When I hear the word optimist, I am reminded of the phrase, “an optimist is a pessimist not in possession of all the facts.”
When I first heard this I laughed and have ‘dined out’ on it more than once when the word comes up in conversation. I confess to being a born optimist – something I inherited from my mother who always sees the bright side of everything.
On reflection though this phrase could be seen to show optimists in a dim light. It could be inferring that optimists are dreamers, Walter Mittys and that blind optimism is no more than wishful thinking.
Optimists will always see a glass as half full. Pessimists see it not just as half empty but containing a liquid which is distasteful or even poisonous. Yet sometimes optimists can become the target of those with a cynical disposition.
Well I think that such blind optimism does lead itself to being open to criticism but it has too much of a bad press. To redress this situation, it’s time that we got a bit scientific about it. So much so that I’ve coined a new term called Optimology. In fact I am really optimistic about this word as I Googled in and found nobody is using it for anything of relevance. This means that as soon as this article is published and I blog it, these viewpoints will even be on top of Google within 24 hours.
It is this type of ‘creative’ optimism that the word refers to. If you simply take an optimistic view and do not act upon it, you will have a better life than a pessimist who will simple manifest the ‘not so good’. If you take an optimistic view and act upon it, you will have a Great Life. To ensure your optimism grounds into physical reality, it is important to use the Cascade of Creativity.
The first step towards such greatness is to back your optimism with high intent, not just wishful thinking. For example, by simply coining this term I have the seed of an Inspiration to start a new movement training professional Optimologists who teach these principles. When enough people think differently, Mother Earth tilts her axis in recognition.
The next step is to Dream where this might lead to. Imagine a world where companies employ Optimology consultants or even have one on the Executive board. For each corporate action, only the positive spins will be sought. I was trained to faciliate meetings a few years ago with a wonderful tool called Appreciative Enquiry. In it you simply discover what works well and just make it work even better. No time is spent navel-gazing or on the Blame Game. Egos aren’t supressed but harnessed and pointed in the right direction.
In Appreciative Enquiry too, the outputs of the dream phase are then managed. This is the next crucial step in the Optimology process. Before acting wildly and running off with unbridled excitment, desired outcomes are defined and tested in an Evaluation phase. So to take Optimology to the next phase, I throw the gauntlet down and ask any trainee Optimologists to get in touch. Collectively we will define a training and testing programme to see where this can go. From which we can set some goals – they will be high ones. As I know already this works, all activity will be synced to the Moon Phase.
Finally, there comes Action. My first action is to write this article and broadcast it. There will inevitably be the book to be written on the subject and all the training manuals. If this is to be, I know the right team will materialise so that this won’t just fall on my shoulders. My role is as creative spark – and CEO. Where CEO stands for Catalystic Evangelist of Optimology.
Now my ever present optimism has already created a Pretty Good Life for me. I have no desire to ‘own’ this movement or even to lead it. This is a call to action for all of an optimistic disposition out there to come together to make a change. This is no new religion and the dogmatic need not apply. The philosophy will be freely available and distributed. Revenue will generated only where Added Value is delivered.
“Truly, food for thought. I really enjoyed chewing over the contents.”
Flavours of Thought started as a chapter in the light bulb book and has spawned into a book in its own right. Not only that but the most amazing sequels to Flavours are coming along too … watch this space.
It is a book of transformation.
We go about our days not giving our thoughts a second thought. This is a real shame as our thoughts fundamentally changes the world around us.
In Part 1 of Flavours of Thought, our thoughts processes are divided into groups of three, namely Ethereal Whispers, Unconscious Murmurs and Directives. Each group is then further divided into seven flavours.
By thinking about our each of our thoughts as having one of these 21 flavours, a transformation happens. We start to realise we are not a slave to them anymore and they will yield to our will and direction.
Part 11 of the book, Recipes for Fresh Thinking, then shows how these 21 flavours can be combined into 21 sample recipes (there are billions of other permutations) to tackle common issues like self-anger all the way through to finding your soul path.
