Its a common misconception that your born genius. The truth is, everyone can and should learn to be a genius. In order to do this, you need to develop your creativity.

Creativity is not only reserved for artists. Actually, you need to do this if you want to be a genius in ANY field.

1. Express Yourself - Find your style. Not only in the way you dress, but in your writing, habits, mannerisms. Do what feels right for you and once you find outlets of expressing your true self, the creativity will just flow.

2. Meditate - When you center yourself, you discover the essence that is YOU. It helps you focus and use your minds in new ways, a perfect start to enhancing your creative potential. There are even specific meditations (check out the silva method or centerpointe) that focus on harnessing your creative powers.

3. List the Things You Love to Do - Whether its gardening, painting or cooking. Think big too, write down your biggest desires and dreams. Stop all negative thoughts and THINK BIG.

4. Seek New Experiences - Seeing and experiencing new things and ideas will inspire you. The more open you are to new things the more likely you will be to develop new ideas.

5. Study and Practice - Rome wasn’t built in a day and no one was born with genius ability, they studied, practiced and learned it.

6. Evaluate Your Surroundings -Is your workspace or home conducive to creativity? Do you cover your walls with art and paintings and give your surroundings your own unique touch? If not, its a good place to start

7. Watch What Your Taking In - Are you stuck in a rut? Always with the same people, talking about the same things. Constantly watching the same TV shows and reading the same blogs? If you are stagnant in this area, it is likely you will experience a creative block.

Taking the time to strengthen your creative muscle will help you become an energetic, outgoing, open-minded and adventurous person. There will never be a dull moment when you truly utilize your creative power.

With these tips you are all ready to go forth and create~With these tips you are all ready to go forth and create~Take these tips and start on your path to creative genius}!

Invent new ideas, exercise your brainpower, and have fun while you’re at it! There are many problem-solving techniques and idea-generating techniques you can use. One of the easiest, however, is to simply find new applications for existing ideas, products, services and systems.

This technique can be used to come up with new ideas in any area of life. Take an existing product, like a raincoat, for example. It takes just a minute or two to come up with new applications. How about a line of raincoats for dogs and cats? Raincoats for cattle? Maybe they lose valuable weight burning calories to stay warm during cold rains.

Evaluating the new ideas you come up with is another process. It is best left for later, if you don’t want to stifle your creativity. You only need one or two good ideas to make the effort worthwhile, and having a hundred ideas to choose from makes finding a few good ones more likely.

I saw an ad for a company that uses a dog to find mold in your house. Dogs can sniff out almost anything, and it reminded me of the news story from a while back, about a dog that could detect if you had cancer. My next thought was, “I wonder what else they could be used to find?” One idea that came to mind was to use dogs to find people’s lost pets. They track lost criminals so well, so why not a service to find lost pets? A sniff of the lost cats favorite rug, and the dog is on the trail.

New Ideas Beyond Inventions and Business

It’s common to concentrate on the invention and business applications. Perhaps these are the easiest areas to come up with new ideas in. However, that doesn’t mean this technique won’t work well in other areas.

Recently I applied Darwin’s theory of natural selection to my clothing selection. No more sorting laundry! The clothes that don’t survive the wash process are tossed and the ones that do are replicated when I buy new clothes. The ones that still fit survive. Survival of the fittest!

I once read about children who were tested for their ability to delay gratification. They were put into a playroom and at some point offered candy, but told they could have one piece now, or wait fifteen minutes and get two pieces. Some waited, and some didn’t. The children who could consistently delay gratification were tracked over the years. They were found to be more successful and happier.

What are some new applications for this idea? Hmm… Test all kids and sell a list of the impulsive ones to big companies who can sell stuff to them all their lives. More seriously, what if more tests like this were done, in order to put together a list of “happiness factors?” Perhaps it would lead to a more systemic and scientific way to raise happy kids.

Do you want some exercises to test this technique on? Think of a new use for paper. Find a new application for the idea of selling by phone. Think of several new uses for socks. Imagine how the idea of positive self talk could be applied to making animals happier. Try this technique, and you’ll see how easy it can be to come up with new ideas.

Why not start each morning with a simple thought for the day? Hold it in mind to see what perspective it gives to the day’s events. Here is one for each day of the week.

