in ideas which fail to solve either problem. Best to divide such challenges into individual challenges and brainstorm one at a time. Start with the most important challenge first.

• Ambiguous challenges
  A challenge such as "need money" isn't really clear and is likely to result in ideas that are not really clear. Make your challenges clear to everyone. And phrase them using the words above.

Once you have got your challenge, you will find it remarkably easy to generate ideas that solve it. But before you start brainstorming, there are a couple of things you should bear in mind..

• Generate ideas first. Nothing more. Only after you have finished generating ideas should you even think about reviewing them and decide which one(s) to implement.

• When generating ideas, whether alone or in a group, prohibit any criticism whatsoever. Moreover, it is essential that you make note of every idea no matter how silly, daft or impossible it may seem. The silliest ideas are sometimes the most creative and often highly inspirational.

• Do not stop at the first idea that comes to mind. The first good idea that comes to mind is seldom the most creative - largely because it is almost always the most obvious. Better to generate lots of ideas and then decide which ideas to choose.

Thus the secret to generating great ideas is to start with a great challenge. Then generate, generate, generate ideas.

A Successful Salesman

Effective Sales Strategies

Every business in the world has some certain unique features, which has to be learnt and practiced a lot in order to be successful in an enterprise. For example, a swimmer has to do practice regularly for hours in order to keep them fit for competitions. Even though the swimmer has succeeded in number of competition he has to work out regularly, everyday in order to defend his position at the highest level.

During his training he should focus on the mistakes he had made in the past competitions, he should train and prepare himself in such a way that he shouldn’t repeat the same mistakes in future. There is an analogy between the competitive sports and salesmanship. As like in sports salesperson has to master the art of selling the products of the enterprise to the customers. The sales person himself should learn the fundamentals of selling and master them in order to get best results. The nature of sales personality depends on certain extent on heredity and environment. An intelligent salesman would combine the study and actual practice of the fundamentals by analysis.

A good successful salesman should posses some certain qualities in order to achieve success.

1. Sales personality

Sales personality is all about the sales man itself. Personality can be produced and improved by developing the qualities in the positive traits. A person may not have all essential qualities of a sales person but he has to strive in order to compensate the lacking. The positive qualities to be developed, in order to increase and improve the salesman’s personality such as kindness, courage, confidence, honesty, loyalty, good health, and cheerfulness.

All the sales person would not have all the positive qualities they might have some negative qualities such as fear, gloominess, cowardice etc. These qualities should be neglected from the sales person. Habits once formed are always difficult to change. A person who has the capability to work hard will always work without any difficulties. So it is necessary for the salesperson to develop the positive traits which may be difficult at the beginning, and there by building a positive personality.

Some of the important aspects to be developed by the sales person to achieve success are:

(a) Physical traits

It includes health, breadth, posture, speech, and appearance. Without good health the sales person would not have the endurance to sell the product or achieve his targets. He may also be required to move about different places, which would be difficult for him, and as well as stand during the greater part of the day. Offensive breadth must be avoided because it may repel the customers. It can be easily detected and controlled by the salesperson himself. It may be caused to defective teeth or physical disorders or, from stomach. Good posture considerably enhances the appearance and personality of the sale person’s. Good posture doesn’t mean a straight and rigid posture. It means unnecessary tension of muscles should be avoided. Voice should be very expressive, pleasant and it should attract the customers a lot. The voice should not be high pitched, hoarse or monotonous. Neat and pleasing appearance is essential for a salesperson in any walk of life. A good appearance of a sales person will give him confidence in presenting his arguments in a convincing manner without being distracted by fear of his own appearance. Appropriate way of dressing also plays a key role in appearance; it should be clean and fit well. The salesperson should know how to smile; a good natural smile would enhance his appearance.

(b) Mental Traits

Mental traits include accuracy, alertness, imagination, initiative, observation, and self-confidence etc. The salesman should be alert, ready to find out ways and means of serving the customers. Alertness is a part in which the sales person should inspire confidence of the customers. Customers normally would not like hurried salespersons as well a slow one.
It is one of the most important mental attributes, which should be developed by the salesperson.

If a salesman with imagination will have the capability to visualize the articles required by the customer, such a customer would be relieved and so grateful for suggestions and ideas given by the salesperson. The salesperson should be able to think and decide for himself instead of having to be told everything, he should be self-reliant. The important quality in a good salesperson is the ego drive, which makes him want to make the sale. He must remain enthusiastic of the job. The salesperson should have the capability to take decisions for himself and assist the wavering customers into making his decisions by gentle means of questions and suggestions.

The salesperson should have the attribute of keen observation. A person who is a keen observer will immediately sort out the problems and find a solution as soon as possible. The salesman must be interested in his work and strive to learn all the duties of the different phases. He must pay a close attention to, the customers, the product he sells, and the enterprise he works for. Self-confidence springs from the knowledge. Therefore he should acquire thorough knowledge of the goods he sells, likely type of customers. The salesperson should have confidence in himself and products he sells to the customers.

(c) Social traits

The ability to make friends and to get along with the people in one of the most valuable assets. Social traits includes, ability to meet the public, the most important quality of a salesperson to meet the public and speak about the product he wants to sell them. He is also required to overcome considerable resistance, deal with the strangers in his selling activity and open up new territories. The salesman should always be polite and generous to his work and to the customers. It deals, not to be late for appointments, addressing customers in a friendly way. Never losing temper, saying thank you and good-bye while leaving. All the workers should be cooperative help one another to make pleasant working conditions.

(d) Character traits

There are some important attributes in a person’s character. No one can expect to be successful unless he follows some modal characteristics. It includes honesty and reliability, enthusiasm, industry and persistence.

2. Knowledge of goods

The salesperson should have the knowledge about the products he is selling. Sales person without technical knowledge about the product would be a danger to he customer. Naturally he cannot explain something prospective to the customers, which he himself doesn’t understand .If the salesman has the knowledge about the product he would be able answer all the queries raised by the customers. Even if a single answer were not given clearly, the customer would doubt about the quality of the product. Besides by having the knowledge it will become easier to make the customer understand about the product.

The extent of the knowledge required of a salesman depends on whether he is in selling high cost products or low priced products. The salesperson should acquire information as to the policies behind the products as these are reflected in the products. Knowledge of the production methods can de used by the salesman to justify the cost of the product, he should also know about the law affecting the sales and selling, knowledge about the firm, knowledge about tariffs delivery conditions also. There are different methods to acquire knowledge about the products:

Ø Personal experience.
Ø Reading books, trade journals.
Ø Consulting with the seniors.
Ø Studying advertisement.
Ø Reading sales manual.
Ø Meetings and conferences.

3. Importance buying motives

There are number of motives. The commonest motives are fear, profit, pride, comfort, fashion, health, and habit. A salesman selling life insurance may utilize the motive of love for the family, loyalty, therefore he should find out the fears involved in it. It may be death, fear of loss etc. Profit in this the salesman should make the two points clear to make money, save money. He should motivate the customers to buy the products he sell about the positive aspects and negative aspects which would provide a clear picture to the customer, whether this product would suite them or not. And by giving suggestions and ideas to the customers.

Idea Language

Amitabh Bachchan recites 'India Poised' anthem

India Poised Anthem (Hindi)

Amitabh Bachchan

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