Ionizing the Creative Juices

The best way to predict the future, they say, is to create it.
It is really amazing how unbelievably creative some people are.
I have always considered myself pretty creative. In my own mind, at least, I comforted myself that I was a cool chap with a solid top. All that self-induced legerdemain came crashing down when I sat to be assessed for the sole purpose of finding my spot on the scale of creativity.
Gee whiz, have I deceived myself! Where have I been hiding!
The encounters of the past few weeks have birthed a radical hunger in me.
It is a pursuit for creative excellence.
I have certainly come to a firm conclusion that I need to be adroit at keeping the creative juices flowing at appreciable levels far beyond personal comfort. On supercharging the brain check this.

Well, talking of the seminar that started it all, I learnt a few things. These are:

1. The brain and the heart have similar properties to the soil. They are centres of monumental creative potential. Their productive capacities cannot be compared to that of any other part of the human being. Whereas the womb can be barren, there is no such thing as a barren brain or a barren heart. Whatever is sown in them and carefully tendered will eventually yield a massive harvest. Most people have taught themselves to follow either the heart or the mind, the secret is both must to be employed to create synergy.
2. It is extremely important to develop a persona that focuses on finding solutions as opposed to finding faults. Where there are problems, one needs to go beyond them in a cool and deliberate manner and begin to imagine the opportunities, ideas and solutions that are possible. The more time spent on thinking creatively about issues, the greater the capacity that is unleashed to find solutions. There is always a bigger picture behind what we are confronted with and one creative thought will induce more creative thoughts. This is particularly important for entrepreneurs and budding businesspeople.
3. The ability to make good decisions consistently is an art that can be mastered and employed in every situation. The critical question to ask always is "what opportunities and ideas can be created out of this situation?" Even out of the most difficult and painful situations, very profoundly creative solutions can be found. A quality decision to make a good choice will unleash a stream of good outcomes and induce the Multiplier Effect in our lives.

Thanks for reading. Wishing you all a super November!

Awakenings

I am beginning to awaken to the fact (to me at least) that there are certain concepts, principles, ideas or buzz words that broadly define, accentuate and encapsulate every one of the 52 weeks, and by extension the 12 months, in the year!
Whilst I frankly can not produce a thesis to back up this whimsical 'discovery' in my mind, I suspect that it can help simplify and perhaps improve life considerably. So I am beginning to subject it to evidential analyses to determine its reliability and efficacy.
Will you join me in doing this for yourself? This is what we will do:

1. From Sunday to Saturday write down all the recurring principles, ideas, concepts and buzz words that invade your space uncontrollably. The dorminant or most recurrent of them is the focus of the next week.
2. Proactively challenge yourself to practice the attributes of the buzz word throughout the week that follows.
3. Jot down the changes you witness in your life as well as the remarks of those around you.
4. We will all then post our verdicts in the first week of 2009 on our respective blogs!

Last week, for instance, my ears were extraordinarily opened to the concept of "Thanksgiving". There was a heightened attention in my heart as well as mind towards the need to be more thankful and appreciative of the life around me. It was clearly the buzz word for the whole week.
So I will be expressing lots of gratitude and thankfulness throughout this week.
So far the prevailing principle for this week is "Creativity".
This probably is due to the fact that on Saturday I attended a superb seminar on the topic of "unleashing the creative potential in you" and have been bombarded by the word literally every day ever since. More on the the concept of creativity in the next post.

Thank you all for reading!

"A Better Ghana" vs " A New Ghana"

Having looked at the mutterings of the two main political parties in Ghana and the themes of their political campaigns, I am convinced that the essence of their messages is essentially similar.
The NPP chants "A New Ghana" and the NDC bellows "A Better Ghana".
While I believe that a new Ghana must lead to a better Ghana, I guess all of them are selling an agenda of change. I am at least encouraged by the fact that none of them is preaching a message of sankofa. Ghana cannot continue to be mired in the pit of poverty and underdevelopment. We need to keep on transforming for the better in order to generate a momentum of progress and modernisation across the entire Ghanaian society.
I suppose continuously pushing for change is our only escape velocity out of our present predicament.
Whilst there have been some oases of change in the landscape of the country, the much needed transformation of the human resources has been awfully slow. A Shopping Mall or two filled with imported products and the rise of a few rich individuals will not lift Ghana out of rank of the least developed countries. We need to develop an abrasive attitude towards becoming gernerators of wealth instead of importers and consumers of what other people have produced.