Monday’s Thought For The Day

When you argue with a person, are you focused on the words? What’s out there beyond the words? What about the reality that the words are pointing to? Look beyond what a person is saying, to what he or she is seeing that gives rise to the words. Do that, and you’ll not only fight less, but you may learn something as well.

Tuesday’s Thought For The Day

Be aware of the thoughts doing battle in your mind, for some of them will win and become your actions. Be aware of your actions, for those which are repeated will become your habits. Be aware of your habits, for they will make your character. Pay attention, because your character creates your life.

Wednesday’s Thought For The Day

Democracy? It’s mob rule. Our rights are not subject to a vote. Law? It is politics and prejudice. Much that is right is forbidden, and much that is wrong is allowed. Religion? A mind killer that answers our fears but not our needs. Bow to no authority. The right path is there when you choose to use the love and intelligence you possess.

Thursday’s Thought For The Day

We defend our ideas to the death - of other people. The wars of words which lead to death and destruction will only end when we stop serving our ideas and see that they are meant to serve us. When they do not, it is time for new ones.

Friday’s Thought For The Day

People say they want to change, but do they? A bird must leave behind the egg it came from in order to fly, but humans so often remain in their protective shell of thoughts and feelings about themselves and the world, and even try to thicken the walls around them. If you are not willing to leave the old self behind, how can you grow into the new?

Saturday’s Thought For The Day

A man argued that the world is a good place as he walked by the hungry child without seeing him. His friend said the world is evil, and did not notice the beauty of the apple tree they passed. Then another came along and, without words, he took an apple from the tree and gave it to the child.

Sunday’s Thought For The Day

“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.” - Buddha

That last one is not my own, but I couldn’t have said it any better.

Sometimes it is just fun to create and share crazy ideas. For example, I recently read about one man’s idea to give away free gas. The catch was that there were remote-controlled paintball guns with cameras on them, connected to a web site on the internet. People would pay to fire paintballs at drivers as they filled their tanks. Apparently this gentleman even went as far as to ask city officials if they would allow such a business. They wouldn’t, but it was worth a good laugh in any case.

Apart from the humor and fun, though, there is often something to be gained from exploring crazy ideas. The more obvious examples are ideas that eventually lead to practical solutions for business, like the idea of eyes on shoes that lead (by a circuitous route) to safety reflectors which make joggers more visible at night, so drivers don’t hit them. But there are also important questions of philosophy, psychology and morality that can be profitably explored from the perspective of an unusual idea. The following is an example of that.

The Thousand Mile Hole

One day I had a crazy thought. I imagined that somewhere in an isolated forest, a hole a thousand miles deep and several hundred feet across is discovered. Rather than ignore this idea, I worked with it a bit. It wasn’t long before I imagined falling into the hole, and I realized that because of air resistance, I would soon reach a terminal velocity of around 120 miles-per-hour. That meant I would have eight hours before hitting the bottom and dying.

Put yourself into this scenario. You can’t have a much more certain countdown to death. You know you have roughly eight hours to live. What do you think about? Does it matter? If you can hold a pen and piece of paper against the wind, what would you write?

If you assume for a moment that someday your remains will be discovered, you might actually still have something to offer the world with your writing. That’s an intriguing thought, isn’t it? Being the first person to fall a thousand miles to your death would generate enough interest that people would surely read what you had written as your final thoughts. What insight would this eight hour journey provide? What could you share that might help others?

But what if you had no pen? You are simply going to die, and nobody will ever know what happened during these eight hours. In that case, does everything you think or do become irrelevant? We like to think that with even eight months left to live what we do matters, but what about eight hours? Would you still try to live the “good” life for that remaining time? What would that mean? Thinking loving thoughts about others? Trying to see the bright side of life?

I explored these questions in my own mind for a while. One question in particular that came to mind was about the reason for morality. Is thought or action morally good only on the basis of an expected future outcome? There is hardly a future when falling eight hours to one’s death. Is there a moral value to thoughts and actions that is in the moment, in the action itself?

I also wondered at the metaphorical value of the above scenario. Is there a “thousand mile deep hole” that we can fall into? Do we gain a new spiritual perspective in the process, with which we are “reborn” after the fall?

The Value Of Crazy Ideas

When we allow crazy ideas to arise, they may come from unconscious places that are trying to show us something.  Even if the “trying to show us” part is not strictly true, these images and thoughts from the unconscious mind are an opportunity to look at things from a new perspective. For example, imagine a new creature, the “deniaphant,”  an enormous being who is human-like but with elephant-like feet which were so large that he regularly steps on and kills people. This makes him very sad, so what is his solution? He stops looking down.

