Creativity Catalysts Come to Consciousness

Frank Prince opened the Creativity Cruise Conference with a keynote question, "Can we catalyze creativity?" His review thru 650 human lifetimes deeply fortified what I know - the pace from Insight to Idea to Innovation to Change continually quickens and is now superfast.

So what are we waiting for? Let's EMBRACE the INVENTOR in ourselves and be aware of our answer to the question, ‘WHAT IS YOUR MOTIVATION?’

For me, this applies to every aspect of my life, personal and professional. If I catalyze my creativity, then I am being more "me" and my life path is supported with purposeful action.

To catalyze creativity, Frank shares:

1. Connect into the Dream State as a perfect place where ideas come to light. Kekule dreamed and discovered the structure of Benzene, Elias Howe dreamed and created the sewing machine.

2. Turn on your Reticular Activating System (RAS). Your RAS is the automatic mechanism inside your brain that brings relevant information to your attention. Hubert Booth and Edward Jenner were great at using their RAS.

3. Identify a problem with a high psychological need to solve. Charles Kettering had high need to be creative and invent due to the deaths of a friend and his wife. His need led him to invent the car with no crank and pioneer cancer research.

4. Be Curious.

5. Become aware of Desires that motivate you. Desire creates a want to understand, pulls you into it, there is confusion when you are about to learn something.

6. Don’t allow others to kill your Dream. Others are always there to tell you why your dreams are impossible.

Are you catalyzing your creativity with purpose?

Frank inspires me embrace my inventor-self with appreciation. I also learned to honor my husband as inventor, his dream state for creating happens when he leaves the light on as he falls asleep at night. Who knew I was stopping this important creating time by turning that light off too early?

What and Why might you create in your life?

The Windtunnel Zephyr

We practiced windtunneling on the Creativity Cruise. If you haven’t windtunneled to solve a problem or create opportunity, you MUST experience it. It is SUPERCOOL.

I typically hold my thoughts inside as I’m working on an opportunity or problem, but for this I had to talk 11 minutes straight to solve the problem. When I ran out of things to say I had to continue talking so my note taker didn’t know I was out of things to say (yes, someone had to take notes on my running monologue, and thank goodness she has fast, neat writing skills).

I just started pulling at straws for this and amazingly it was all connected and I really solved 2 problems or, more specifically, created actions for 2 opportunities. To me a problem is just an opportunity that has become more urgent or more important at a point in time.

What is so SUPERCOOL about this? I immediately started acting (almost unaware) on my new verbally discovered steps. This is because I internalized as soon as we debriefed the 11 minute talk. My recording partner and I shared what was MOST interesting in the talk, 3 things each. She even drew me a little model from her note-taking. Yes, it is good to have a superior note taker but not required, others had big things happen too.

We, the Creativity Cruise participants, all windtunneled so well that the next day we could not disembark on Half Moon Cay via tender boat due to wind. Hmmmm.

Learning Gains with 3 Easy Tactics

We just returned from the Creativity Cruise 2011 and it was spectacular. We hope to highlight a little something each new blog in the coming days.

I received a GREAT BOOK for Teaching and Teachers during my CreativityCruise experience! The book is called How to Teach SMARTER-not harder; 3 Easy Tactics to use in your classroom by Win Wenger. I'm not a certified teacher but I am a Mom who is totally interested and involved in my kids education and I like to support other kids too. And, I know alot of GREAT teachers who look to keep evolving their teaching impact, so I hope they pick up the book. I'll certainly share mine, anytime.

As part of a presentation Win Wenger, the author, shared some ASTOUNDING results from a school in Buffalo, NY. The whole study body qualdrupled their rate of progress (as measured by terra nova scores) between 2008 and 2010 after they experienced a year of Maieutic Socratic Methods.

The 3 EASY TACTICS book is aimed at obtaining these kinds of results! And the 3 tactics - instant replay, highlighter question and planning questions are so EASY! Please visit this link (especially if you teach my children). Win is a wonderful, wonderful man who's purpose is to "UPGRADE YOUR NECKTOP COMPUTER" -- and he is passionate about Creative Problem Solving and Education.

In addition I had an opportunity to experience one of his Creative Problem Solving sessions. I practiced a method called "Windtunneling" for ingeniously solving problems. WOW! was that cool and I have to say I've already experienced results of my problem solving...more on that tomorrow. THANKS WIN!