Imagination and Creativity

Imagination and Creativity

According to the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, imagination is the ability to create pictures in your mind while creativity is the use of skill and imagination to produce something new or a work of art. 

 It looks like first, you imagine and then you create. It is confirmed by a quote from George Bernard Shaw,” Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.” 

How do we develop the power of imagination? Here are a few tips: 

 1. Something for the mind to focus on: Do not allow your mind to wonder about. Direct your mind to a particular point to start working on. 

 2. Carry a note pad with you: Whenever an idea flashes across your mind, jot it down quickly so that it will not be forgotten. 

 3. Interest and passion: When you are passionately interested in something, your imagination works better. There is a flow of ideas to excite the imagination. 

 4. Writing: The daily habit of writing is a source to stimulate the development of imagination. Imagination leads to creative writing. 

 5. Hobbies: Hobbies such as drawing and painting inevitably employ the faculty of imagination. 

 6. Memory and imagination: The images that are stored in the memory are used as tools to generate imagination. Be curious about things and allow the brain to absorb new ideas and in turn, the information feeds our imagination. 

 7. Learn from creative people: Associate with people who are creative. Talk to them and get insights from them. 

 8. Reading: According to Alex Osborn, author of ‘Applied Imagination’ says,” Reading supplies bread for the imagination to feed on, and bones for it to chew on.” Read widely to stimulate the development of imagination. 

 Albert Einstein says. ”Imagination is more important than knowledge. For while knowledge defines all we currently know and understand, imagination points to all we might yet discover and create.” 

 Related articles:

Creativity - 7 Sparking Tips to Get It

How to be Creative – 7 Bright Ideas

Persistence – Success in the Long-term

Persistence

A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success. ELBERT HUBBARD

Success means going for the long-haul. It means you must be able to sustain your effort at least for a few years to see the fruit of your labor. How do you develop persistence?

1. Interest and passion: One of the surest ways to maintain persistence is to do something that you are passionately interested in. Your passion will bring your full attention to it. I enjoy blogging and I am happy and delighted to write and post an article a day and I have been doing it for more than 19 months.

2. Value to others: When you do something which is beneficial to others, you find meaning in it and it is a motivating factor to keep you going on. Like blogging, my articles are able to solve readers' problems and it encourages me to write more and better articles.

3. Monitor your progress: It is important that you should be able to check your progress. When you see improvement as you go along you are happy and you work harder. For me, I am able to check the progress in blogging by looking at the figures at statcounter.com and the Traffic Rank. My self-confidence and my self- worth are elevated because my Traffic Rank is going up all the way. There are times when the Traffic Rank takes a dip but it does not affect me negatively. I continue to work on my articles.

4. Take the challenge: Whatever you do, take it as a challenge. Succeeding at doing something by itself will give you satisfaction even without reward. Like blogging, it is very competitive. When my Traffic Rank is going upward I know I am doing things right. It gives me happiness, excitement, and delight.

5. Rewards: Are you being rewarded for your efforts? The reward will spur you to do more and put your energy at a higher level. To me, my reward is the favorable comments by my readers, links to my blog, and subscriptions to my feed. The support from my readers is more than enough to stimulate me to carry on.

Success is not a destination. It is a journey and it is a long and winding road.

You have to stay on course all the way and success will be yours.

Bring Excitement to Your Life – 7 Stimulating Tips

As we grow older we are more and more cocooned into a comfort zone. Our outlook in life is getting narrower and narrower. We do the same routine every day and our senses are getting bored and dull. How do you bring excitement to your life? How do you renew yourself so that life is more meaningful? Here are 7 stimulating things that you can do to bring back the spark into your life so that your life is filled with happiness and fun.


1. Continuous Learning: Be keen to acquire new knowledge. The latest information stimulates your mind. It sparks creativity in you. Fill your time profitably by reading and learning.

2. Travel: One sure way to widen your horizons is to visit new places. Your mind is more receptive when you go to unfamiliar places. Learn the way of life of other people and compare them with your life.

3. Connect with more people: Don't limit yourself by seeing the same old people every day. Talk to new people to bring new insights into your life.

4. Break away from your habits: Do something that you normally do not do. Instead of driving, perhaps, you take a bus to town. Instead of staying at home on Sunday, take an excursion to the beach or to the country.

5. Be curious, excited, and enthusiastic about life: As a good example, you visit the mall to do window shopping. Be alert about the latest fashion by looking at the people there. Check out the latest products on display. Find out how products are launched and promoted at the mall. Do you think the way they do marketing is effective? Is the mall well-managed? There is a lot to learn by visiting the mall.

6. Stay fit and healthy: Your energy comes from your physical activities. Exercise every day so that you are in top form. You will be able to concentrate and stay calm.

7. Develop your potentialities: Do something good for you and others. As a good example, I have taken up blogging and I find that it is very meaningful. As I write every day I polish my writing skills and at the same time, I post useful articles to solve readers' problems. I also post topics on happiness to uplift the mood of others.


Life is about movement. Be alive and bring more life into your life and start living again.

Emotional Intelligence – 7 Tips to Manage Emotions

Emotional Intelligence

According to Wikipedia, emotional intelligence is a term that describes the ability, capacity, skill, or a self-perceived ability, to identify, assess and manage the emotions of one’s self, of others, and of groups. Here are the tips to manage emotions:

1. Self-awareness: Be able to recognize your own emotions as they occur. Get to know how the emotions are affecting you.

2. Self-control: Able to manage your own emotions to avoid the outburst of negative emotions such as anger and violence Research shows that chronic anger and anxiety create a health risk.

