The latest interview in the Moments of Lights series of podcasts is with Eddie Yu, author of a new book called Speedlights and Elephants.
At a surface level you might take it as yet another book on how to make a million online perhaps making claims that worked for the author but are out of reach for normal mortals. You might cynically think it’s said author’s attempt to make that million for themselves.
Well you’d be wrong on both counts – Eddie’s approach is a breath of fresh air. He is wise well beyond his years and has tuned into two factors that make the difference between failure and success for any business or initiative.
They are our mindset and having a meta-strategy
Listen to interview to find out more and get a copy of the book today if you want to reap the success for your business you so richly deserve …
After speaking to Eddie, it made me think about my own meta-strategies and that, although I have them, I haven’t communicated or shared them with anyone but close friends.
So I’d like to try an experiment and publically state them here and also send out a call for action which is threefold:
1. Declare your meta-strategy – either in a comment in this blog or elsewhere
2. If you think I can help you with yours, let me know
3. If you think you can help me with mine, let me know
My meta-strategies
To show the world how to tap into unlimited inspiration
To help people how to embrace fears and fulfill their magnificence
To be an instrumental part of the transition from Humanity v2.0 to Humanity v3.0
I had the great pleasure last week of hearing Dr David Hamilton talking about the remarkable properties of mirror neurons in the brain. They are the mechanism behind how we empathise, emulate, copy and learn.
This resulted in many light bulb moments firing in this particular head of mine.
I’ve been doing talks and workshops on creativity and innovation for some years now and I’d noticed that when I get into the state where I can receive light bulb moments, people in the room would follow shortly after.
To find out how this all works, I recommend you buy David’s book called The Contagious Power of Thinking or, better still, attend one of his talks and then buy the book – as he explains it all much better than I ever could.
So at my talks naturally people will pick up on my body language, the words I say and the images should I use any slides or handouts. The mirror neurons are the mechanism whereby such empathy is achieved. There is something which is more subtle in operation too however.
Before I even get to the venue to do the talk, I set my intention that the attendees of the talk will get into the state of having light bulb moments. Furthermore, that this state will linger either for a few days after the talk or even permanently.
People report having not known why they came to a particular talk but that they felt strangely drawn to attend. They also can’t remember where they first heard about it.
Now I am not claiming any extrasensory powers. What everyone is experiencing is a natural state of affairs and happens all the time but, mostly, outside our conscious awareness.
What is interesting is how this concept can be applied in business – especially if the business is involved in new product development or any creative field such as publishing, marketing, design or any artistic endeavour.
Any mindset we adopt will spread unconsciously – including anger, fear and guilt – and any behaviour and culture set will also ripple throughout an organisation like gossiping and lunchtime drinking.
So if you want innovation to spread in your organisation, it needs to be seeded and then it will spread organically. For example, apocryphally a US president visiting NASA in the Apollo era asked a janitor what he did and the reply was, “I fly rockets to the Moon”. This type of team spirit amplifies, reflects and ripples from mirror neurons to mirror neurons in each team member working to a common goal.
Sowing the seeds for innovation
The first step is to initiate the culture change with a thought and attitude and it can start anywhere in the organisation but ideally with senior management. The end goal is for it to be adopted from the bottom up whilst also aiming to remove the whole idea of the top and bottom hierarchy, as one could not exist without the other and it is in essence more like a symbiosis.
Then practical steps should be taken to foster innovation throughout the business, such as:
1. A simple suggestion box [perhaps anonymous]
2. A suggestions wall or whiteboard [best seeded with an associative Mind Map]
3. A more formal and facilitated intervention like a Walt Disney Three Rooms session or de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats. Even better again would be to use Appreciative Inquiry which additionally generates a positive thinking mind set. The idea of positive thinking also spreads like wildfire and is based on taking what works and making it even better rather than focusing on woes and trials and tribulations.
The latest podcast in the Moments of Light series is with the sublimely wise and intelligent soul who is Nicola Phoenix.