It’s a silly thought, and yet it immediately suggests itself as a metaphor for what we humans actually do. We stop looking at the pain and suffering we cause others, because that’s much easier than watching where we step. If we were to develop the story of the deniaphant further, we might see what the consequences of such an approach are, and perhaps what could be done about it. Examples like this hint at the value of crazy ideas when they are explored with an open mind.

To be a deep thinker you simply have to get in the habit of asking deep questions about everything around you. What is a deep question? Let’s look at a couple examples.

Suppose someone lies to you, and you simply explain it by saying, “He’s a jerk!” That may be true, but it is shallow thinking. Instead you might ask why he lied to you. A deeper question than that would be why people lie in general, or why it is wrong to lie. Related questions might include whether it is ever okay to lie, and if so, when.

To become a deep thinker then, you have to get in the habit of looking beyond the immediate questions raised. Fortunately it isn’t a heavy philosophical exercise to determine which questions are “deeper” than others. You will usually recognize them when you see them. For example, which is a deeper perspective, pointing out all the excuses a person makes for his or her behavior, or asking and exploring why people feel the need to make excuses?

Here’s a good rule to remember: The more profound questions are those which have wider application. For example, knowledge about a particular man’s personality, though perhaps useful, is limited and shallow compared to knowing the principles of psychology that apply to all people. Questions about a particular business are not nearly as deep as those about the principles of success which could be applied to all businesses.

Another rule: If one question or idea is an example of another, the latter is the deeper one. Water freezes at 0 degrees and becomes steam at 100 degrees. This is an example of the more fundamental principle that substances have three forms (solid, liquid, gas) depending upon temperature.

You can always start with “Why?” Like a child, ask it again and again, and question each answer. “Why do we force people to pay taxes?” Because they wouldn’t pay otherwise. “Why wouldn’t they?” They consider other things more important. “What are taxes for?” To serve the public good. “Who defines the public good?” The voters, by way of their representatives. “If the public votes for evil things are they still a public good?”

If you can remember to ask such questions often enough throughout your day, and continue doing it for a few weeks, it will become a habit. Making these “probing” thought patterns habitual is how you become a deep thinker. Carry a note to remind yourself at first, or put reminders on your schedule.

Being A Deep Thinker - The Use Of Language

Question even the language which you and others use, instead of taking it for granted. For example, what does “national defense” really mean? Does it mean protecting the borders, the government, the flag, honor, the people, or the rights of the people in the nation? These are very different ideas, and perhaps not always compatible, yet we often take for granted that we all mean the same thing when we use the words, “national defense.”

The metaphorical nature of language is essential to growing our range of expression. We refer to the “memory” of a computer, and by using this metaphor it becomes easier to understand and communicate. On the other hand, this use of metaphor can also limit our thinking. The sun “going down” is a small example. We know intellectually that it is the planet turning which causes this apparent effect, but our language creates the impression that the sun goes away each night.

Now, if we stop and really consider that the sun never sets, all sorts of new ideas come to mind. Solar panels in space would always be in the sun, and they could beam electricity down to us by way of microwave transmission. Someday, a “nightless farm” could fly around the Earth at a thousand miles-per-hour, growing vegetables in 24 hours-per-day sunlight. These ideas may not be new, but they only occurred after mentally questioning the idea that the sun goes down.

Finally, a deep thinker recognizes the representative nature of language in general. Words are only meant to point at things in reality. They are not things by themselves. While this may seem obvious, it is forgotten in common discourse. A man says that corporations are evil, for example, and another jumps to “prove” this idea wrong, rather than trying to see what the first man is pointing at with his words. Seeing the limits of language is actually a very deep thought itself.

You may recall the ancient puzzle called “Zeno’s Paradox,” which “proved” that motion is impossible. Because of the perfect logic with which it was demonstrated, some chose to believe that what we see as motion is an illusion. Much later, philosophers, mathematicians and physicists found acceptable challenges to the paradox, but the real lesson here is that logic isn’t infallible because language is imperfect, and if we are to more fully understand the world, we have to allow for that. A deep thinker, then, uses words as the valuable but limited tools they are, while trying not to let words use him.