Be positive Think positive...
by Amal HEWAVISSENTI
It is a professionally
acknowledged truth that criticism levelled on you positively or
negatively helps much to create and to build up your ideas and makes you
highly responsive to challenges.
Most people act under the perfect misconception that their
criticisms, whether positive or cynical, would harshly damage somebody’s
abilities that may be developed and unconditionally block his otherwise
resounding success.
This is baseless. A person who tastes the criticism from others is
much better able to bring out ideas and blossom them into success than
the person who is known to have an aversion even to constructive
criticism, so to speak. Perhaps we may be unwilling to criticise purely
to avoid conflict and to form favourable impressions on others.
This is absolutely wrong because good ideas readily tolerate
criticism and bad ideas never improve if no one points out their
weaknesses and setbacks.
We know that homogeneous groups where everyone shares common beliefs,
values, same background and same knowledge are those who are the most
unlikely to succeed when social changes take place because they are
bound by a common tie restricting mutual criticism whatsoever.
On the contrary, the demand for “resistance or disagreement” is
greater than ever simply because creativity never flourishes when
everybody thinks and acts in the same way.
The long and the short of it is that lot of conflicts and sceptic
views infallibly father good ideas and, as a famous company owner once
said, “If we do not get criticism in whatever form, we must hire
sceptics in order to boost up whatever product we have.”
If ever you happen to have a better idea next time, never hesitate to
go to someone who has a different opinion about it and listen to him
criticising it in detail before analysing its weak points yourself.
Yet, if somebody criticises you behind your back, that is purely
malicious and the motive behind his criticism aims at nothing more than
personal disgrace.
Break a rule for new horizons
If ever you are confronted with a certain problem, you have to stick
to some boundaries which turn out to be laws of nature and mental
limitations.
Dramatically enough, it is here that most people are highly careful
not to break the laws or rules and sometimes they adopt their own
unwritten laws or rules to protect themselves against the tendency to
break them.
Contrary to popular belief, breaking the unwritten laws or rules is
the first lesson of creativity. The more limitations or boundaries you
set up, the less scope of creativity you are able to display in order to
emerge with freshest ideas.
However, it is interesting to note that we are quite afraid to break
the rules simply because of the rigid control impressed on our minds at
school over the “unnecessary freedom” to break a rule that exists.
Curtly speaking we are naturally frightened to be charged with the
cheating of rule breaking and we tend to sacrifice more in order to
avoid breaking the traditional norms, however revolutionary it might
seem. However, creativity is all about breaking an unwritten rule and
not creating it.
Human creativity is often observed to be greatest in the criminal.
Hardened prison guards at Athens, as a newspaper report said, were
watchful about the smuggling in and out of the prisons and gave shocking
revelations of incidents that had taken place within the prison.
They had virtually had all types of experiences within the prison. A
female visitor was once arrested in her attempt to take a bowl of potato
sandwiches wiches to one of the prisoners who used to receive heroin
tucked away in the sandwiches.
The prison guards had reasonable grounds to be watchful because
friends and relations were employing increasingly crafty ways to smuggle
drugs in to the prison. The same newspaper report said that a woman had
been caught smuggling heroin in a bowl of pasta.
The astounding creativity by the criminals is better displayed in the
shrewd diplomatic games they play on others and they leave behind
valuable ideas for others to be more creative. Most often we can learn
something about the power of thinking differently from hardened
criminals.
Find new inspirations
It is also interesting to note that some of our best thinking is
spawned in absolutely odd locations such as bathrooms, buses, bars and
beds where most people feel more relaxed and expressive.
We should locate right thinking places where we assuredly feel more
creative and expressive than usual but we should at the same time, make
sure we work in the particular place more often.
For example, there are ample stories highlighting the superlative
business ideas that were thought of in bars and restaurants and quickly
jotted down on a piece of paper before the “precious creative force”
vanished.
Boring meetings too are ideal places to induce creative thinking and
to generate ideas in areas that have nothing to do with the boring
meeting in question.
Some of us might be having a pen and a paper on our bedside table in
order that we are able to write down all the good ideas which flow into
the mind just before we fall a sleep.
Most people have one or more places where they can be in a brown
study better than usual. It is noted that the renowned music composer,
Beethowan stimulated his brain by pouring ice-cold water on his head
before embarking on a novel creation while Einstein hit on flash of
inspirational thinking while shaving.
Storm your brains
Brain storming is undoubtably a highly popular method of getting new
ideas though unfortunately it does not work on the majority.
It has often been pointed out that most people do not get rewarding
ideas in groups and there are some others who get blessed with vast
spectrum of ideas when the brain is not disturbed by trying to think
hard.
It is true that our incestuous gives us ideas and it hardly emerges
with new, challenging ideas as it is full to the brim with things we
already know which are often presented by the brain as new ideas.
When brainstorming we have a certain chunk of time in which our
conscious comes up with new ideas but our unconscious does not have a
chance of getting an idea off and on.
To test the effectiveness of brainstorming, we can plan a
brainstorming session and discuss an exclusively selected problem from a
number of view points possible for about an hour without trying at all
to resolve the problem during this time period.
Instead, we must concentrate more on formulating and re-formulating
the question from as many different angles as possible and go home
allowing our unconscious to get to work. Meet after around a week or two
and check what ideas have emerged.
Rapid thinking and new thinking
Ideas do not need to be hair-splittingly complicated to be good or
valuable. You might have seen people who are able to father multiple
concepts and thoughts in a given time period than others and you can see
how their brains work faster with new ideas pouring forth in an unbroken
stream, faster than you can snap them up.
People with this calibre of creating ideas frequently get half-baked,
disorganised ideas which are sometimes difficult to interpret.
Although the ideas naturally flow into their minds in a rapid
sequence, some of them are proved to be dramatically brilliant, notably
consistent, well-planned and well-knitted.
It is tragic to reflect on the current generation which is made up of
people who have put a full stop to thinking so much so that their brains
have more or less shut down with complete numbness to creativity.
This, by no means, is to imply that people are perfectly mechanical
or unemotional, but it is blatantly obvious that they are much the same
as those who do not take any exercise. So, we can survive without
exercises although our prospects are exposed to a wider world if we are
in good shape.
People, who have deliberately avoided deep thinking are used to carry
on with their routine of work and often are sceptical of those who might
possibly disturb their traditionally comfortable, trouble free life
style with what they call innovative and revolutionary thinking.
Let’s take a simple case of a sleepy driver. Just as a tired driver
who happens to doze off at the wheel, can make it as long as the highway
is straight, so can a sluggard devoid of thinking, get by so long as the
course of life is smooth and everything remains the same.
To be continued
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