Shapers

Consciousness Shapers

The brain is often full of peripheral ideas. These may be useful or just sometimes in the way. Consciousness shapers (CS) are devices to help our selection process. We make a list of five-eight items.

These items are delivered to consciousness using the following CS criteria: 

• random trivial, important, interesting, essential, and possible. 

For instance, the following is a CS based on the criteria mentioned:

Salt

Seasons

Appointment

River

Kentucky

Conversation

Awareness

When selecting the items, no effort is made to organise them into a category. Effort is made at randomness. For example, if my first item was Airport, my second would not be Arrivals hall. Each item should be spaced apart in time and space and unrelated. Only the criteria above mentioned should be kept in mind.

You look at your list and certain items will jump out as most important to you. It may be just one or two. That is fine. The other items are there to look at from time to time. They can be used as stimulants for further thinking or for further ideas.

Here is another CS

Merchant
Raider
Film
Purchase

Friend
Astronomy
Sausages

There is no intention of relationships, similarities, decisions or things to do. The intention is to create as random as possible list. We then forget about the criteria for the list (in italics above), how well we have fulfilled the criteria, or whether our list is good or not. We look at the list as possible directions for further thinking. Usually one particular item will be obvious as important. The less important items need looking at as and when we want to.

More on the CS related ideas on my site www.masternewmindsets.com

Six Thinking Hats Training

Six Thinking Hats Training

Spend more time using a powerful

system and less time wondering 

how to think

The more you use the Hats, the more
they work for you . . .

As is currently being used world wide, the Six Thinking Hats are available for use by anyone.

The Thinking Hats work because the focus is trained. Attention is only effective if it is correctly focussed. Being able to switch using simple signals, the mind is no longer distracted. When you combine the effectiveness of individual use of the Hats into groups, then there is substantial saving of time at meetings. There is also a high chance of that meeting getting new ideas, especially if a trained Six Hats facilitator is in control of the meeting.

There are many reasons to use the Six Thinking Hats. Every day we have to make sense of information, and using one or two of the hats helps to sort the information quickly and effectively.

Another reason is our schooling. We've been schooled in directions to suit the architects of education. These are those who consider themselves the guardians of public thinking, the shapers of political thought, and the habits of the media.

Most thinking is almost entirely devoted to financial indoctrination. Wealth, money, the national debt, and chasing of "success" is all secure under the democratic umbrella that dictates public thinking. So we need better thinking - six hats - to sort out what is really important in life, and how much of what we take for granted has been decided by others for political and financial reasons.

So the Six Thinking Hats will aid co-operation in what we are trying to achieve, and, help us think better as individuals. They do this by helping us do things one thing at a time. 

Dennis R Perrin, www.sixthinkinghatstraining.com

Practical Creativity

Practical Creativity is Serious Creativity

How to be seriously creative

A background to the mechanics and some of the tools of serious creativity is here on my site. First, what creativity is not. (Then, further down the page, for what serious creativity is.)

It's not:

1. Religious or mystical in nature
2. A deep philosophy or complex physics
3. A system based on chance
4. Illogical
5. Requiring high intelligence
6. Specially for creative people
7. Needing special talent
8. For artists only
9. For a select group
10. It's not difficult!

What is "Serious Creativity"?

It is:

1. A skill that can be learned
2. A sort of provocative type of thinking
3. An essential supplement to traditional logical thinking
4. A skill that improves with practice
5. Useful in business, education, and social life
6. A generator of new ideas (and helps escape rigid thinking)
7. Based on the way the brain works (as a self-organising system)
8. A way of escaping routines
9. A way of advancing self-esteem and confidence
10. A way of improving intelligence

In ordinary thinking, experiences set up routines.

With serious creativity, we set up provocations, movement
techniques, and other tools of lateral thinking (red blobs
in the above picture). One of these methods has generated
a new idea (gold star). This new idea can then be further
refined and developed with the more advanced methods of
lateral thinking.

Dennis R Perrin is an accredited trainer in lateral thinking, the basis of "Serious Creativity" by
Dr Edward de Bono.
Training is available.