Nicola is a Spiritual Psychologist and yoga teacher with such a simple approach to share by which we can all get to a place of happiness. Where many make the journey over-complex and arduous, Nicola makes it accessible and do-able. What’s more, we can all start doing it today – right now.
Have a listen to the interview to find out more … and then get yourself a copy of the book !!
Details on how to get your copy of Reclaiming Happiness and how to contact Nicola here … www.nicolaphoenix.com
A wonderful and eclectic chat with Joel Friedlander on how authors can use light bulb moments in their work …
Topics covered :
Where do light bulb moments come from?
What blocks light bulb moments?
How to use your whole brain and whole mind
The beauty and power of Mapping Your Mind
The importance of meditation and the breath in ideas generation
Find out more about Joel and subscribe to his brilliant blog which is full of help for authors and publishers – and get a copy of his book too – www.thebookdesigner.com
Words are wonderful constructs. They allow us to swap and communicate our thoughts either verbally, in song or by the written (or typed) word.
They can educate, entertain and illuminate or, if wrongly chosen, annoy, anger or sadden. The construction of an individual word can hold intrinsic additional content or its root meaning might be corrupted or hidden by years of ‘chinese whispers’.
For example, the word inspiration both conveys the concept of ideas but also alludes to the oft-missed connection between the breath and thought itself.
Conversely the word palindrome, although a brilliant word, kind of lets itself down somewhat. It describes a word, or phrase, which is spelt the same when written forwards or backwards like ‘kayak’ or “Madam I’m Adam”. So why isn’t it a palindrome itself? That would linguistically brilliant. Come to thing of it, when applied to language especially shouldn’t that be ‘forewords’ and ‘backwords’.
Similarly, the lovely word onomatopoeia isn’t onomatopoeic like ‘cuckoo’ or ‘crack’.
The word understanding, although well meaning, also is a bit of a disappointment when you think about it. The reason being is that it implies that when you comprehend something that that thing is somehow above you and you under it.
A much better word would be ‘overstanding’ which implicitly means you are above the very thing that you are supposed to ’understand’. It is one of the many plays on words common in the Rastafari Language.
Here it is ‘overstood’ that the idea cannot be superior to its creator.The Rastafari philosophy asserts that every man woman and child are equal – this is the concept behind the term ’I-n-I’. The individual who is receiving the information is equal to the communicator of the information and superior to the idea being communicated. So we should not ’understand’ or stand under an idea; when you absorb and correctly perceive an idea, you ‘overstand’ it.
Rastafari is full of much more linguistic richness. For example, the movement is always mind-full of a continual (I-tinual) remembrance of the struggle for emancipation. Similarly a concept is called an ‘I-cept’.
The language is also rich in humour with ’politricks’ replacing the word ’politics’. ’Everliving’ replaces ’everlasting’ implying and conveying the immortality of the soul. It is most commonly used in the phrase “I and I is Everliving, Everfaithful, Eversure. Ras Tafari.”
‘I man’ is the inner person within each Rastafari believer. ‘Irator’ replaces ‘creator’, and ‘Iration’ replaces ‘creation’. These are subtle yet deep concepts that science, and some religions, are only just getting their heads around. Implicit in these words is the description of how consciousness creates reality and not the other way around. Once this is fully embraced as a concept, the so-called Laws of Physics will add up and all that missing Dark Energy will appear from behind and under our noses.
When we take the time to analyse and think about what words really mean, we can make huge leaps in our ‘overstanding’.
Each year the Concise Oxford English Dictionary brings in a set of new words – and gets rid of some others. Just last month the rather trivial ‘mankini’ as popularised by Borat made it in, as did the ‘retweet’. Perhaps it is time both scholars and speakers of the dynamic and rich language we call English under-took a more comprehensive over-haul.
The latest interview in the Moments of Lights series of podcasts is with Eddie Yu, author of a new book called Speedlights and Elephants.
A wonderful and eclectic chat with Joel Friedlander on how authors can use light bulb moments in their work …
Definitions from the 