ThisMonth's Mind Flexors
Mind Flexors
are conciseexercises to practice the six characteristics
listed below.If you put on ice skates and skate a little bit each day
for the next year,you will definitely be better on ice at year's end. Research
and commonsense tells us that regular flexing of your creativity capacity
will makeit easier for you to be creative on demand.
Mind Flexors
are designedto be fun and to exercise your mind. You don't have to do all
of them toincrease your creativity, but practice never hurts! Some people
who haveattended TMI's Unbind Your Mind creativity class share ideas across
e-mailor do the exercises with colleagues or family.
There are no
correctanswers to the Mind Flexors. Give yourself permission to think of
as unusualanswers as possible.
- You live in a culture
where peoplecelebrate death. Why is this so? Brainstorm a list of reasons,
and thenchoose your most reasonable answer and your most unreasonable answer.
- Make up several new names for yourselfusing
names of body parts. Choose names that you would like to be called.
- The area you are living in has beenexperiencing
a drought for the past ten years. Devise a special ritualto call forth the
Rain Gods. Be as elaborate as you can in your descriptionof the ritual.
- List ten examples of ostentatiousdisplay of
wealth. For example, monogramed firewood.
- Write an exaggerated year end Holidayletter
to send to your relatives. You have done extremely well and arevery boastful.
- Rewrite the ending of the movie Titantic.You
remember that at the very end the elderly woman throws the necklaceinto
the water. You can change that event if you wish, but start from there.
- Sing a song, the repeating refrainwhich can
be no more than four words.
Janelle Barlow,
Author
Mind Flexors, I and
II
You are free to use these Mind Flexors for your
personaluse. With any publication or duplication in a document, electronic
or otherwise,full credit must be given to Janelle Barlow, TMI, and permission
must beobtained.
UnbindYour Mind - Six Characteristics
People who rank high in the following six characteristics tend
tobe more creative:
Fluency of ideas: Themore creative you are, the more ideas you
can produce in a given time.If your brain can rapidly produce 30 ideas, it
does not matter if mostof them are of little value. You say that one good
idea is better than30 bad or mediocre ideas, but it can take 30 ideas to
produce one goodidea. Most people do not produce their best ideas until their
brain hassorted through some average ideas. It is almost as if the brain
needs toget warmed up in the same way athletes put their bodies through warm-upperiods
before competition or training.
Withholding of judgment:If you delay your judgments, you will get
more high quality ideas whenyou are brainstorming. When you judge, you are
looking for what does notwork or fit, rather than possibilities. It is within
possibilities thatcreativity sits.
Tolerance of ambiguity:Tolerance of ambiguity is the ability to
live in a universe where thereare no right or wrong answers, where ideas
or thoughts are vague and yetunformed. There are two sides to this ability:
willingness to see bothsides of the same coin, and willingness to stay in
the questioning phasebefore rushing to an answer.
Flexibility and imagination:Creativity demands flexible thinking,
almost a childlike attitude of wonderment.To be creative, you must operate
as if the world can be as you create it.
Concentration: This isthe ability to stay focused on a subject,
even while you feel frustratedor bored. It is the ability to ignore distractions
while trying to solveproblems or accomplish something. Concentration and
determination are criticalaspects of creativity.
Preference for disorder:Creative people tend to like disorder.
This does not necessarily mean mess.One of the stereotypes of creative people
is that of the messy inventoror writer with piles of paper everywhere. Mess
has little to do with creativity.Disorder is something else. Preference for
disorder refers to asymmetryin design, nonlinear thinking, or shaking up
the normal order.
Previous "Mind Flexor"
selections:
#1
#2
#3
#4
#5
#6
#7
#8
#9
#10
#11
#12
#13
#14
#15
#16
#17
#18
#19
#20
#21
#22
#23
#24
#25
#26
#27
#28
#29
#30
#31
#32
#33
#34
#35
#36
#37
#38
#39
#40
#41
#42
#43
#44
#45
#46
#47
#48
#49
#50
#51
#52
#53
#54
#55
#56
#57
#58
#59
#60
#61
#62
#63
#64
| TMI, USA has a complete
book of365 Mind Flexors exercises available. It is authored by Janelle Barlow,Ph.D.
and is titled, Mind Flexors.We
will also publish here new (never before seen!) Mind Flexors--sevenat a time
each month. We invite our readers to add their own creativityto this list,
and we'll credit you with your contribution. We'll also listyour creative
answers on this page if you send them to us. |
CreativityTraining
Program
UnbindYour
Mind & Mind Flexors Publications
|
