Showing posts with label creativity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label creativity. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Brainstorming Techniques: Top Proven Methods

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BRAINSTORMING TECHNIQUES: TOP PROVEN METHODS
Utilize Brainstorming To Unleash The Power Of Your Mind



Your mind is an endlessly powerful, multi-dimensional multipurpose tool. Regardless of its incredible power, too much conscious focus on attaining a particular goal or on solving a specific, perplexing problem eventually causes a sort of “burnout,” where creative methods and solutions become increasingly elusive as you become increasingly fatigued.

It is at times like these, when the indirect subconscious approach, i.e., solo brainstorming, can provide us with a renewed perspective. While most people talk about brainstorming in groups (“let's toss some ideas around and see what we come up with...”), in this article we'll find ways of brainstorming alone using a combination of techniques and approaches.

At its best, brainstorming is a means of combining the power of the subconscious with the power of the collective consciousness – where your subconscious (without your conscious interference) picks up signals from the ever-growing pool of wisdom on tap in the universe [you may not believe in this notion of collective consciousness, but there is an increasing body of evidence, albeit anecdotal, which makes the case and lends credence to its existence].

At its worst, what we refer to as “brainstorming” simply provides a means of cooling the consious mind down and allowing it to reboot when it is ready [assuming, of course, that your subconscious knows how to signal your conscious mind into renewed wakefulness on demand].

Here are some steps, simply outlined, that you can use to get your mind properly attuned to brainstorming and into the process of brainstorming:

===+ Firstly, relax your conscious mind and let it drift away. You can accomplish this by simple meditation (listening to meditative music) or viewing a hypnotic visual pattern for ten or fifteen minutes. Get your mind ready to brainstorm. If you need some meditative audio and visual, YouTube is an excellent source. I sometimes simply use hypnotic patterns, as they provide some good meditative material. You might try https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iewSUmShL2g for a ten-minute mind prep for brainstorming. Relax your mind and body and simply focus on the audio and the visual. Get lost in the flow of patterns of vision and sound.



===+ Choose a brainstorming approach from the list below, and put it into play (since life is an experiment and the world is your laboratory, try each of these techniques at least once and find which works best for you – be an adventurer):

Technique 1: Take out a yellow lined pad, and write in five words or less a description of the problem you are trying to solve or the result which you are trying to achieve. Then, under each word, taking one word at a time, write the next word which comes to mind through free association. You'll wind up with several very long columns of words, and a pile of ideas as to how to advance your mental task to the next step. It works.

Technique 2: Take the initial steps outlined in Technique 1, create your sentence, look at it for one minute, then close your eyes (this works best while you're sitting in a comfortable chair), and let your mind form pictures using either the brief sentence, a word from the sentence, or a few letters from a single word or words. Ideas will emerge from your internal narration of each of the pictures. Your creativity will be running wild, and that's precisely what you want.

Technique 3: Take out a dictionary, start with any letter you'd like, and read each word once aloud, and follow it with a single simple thought about how that word directly or remotely relates (it doesn't matter how remote the association is) to the problem that you are trying to solve or the objective that you're trying to achieve. After a brief while, new ideas will pop into your head, framed in a new perspective.

Each of the above techniques is associative, distracting, invites daydreaming and does not permit you to address the probem or goal in a conventional, linear approach. The above three “out of the box” brainstorming approaches will help you to be far more creative than you would otherwise be if you just kept thinking and efforting head-on.

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As always, thank you for reading me.

Douglas E. Castle

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BRAIN TEASERS,
BRAIN BOOSTERS &
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BRAINTENANCE: Train, Strain And Improve Your Brain. Expand Your Mind.

http://braintenance.blogspot.com

Braintenance contains articles, resources, exercises, games and specially-designed protocols to improve the power of your brain and your mind in every significant aspect, including memory, cognition, IQ, plasticity, creativity and problem-solving ability.

Key Terms: brain, mind, cognitive enhancement, memory, brain gym exercises, IQ, plasticity, mind expansion, creativity, meditation, altered states, perception, self-hypnosis, self-growth, neuron, artificial intelligence, learning, somatic intellect, mathematics, language, dissonance, individualism, herd mentality, puns and word games, linguistics, genius, emotion, subconscious, unconscious, intuition, instinct, psychedelic, reality, learning curve, probability, collective consciousness


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Friday, June 5, 2015

Build Your Brainpower By Confusion -- Douglas E. Castle - Braintenance

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 ?

In Braintenance, confusion is the magic which creates new neurological pathways, greater plasticity, and enhanced creative skills. The brain and mind are strengthened in the same fashion as the bodybuilder builds and defines new muscle -- by changing the workout regimen to "shock" the body into over-compensation. The mental exercises which follow are gearing toward forcing you to think (and problem-solve) in a different manner than you usually do by changing the entire problem-solving scenario.

Want to strengthen your mind? of course you do. Simply find the missing numbers or letters in each of the following sequences. You'll notice that you are not trying to find the next number or letter in each sequence (as you are accustomed to doing) -- you are being asked to think interpolatively instead of extrapolatively:

1)   A C _ D C E D _ E G

2)   _ 4 9 _ 25 _ 49

3)   2 4 _ _ 10 _ 14

4)   P_S_ENG_RS  O_  A  T_AIN

5)   _ 3 _ 7 _ 13 17 19 23 _ 31

Thank you, as always, for reading me.