The simplicity of this book belies its power as it is crafted from ancient wisdom but in a modern context.
“This book is intrinsically simple. Simple to read; simple to understand; simple to apply. Its simplicity is what makes it genius.”
Published using CompletelyNovel
I have used the most amazing new site to publish the print version called CompletelyNovel. It took just a few hours to go from Word document to published book.
Their model is to allow readers to read the whole book online for free, much as you would browse a book in a bookshop – and you can do this here
This is one book you will want to own however though and you can get it here online and order it in bookshops …
For those of you with ereaders or smartphones, the book is also available via the Amazon Kindle store for the Kindle, iPad, iPhone, Android and Blackberry.
In fact, the book has been written with the iPhone in mind and it is optimised for reading on the small screen.
See the Flavours of Thought Facebook page more recipes and new flavours.
List of Contents
Preprandial Part 1: Flavours of Thought
– Strangeness: Ethereal Whispers
– Charm: Unconscious Murmurs
– Direction: Who’s Driving The Bus? Part 11: Recipes for Fresh Thinking
– Starters: Recipes 1 to 7
– Main Courses: Recipes 8 to 14
– Desserts: Recipes 15 to 21 Postprandial: The Obvious
See what readers are already saying about it …
“Oh my you are brilliant with your wit and insight!” – Tim Johnson, Director of Strategy, 4Networking Ltd
“Anti-perception is an intriguing concept and just on of the may gems to be found in Flavours of Thought which is a delightfully simple journey into personal development. The book can be used to build a much larger and more powerful framework that I believe hints at an even greater innovation which surprisingly is not often found in the personal development industry. I thoroughly recommend you read it and judge for yourself.” – Bill Liao, Founder of WeForest.com
“It is the deceptive power in its apparent simplicity which allows Flavours of Thought to be easily accessible to both beginners and time served devotees of personal development work. The book is cleverly engineered and crafted to produce light bulb moments (or understanding) whether it’s being read cover to cover, dipped into randomly or as an aide memoir when required. I do all three …. often!” – Jackie Walker, Edinburgh
“It’s brilliant! I love the idea of thinking about thoughts in a way that encourages my intuition, without embroiling me in my intellect.” – Kuumba Nia, author of The Circle of One
“Through gaining an understanding of the flavours in my thought process and applying the recipes I am now positively dealing with being hurt and rejected and using them to remove frustration and to find my soul path. I have applied recipes to my business, to my writing and to the way I chose to live. As a result, I can now see that in every situation I have a glass half full mentality, where before there may have been despair. This is one inspirational, magical and thought changing book that has the power to change your very being.” – Mike Smith
“This book takes personal development it to a different level. No stuffy 50 year old theories that people still hang their hats on. Refreshing, thought provoking and inspirational.” – Anita-Clare Field
Wearing my hat of the Bookwright, I have been talking for a while now about how a book becomes your best business card …
With my book Flavours of Thought, I have surpassed even my own expectations [and advice] and it has lead me into a new area I simply hadn’t planned.
For starters, I didn’t plan to write this particular book last year – it just kind of happened. It was inspired by an eponymous chapter in my book on light bulb moments. In addition, I had for a while being studying the Major Arcana of the Tarot and wanted to write a lay person’s guide to it.
The two themes came together perfectly and the book ended up ‘writing itself’ during a single month last August. I opened my email after finishing the very last recipe in the book only to find a message from a new publishing service called CompletelyNovel. Within a couple of short weeks, I ended up with the book in print and available worldwide for download from the Amazon Kindle Store.
Now that would be a good result for most people in itself – and it was for me too – but the Universe wasn’t finished with me yet. By the time the year was out, I had a training course running teaching people how to concoct their own recipes …
… AND a 1-2-1 karmic mentoring programme that takes people on a tour of the flavours called the Cube of Karma.