Having said that I believe each and every individual in their own small way need to work towards an agenda of personal transformation. Following the routine of the past will definitely not help us no matter who we elect to lead our beautiful nation.
Personally, I have vowed never to become a victim of routinism.
For me the busy-ness of a routine life is as suffocating as it can be. So I have devised ways of combating routinism without compromising my productivity and the quality of work I put in at the end of the day.
The three basic reforms I am choosing to adhere to are:

1. I will try to do something different every day. A non-reckless adventure is invigorating and has the capacity to unleash a great deal of positive vibe. ( Hopely this doesn't become a routine in itself)
2. I will take the responsibilty to get to know new people as often as is possible. This I believe will lead to a network of great friendships and create arenas of influence.
3. I will embrace change as it come or initiate change where necessary. I will take the needed steps to do whatever it takes to transform myself and positively affect those around me.

Poverty: we can't afford to ignore it any longer

Poverty is not necessarily the lack of money in the pocket.
It is not primarily a money problem. The lack of money ; more precisely, the inability to make ends meet is just symptomatic of a much broader systemic malaise. It is the severest breach of a person's humanity of tentacular dimensions!
It is less about what people don't have and more about why they don't have what they don't have. That is why simply throwing money at the problem does not defeat it. It makes it even worse because it nourishes it.
A very complex state of affairs broadly characterised by hopelessness, indignity and despair, poverty flourishes and thrives by the the very circumstances it creates in the lives of its victims.
Poverty is a state of existence or a way of living that perpetuates a circle of lack or insufficiency.
To successfully combat poverty therefore our attention must be propelled towards creating a parallel but opposite perpetual circle in the areas where it thrives-- a perpetual circle of sufficiency and productivity! This brings up the issue of sutainability in all societal endeavours.
Quality education, policies that support entreprenuership as well as the involvement of Governments in establishing centres of excellence are perhaps some of the most potent weapons needed to be unleashed against this formidable enemy.

Learning to Follow the Subconscoius Mind

I have caught myself contemplating on the question of leadership subconsciously over the past few weeks.
I am amazed as to how my mind has a mind of its own. Sometimes I have been able to intrude on these internal discourses by chance! I wish I really knew how to train myself to track all what the subconscious mind is doing. That, I believe, is the secret of creative thinking.
Let me say that I am not an expert on leadership by any stretch of imagination nor am I reading any book on the subject at present.
However judging by the frequency with which my subconscious mind has been trekking to the subject, I have decided to make time to study the subject myself. I am even planning to pursue a Master of Business Leadership degree to help me unearth what I am missing .
Who knows I might become a better me by simply following the pioneering spirit of my mind.

If any of you have mustered the art of following your subconscious mind let me know the secret.

The Fleece Market

The free market as we know it is no more!

One of the central pillars of economic theory is the expectation that people and economic entities will always take reasonable decisions and make sound choices.
Oh boy, how wrong we have been all along!! It would have been better to have assumed that, as a matter of fact, all humans are incorrigible morrons and on that premises we could have put together the necessary safeguards in our economic theories to minimize the risks.
The unfolding economic quadmire the whole world is wallowing in, makes a mockery of the much-heralded assumption of reasonableness. We are all witnessing the consequences of the untested and laissez-faire decisions that have been made over the years by greedy and callous men and women in charge of many branded financial institutions.
Let me express a very critical fact that many seem to forget so easily:
designing very complex financial derivatives and other instruments and simply passing them through the system for implementation by people who have no idea of what they are dealing with coupled with the total disregard for checks and balances will always sink the ship!

Greed, deregulation and irresponsibilty are essentially the hallmarks of the present contagion.
As it was with Nick Leeson so it has been with these clueless managers of our financial resources. Only this time the scale has been massive, brutal and catastrophic!
Global brands are collapsing like dominoes before our eyes every day. The Securities Markets have lost trillions of dollars in a matter of weeks. This is unprecedented! It will take years for the markets to get back to where they were. I wonder if any lessons would have been learnt by the time it is all over.