Here the link to downloading a useful parent's guide to raising inventors at home, with ten ways to creating inventing-friendly environment for your kids.
HELP GROW INVENTIVE MINDS! MAKE INVENTING A FAMILY ADVENTURE!
Am I prepared?
What do I expect?
~ inspired by the remarkable work of success coach Kevin Eikenberry;
"When Susan Boyle took the stage to audition for 'Britain's Got Talent', the judges & many in the audience snickered & rolled their eyes as the frumpy, middle-aged Scottish church volunteer shared her dream of becoming a professional singer.
But when she opened her mouth to sing 'I Dreamed a Dream' - a ballad from the treasured musical 'Les Miserables' - angels soared, jaws dropped, judges let out audible gasps, & hundreds in the audience stood to applaud & roared their approval as she sang her dream into reality.
She ended up second in the competition but first in the hearts of many new fans around the world.
On one day April 2009, Susan's hidden gift & dream exploded onto the world stage.
Within hours, YouTube postings of her performance had more than 20 million approving viewers.
Her 'Britain's Got Talent' videos were the most watched YouTube videos in 2009, attracting more than 120 million viewers worldwide, more than the next top three most-watched YouTube videos combined.
Millions were brought to tears merely watching her performance. Many have focused on the need to not judge a book by its covers.
That is a valuable lesson, but more important, you should never let your gifts & your dreams die within you.
Never forget that authentic gifts & empowering dreams produce amazing performances when unleashed.
Optimism is born when attitude, skills & opportunity come together at the right time to deliver excellence."
[Extracted from 'The Optimism Advantage: 50 Simple Truths to Transform Your Attitudes & Actions into Results', by psychologist Terry Paulson;]
[For me, the lesson key to the foregoing Susan Boyle story is 'Follow Your Bliss', an apt phrase, which I had picked up from an unforgettable training session with the legendary Jim Channon in Kona, Hawaii, during the early nineties, even though the powerful phrase was often attributed to the great American mystic Joseph Campbell.
Readers can go to this link to read an excellent & extensive write-up on 'How to Follow Your Bliss: A Step-by-Step Guide';]
"Gaining an edge in the future depends upon the ability to hone the hyphen - to creatively bundle & rebundle skills & knowledge. Cross-fertilisation gains when two or more unlikely fields combine. The industries of the future all have hyphens in them: bio-tech, multi-media, eco-production..."
~ Kate Kane;
How am I doing?
Or, how well am I you performing?
Is there a difference between what I want and what I have?
Have I set any new records?
Have I achieved a personal best?
Am I on pace for having the best year of my life?
What am I going to do differently starting today to get myself back on target?
~ inspired by the Goals Guy, Gary Ryan Blair;
"My attitude is that creativity might be a commodity. So, the trick isn't really to be really creative or really strategic, but it's really to combine the two."
~ Alex Bogusky, Creative Director;
"Look what the educational system does to creativity. Every child learns at a very early stage that when they're asked a question in school they must first ask themselves a question: What answer does the asker expect? That's the way you get through school, by providing people with the answers they expect. Now, one thing about an answer that somebody else expects is it can't be creative because it's already known. What we ought to be trying to do with children is get them to give us answers that we don't expect-to stimulate creativity. We kill it in school."
~ Russell Ackoff, 'The Deming Library' (Volume 21);
Today, what is education for?
Where should it take place? How? When?
What is the ideal school?
The ideal lifelong learning experience?
Who should be in charge of education?
And who pays for it all?
~ from the book, 'Turning Learning Right Side Up: Putting Education Back on Track', by systems scientist Russell Ackoff & education innovator Daniel Greenberg;
Psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi has studied highly creative people who are passionate about their work or hobby but are not rewarded or motivated by money or fame.
He has attributed their passion to a concept called optimal experience or flow, which he has also broken down into nine elements:
1. There are clear goals every step of the way.
2. There is immediate feedback to one’s actions.
3. There is a balance between challenges and skills.
4. Action and awareness are merged.
5. Distractions are excluded from consciousness.
6. There is no worry of failure.
7. Self-consciousness disappears.
8. The sense of time becomes distorted.
9. The activity becomes autotelic [the meaning of the activity is within itself].
"On our track to success, we have to fight the tendency to look at others & see how far they've come. The only thing that counts is how to use the potential we possess & that we run our race to the best of our abilities."
~ Denis Waitley & Reni Witt;
Do I ever think about how my eulogy will read?
Or, will it be one that is talked about & remembered for years - just as my life's contributions will be?
I find it intriguing as well as amusing to read that the Buzan Organisation has claimed that
"... 250 million people already 'mindmap'..."
on their newly created ThinkBuzan website.
Is this a fact or pure hyperbole? Or, did they just pluck the figure from the sky or is it an audited figure?
Likewise, in the corporate website of the Singapore Institute of Management (SIM), which offers professional programs to the corporate world as well as to the general public, I have noted that Tony Buzan has claimed that he is
"the owner of the world's highest Creativity IQ".
I like to know who is the ranking or rating authority.
Interestingly & also amusingly, Tony Buzan also claimed
"he has been consistently ranked as one of the top international speakers at all levels & to groups from 1-15,000..."
"... rated as the top international lecturer in 15 national & international management associations."
In the first instance, any young kid can tell you that 1 is definitely not a group.
More importantly, I like to know the respective ranking or rating authority in the two instances.
Did the relevant people in SIM bothered to conduct due diligence on the "accolades"?
Hopefully, the relevant people at SIM, being a premier management training institution, are not entrenched in colonial mentality. Layman calls it the 'Ang Moh Factor'.
['Ang Moh' is a widely accepted & used as a simple term to describe a Causasian. You will hear the term in local TV & movie productions, radio shows, & also read it in the magazines or books.
By the way, readers can pop into this AngryAngMo website for elaboration on the term. The website is run by a German expatriate.]
"All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous, unpremeditated act without benefit of experience."
~ Henry Miller, (1891–1980); American novelist & also painter; well-known for breaking with existing literary forms; as such, his most characteristic works are 'Tropic of Cancer', 'Tropic of Capricorn' & 'Black Spring';