To find out more, have a listen to Jackie Walker, the first trained Master Chef on her experience of it all …
Blocks is an easy to follow guide to unlocking your true creative potential.
This practical and comprehensive book takes you on a journey of the mind to help you banish your blocks forever and tap into an abundant flow of inspiration and creativity.
This book is for anyone who writes regularly, whether professionally or for pleasure. Nearly everyone will at some point have found themselves unable to get into their creative flow and achieve the literary results they are looking for.
‘Blocks’ explains why we get stuck and how to get unblocked. It is available in ebook form and, optionally, with 6 guided MP3 visualisations designed to get your creative juices flowing.
Note that although ‘Blocks’ was written primarily for authors, it can equally be used by artists, musicians and any one involved in any creative process.
List of Contents
So Why Write A Book?
Making Time To Write
Getting In The Groove
So What’s Stopping You?
Mapping Your Mind
Whole Mind Not-Thinking
The Superconsciousness
Becoming Fear-less
Vestigial Minds
The Physicality Of Inspiration
Food For Thought
Using Dreamtime
Reader-Centric Writing
Expanding Time
Writing In Trance
Being An Author
Putting It All Together
Voiding Karma
100 Years of Ermintrude is a book of meditative poetry and my first real foray into the world of publishing. It comprises three intertwining life stories and is told in just 99 stanzas. Although it can be read in less than an hour, it’s something that will stay with you forever and you will want to read again.
Find out why this story is making grown men cry, mothers smile and children laugh and one man said, “Stunning. I cried. That’s all.”
“Inspiring, moving, emotional, poignant and full from cover to cover with the most amazing energy. Thank you Tom. I am a different person for having read 100 Years of Ermintrude.” “Truly a touching piece of work and artistry wonderfully complimented by the guitar music. Thought provoking to the extent I just wanted to ‘hug’ someone.”
‘Ermintrude’ started life as a PDF and morphed into an MP3 download and MP4 Jackanory-style video before I wrote the two sequels and made it as an author in print for the first time.
If you have an iPhone you can get a full multimedia version of the first story in the trilogy which will make a commute fly by here.
Blogs that list “things” are some of the most popular and retweeted blogs on the Interweb. Like all these things, there are some do’s and some don’t.
Here’s my top seven tips:
1. Make sure the title is snappy, contains a pun or humour and even try and make it rhyme – kind of like this one
2. Go for something that’s topical – e.g. iPad, Ryder Cup
3. Seven is the optimum number as most people can (just about) hold seven things in their short term memory
4. If you have to list more than seven either rank them – e.g. Top Ten in order of popularity – or group them
5. For grouped lists, three is a brilliant number – e.g. Good, Bad and Ugly or Top, Middle or Bottom
6. Three and five are also good numbers, especially when the list have equal weighting like an equilateral triangle or five pointed star – your 3, 5 or 7 points can also form an ACRONYM or MNEMONIC so the list can be remembered more easily
7. Make sure you end with an invite for others to add their thoughts to the list as I am doing now … please add your tips below
If you want to know more about the psychology of writing brilliant blogs with eye catching and brain-catching headlines, come along to the You Only Have 1 Second series of workshops – details here
So with increased functionality in iBooks, I thought it worth pointing out the pros & cons of publishing your ‘work’ as an iBook or as an App.
Why iBook?
If your content is essentially uni-directional – i.e. read, listen or watch only – then iBook is a good route. It is worth doing a Kindle version too though to get on both platforms at not much extra complexity or cost.
The production costs for a text-only iBook are in the low hundreds of dollars and for a multimedia iBook (if you have the assets), about 20% of the cost of producing an app. This means you will be able to get your investment back quickly for a reasonably popular title.
At the moment, authors and publishers need a US Tax ID to submit self-published works – this will change shortly.
Note that Storyist software is brilliant at generating compliant ePub files as is now Apple Pages.