3. Understand the emotions of others: Identify the feelings of others will put you in a better position to understand the behavior of your fellow beings

4. Take care of your health and fitness: Positive emotions are generated when you have sufficient sleep and you exercise regularly. You are able to stay calm and collected and will not be easily disturbed by outside events. Having a balanced diet will also affect your emotions positively.

5. Be connected: Building lasting relationships and trusting each other at home, at work, and among friends are ways to display your positive emotions. These positive emotions will be reciprocated.

6. Harness the power of positive emotions to motivate oneself: Positive emotions such as enthusiasm, optimism, zeal, confidence, persistence, and hope will propel you to success and happiness in your life. When you are able to pay 100% attention to the task at hand you are able to enter into a “flow” state. You will be highly productive and your performance will be outstanding.

7. Positive emotions generate more positive emotions: Negative emotions lead to more negative emotions. Likewise, positive emotions will vibrate into more positive emotions. When you feel happy, you are excited, your spirits will be high, and your self-confidence will be boosted.

Effective management of emotions means you are more attentive, more conducive to creative thinking, more affectionate to others, and most important of all, your positive emotions override your negative emotions.

Think Positive and be Successful

Source:http://www.webthoughtspot.org/stories/positive-thinking/

“The positive thinker sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible.” –Winston Churchill

After reading many books and articles about successful people, I have found out that the most important factor of their success is that they think positively and they feed their minds with positive thoughts. These positive thoughts create positive action and the outcome is a success. Why positive thinking can bring about such tremendous power? Here are some of the reasons:


1. Self-image: They think highly of themselves. They carry a healthy image of themselves and they feel good about themselves.

2. Good habits: Once they have arrived at a decision. They do not hesitate; they swing into action right away. They don’t have self-doubt to hold them back

3. Belief in themselves: They are confident in themselves. When they do something, they believe they can get it done and they just do it. When they face setbacks along the way they take them as a learning experience and they move on.

4. Positive emotions: As positive thinking is a positive emotion it leads to more positive emotions such as happiness, cheerfulness, calmness, energy, kindness, friendliness, mindfulness, and patience.

5. Be themselves: They accept their own weaknesses; they show their true selves without feelings of guilt or embarrassment. They behave normally with no thoughts of what others think about them.


When you think and feed your mind with positive thoughts you elevate your self-worth. You project a positive image of yourself in your mind. You are confident in yourself and you feel happy.

Think positive to propel you to greater success.

What is Your Online Personality Grade?

According to Hubspot’s Inbound Internet Marketing Blog, you can benchmark your online personality. Their Personality Grader clusters analyze and measure the width and breadth of your online footprint across thousands of different social sites. The tool uses this data to calculate 4 variables that serve as input for a Personality Grade:

   Frequency – This is a measure of your rate of content production and social interaction.

 Sentiment – Using computational linguistics they are able to analyze the tone of the content you produce for the Web. 

Reach- This is a measurement of the size of your social network, in terms of both first and Nth-order strong and weak connections. 

 Intelligence – The intelligence metric uses a combination of several different methods. 

 I did a cheek and the following are my scores: Frequency 50 Sentiment 69 Reach 93 Intelligence 90.

 My grade is 75.5 out of 100 (50+69+93+90)/4 

 What is yours? Go to personality.grader.com to check it out.

Looking after Your Personal Brand – 8 Crucial Tips

Personal Brand

The financial crisis means cost-cutting. Cost-cutting means retrenchment. How do you maintain your position in the office so that you still can keep your job? Here are some relevant issues that you must look into to sustain and strengthen your personal brand: 

 1. Personal Packaging: Always dress smartly and appropriately. If you don’t you are perceived by others that you don’t care too much about yourself. A smartly dressed person tells me that he is full of confidence and very sure of himself. 

 2. Personal finance: Don’t get yourself into unnecessary debt to the extent that people are looking for you at your office to demand outstanding payment from you. Manage your personal finance well. If you don't, how will you manage the finance of the company when you are the CFO? 

 3. Update yourself: Keep abreast of the latest development in the area of your expertise. Learn new things and gain valuable knowledge so that you are on top of things.

 4. Positive image of yourself: Behave yourself in such a way that people can count on you to get things done. Make yourself likable by getting along well with others. 

 5. Promote your brand: There is no better way to advertise your personal brand than by having a blog. A blog gives you an opportunity to write articles on subjects relating to your expertise. When you are in a management position, write about topics on effective management. Who knows you may be noticed and get yourself hired in a better position. 

 6. Maintain your trustworthiness and honesty: Your honor is very important to you. Don’t ever make a wrong move or your future will be ruined. People notice others more of what they have done wrong than right. Uphold your trustworthiness and your honesty. These virtues are indispensable at work. 

 7. Health and fitness: Project yourself as a person full of energy and vitality. The only way is to exercise every day to maintain the youthfulness in you. 

 8. Personal network: Be connected online and offline. Sign up with LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter and be connected to those with similar interests. Extend your web of influence by joining trade associations and enlarging your circle of friends. Build yourself into a trusted brand. 

A trusted brand will go a long way in your career. Happy branding!