Douglas E. Castle

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BRAIN TEASERS,
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FUNDING BUTTON LINK

BRAINTENANCE: Train, Strain And Improve Your Brain. Expand Your Mind.

http://braintenance.blogspot.com

Braintenance contains articles, resources, exercises, games and specially-designed protocols to improve the power of your brain and your mind in every significant aspect, including memory, cognition, IQ, plasticity, creativity and problem-solving ability.

Key Terms: brain, mind, cognitive enhancement, memory, brain gym exercises, IQ, plasticity, mind expansion, creativity, meditation, altered states, perception, self-hypnosis, self-growth, neuron, artificial intelligence, learning, somatic intellect, mathematics, language, dissonance, individualism, herd mentality, puns and word games, linguistics, genius, emotion, subconscious, unconscious, intuition, instinct, psychedelic, reality, learning curve, probability, collective consciousness

Monday, February 16, 2015

Exercise More Of Your Brain - Braintenance - Douglas E. Castle

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The statement above captures the essence of a form of Braintenance "cross-training" and "confusion training," wherein your brain is forced to break through its ordinary routines and to coordinate different tasks in a different matter. These exercises are very simple, but yield tremendous benefits in terms of your ability to focus and to be creative. Following is a sampling of exercises which may prove challenging enough to 'wake up your mind' and to capture your brain's attention. When dealing with the brain, more exercise, and greater diversity of cerebral tasks is always better. Try these:

1) If you are right-handed, try doing as many things as possible with your left hand, and vice versa;

2) Stir beverages, soups, and the like in a clockwise fashion, instead of in the traditional and popular counter-clockwise fashion;

3) Read a page of text from the bottom up, with the last sentences first;

4) Try working backwards for a while (be careful, and avoid those steps or the kids' Legos!); and

5) Do some simple multiplication and division problems in your head, with your eyes wide open.

These simple changes of pace will prove awkward at first, and will challenge your mind, as the central conscious coordinator of these voluntary actions. The skills required to make these changes are some of the most important in improving your spontaneous associative thinking, your creativity and your adaptability in problem-solving situations. Try these exercises; in fact, think of a few of your own and practice those as well as part of your cerebral cross-training workout. As we've noted before, doing things in an extraordinary fashion, forces your brain to do extraordinary things. Intellectual flexibility and neural plasticity are easily built by feeding the mind exceptions to the established routines.

Now, let's get to it, Fellow Braintenancers!




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Labels, Tags, Categories, Keywords And Search Terms For This Article:
Braintenance, neural plasticity, creativity, brain exercise, problem-solving, self-growth, mind power, intelligence hacks, Douglas E. Castle, cross-training, confusion training




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BRAIN TEASERS,
BRAIN BOOSTERS &
COGNITIVE ENHANCEMENT!





FUNDING BUTTON LINK

BRAINTENANCE: Train, Strain And Improve Your Brain. Expand Your Mind.

http://braintenance.blogspot.com

Braintenance contains articles, resources, exercises, games and specially-designed protocols to improve the power of your brain and your mind in every significant aspect, including memory, cognition, IQ, plasticity, creativity and problem-solving ability.

Key Terms: brain, mind, cognitive enhancement, memory, brain gym exercises, IQ, plasticity, mind expansion, creativity, meditation, altered states, perception, self-hypnosis, self-growth, neuron, artificial intelligence, learning, somatic intellect, mathematics, language, dissonance, individualism, herd mentality, puns and word games, linguistics, genius, emotion, subconscious, unconscious, intuition, instinct, psychedelic, reality, learning curve, probability, collective consciousness

Sunday, April 20, 2014

Dreams And Dreaming: Fascinating Facts - Braintenance

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We tend to dream in metaphors about things in our lives which are unsettled and frustrating. This is quite the opposite of what we tend to say about dreams, which tends to be positive in the sense of "you're in my dreams," "I can dream about it if I can't have it," or "I was just daydreaming."

In fact, the dreams we tend to remember as adults are very often the ones which are closest to nightmares. The more plagued we are with the stressful components of our lives and either our point of view or our actual environment (the two are never quite the same), the more we dream, and the greater the percentage of our dreams which are perceived as nightmares.

In curious contrast, when our conscious minds are at rest after struggling at a perplexing problem for some time, our subconscious, operating through metaphor and unbridled free association, continues to work on these problems in our dreaming states and occasionally solves them. Much of our "Breakthrough Thinking" occurs while we are asleep. At times, these breakthroughs are so powerful that we are awakened as if by some mystical revelation. In this way dreaming is similar to some forms of meditation.

Many of our species' greatest thinkers, artists, scientists, inventors and other creative individuals have done their most creative work inspired by revelations born of either dreaming or meditation. Various drugs, some legal and some of them illegal, can enhance the parameters within which we dream; they seem to enliven our imagination with synesthesia and other 'special effects'. But it is important to note that any of these effects or changes is still, in the end, a product of our own mind's initiation.