Note also that various aggregator sites, like Smashwords and Lulu, allow international self-published authors to submit to the iBookstore. They will have to catch up a little to support the new format though.
See this blog from Bubblecow for How To Publish Your Book On Kindle and Ipad
Why App?
An app is a completely different kettle of bananas. When you build an app, you can access all the features of the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad operating system.
Apps are interactive and bi-directional. In my opinion, they should be used to either augment a conventional or ebook OR to extend the idea of what a book is about in the first place.
For example, see these App Books and note their main features:
140 Characters – embedded discussion forum for author and readers to interact and inclusion of live Twitter stream based on keywords, Twitter handles and hashtags
Kryo Pro – card set and book integrated with auto-switch between four languages – English, Russian, German and Spanish PLUS ability to email or Tweet a sample card
Top 10 City Guides – geo-coded information, latest news via live RSS feeds
Now before you get excited, your investment in an app like these starts at a few thousand dollars. Get it right though and you have access to tens of millions of owners of a device.
Even if you give your app away, the exposure alone can be worth it.
Note also that the other advantage of an App over an iBook is the separate listing on the iTunes store on the web, as opposed to within the iBookstore which is only accessed via the device at the moment. Your app also appear as an icon on a device as opposed to a book inside an app.
This is perhaps not of great significance but you do have your own App URL and it seems to get great Google rankings too.
Note also that as Apple and others allow more features of HTML5 to be introduced, this gap will narrow even more … watch this space … ePub2 will be with us before you know. Great time to be an author and a publisher.
When people repeat the same thing often enough it can enter the common psyche and be assumed to be true.
A good example might be an urban myth like the lemmings jumping off a cliff. It’s now equally well known (or thought as such) that this was a staged scene in a Walt Disney friendly critters-type movie. Perhaps this is just an urban myth derived from an urban myth.
It’s also become a bit of a myth that people spend 5 to 10 seconds on a web page before they decide if they like it or not.
The reality is that, in our increasingly connected world, we make our minds up about a web page in less than a second. If you are still reading this, that’s a testament to this in action. If you aren’t then this of course means I have not succeeded in my intention.
What’s worse still than my failure to get people to read this far is that before you came to this page, the title will have grabbed you or not. You may have seen a tweet or clicked a link in a newsletter.
If you did click the link and you have read this far, it’s worth pondering why and worth noting that there’s both an art and science to engaging with readers and getting their eyes to follow your copy down the page.
This is of course very important for authors seeking to entrance their readers with a page turner and, in this day and age, increasingly so for blogger and micro-bloggers.
It’s of course nothing new – consider these book titles which all became both best sellers and were subsequently made into successful films:
Trimalcio in West Egg
A Jewish Patient Begins His Analysis
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Would you have gone to see the film based on these titles or perhaps been more enamoured by their eventual titles of?
The Great Gatsby
Portnoy’s Complaint
Blade Runner
When I work with writers, I spend quite some time getting that perfect title which also includes some due diligence and market research. Sometimes the title is just something that gets the author going and sometimes it sees itself on the front cover of the book.
When you get it right, you’re on to a winner in many more ways than one!!
These themes and more are the subject of a new series of 1/2 day workshops I’m running with Nicky Kriel from the 1st November this year.
When I hear the word optimist, I am reminded of the phrase, “an optimist is a pessimist not in possession of all the facts.”
Blocks is an easy to follow guide to unlocking your true creative potential.
100 Years of Ermintrude is a book of meditative poetry and my first real foray into the world of publishing. It comprises three intertwining life stories and is told in just 99 stanzas. Although it can be read in less than an hour, it’s something that will stay with you forever and you will want to read again.
Two ways to get 100 Years of Ermintrude: 
Apple announced recently that they’ve followed Amazon’s lead and iBooks can now have audio and video embedded in them.
When people repeat the same thing often enough it can enter the common psyche and be assumed to be true.