It is worthwhile to note that our brains (or our minds) are never fully at rest -- they are always vigorously at work. 

- Douglas E. Castle

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Friday, April 12, 2013

One Simple Exercise To Expand Your Intelligence And Creativity

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One splendid braintenance trick to expand your analytic intelligence (reasoning and problem-solving ability) and your creativity (the ability to envision something in your mind without having seen it with your open eyes) is [believe it or not] doing algebraic word problems in your head. No pens. No pencils. No computers or mobile devices. This absolutely requires that you keep information filed in various parts of your mind while looking at new information, and then ultimately going back to those files and fitting these "saved" pieces together to find the solution.

Your intellectual curiosity and perhaps your oversized ego demand that you meet this little challenge. It involves two brothers from Poland named Mario and Lorenzo (their parents had a particularly bizarre sense of humor):

  • Mario is currently three years older than his bother (this is a Freudian Slip inserted in the interest of making this exercise a bit more challenging) -- er, brother;
  • The sum of the two digits in Lorenzo's age is 6;
  • Both brothers are teenagers.
What are the brothers' ages?

One helpful hint - It might serve you well to actually picture the two boys in your mind...give them different heights and hair colors as well. Neither should have freckles (that's just my own opinion).

Now solve the problem. If you can do it in less than 1 minute you are in possession of a good cranial companion; if you can do it in less than 5 minutes; you've done well. If it takes you longer than 5 minutes to do this exercise (and to get the answer correct), you need to work a bit more on these types of algebraic logic and memory problems.

Work quietly and swiftly, and Dr. Braintenance will be back with answers!

Thank you as always for reading me, and for sharing my articles with your colleagues and friends via your social media groups.

Douglas E. Castle for The Braintenance Blog

Sponsored By:
CFI - CrowdFunding Incubator LLC
Global Edge Technologies Group LLC
ICS - International Connection Services





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Thursday, March 7, 2013

Trick Your Mind Into Expanding! - Braintenance

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The above is unrealistic - If you are truly paying attention, you can focus your full awareness upon only one object or task at a time.

Braintenancers - You've seen advertisements and advertorials on TV about "tricking" and "confusing" your body's muscles into growth and clearer definition. This confusion theory is absolutely true and is genuinely effective. The mind responds the same way to confusion and the need for resolution, or to alternating between one type of thinking task and another. I have an interesting exercise which will force your brain to shift gears -- this initiates, creativity, imagination, cognition, memory and many other wonderful brain benefits.

The exercise is very simple, but is time-consuming, so please do it in the evening, when you have a clear hour-long block of time and nothing to interfere with your exercise and experience -- it only requires the following steps:

1) Listen to a binaural/subliminal entrainment audio recording which will stimulate those parts of the brain that heighten wakefulness (not nervousness or stress) and gear your state of mind to a razor-sharp focus.

2) Rest for one minute.

3) Listen to a binaural/subliminal entrainment audio recording which will give you a nice, relaxing dose of alpha; your mind's most free-flowing and creative state.

4) Listen to the first recording (as in step #1) again.

5) Rest for one minute.

6) Set a timer and spend five minutes digging deeply into your earliest childhood memories, with as much sensory and emotional detail as you can recall or relive.

7) Set a timer and spend five minutes picturing in full sensory detail the future which you truly wish for yourself. Think of it in very real terms as if you were 'in' that future.

That's all. Access to the two audios that you'll need is right here:


RAZOR-SHARP FOCUS


ALPHA STATE CREATIVE RELAXATION


Headphones would be of benefit, but are not required. Just sit back in a comfortable chair and be certain that the sound is loud enough to drown out any ambient noise.

You'll want to do this simple exercise once per week (on that "off" night), so be certain to bookmark this page or to make it a favorite. You'll notice changes in your mental dexterity and flexibility even after you've done this Braintenance Exercise only once. Do it once weekly, and not more frequently, as that would defeat the purpose.

"Confusion, and the body's and mind's innate need to sort things out, is one of the greatest initiators of real change, strengthening and growth." -DEC

Douglas E. Castle for The Braintenance Blog,

-- sponsored by CrowdFunding Incubator LLC.




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CFI, C.F.I., CrowdFunding Incubator,  crowdfunding, crowd funding, incubators, accelerators, finance projects, listing services, start up, small business, SME, funding, capitalization, financing, leverage, company services, management, marketing, fundraising, technology, mentoring, advice, media, branding, memes, business tips tricks tools and resources, entrepreneur, forum, discussion, applications, technologies, risk assessment, business model, strategic planning, organizational development, connections, networking, early-stage, first-round, angel  funding, venture capital, credit lines, assistance, business growth, biz builders, social media power, delegation, automation, monitoring, metrics, brainstorming, meetups, joint ventures, partnerships - http://CFICrowdFundingIncubator.blogspot.com, http://www.CrowdFundingIncubator.com, marketing, messaging, news releases, free, gain market share, increase backlinks, SEO, influence, disruption theory, directory, RSS feeds, Douglas E. Castle, blogroll, blogs, crowdfunding blogs...



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