Читать книгу Jump Start Your Brain - Doug Hall - Страница 12

Adventure drives the creative engine. Adventure awakens the imagination, fires the adrenalin, and ignites a willingness to try.

The spirit of adventure makes it possible for you to move forward, to take that leap of faith. Without it, life registers on an oscilloscope as a flat, horizontal line. Nothing adventured, nothing gained.

Adventures happen on many different, not necessarily grand, scales. You don’t have to be Magellan, Freud, Einstein, or Lewis and Clark to blaze a trail. You might be an assistant manager negotiating a better idea through a maze of corporate bureaucracy, a soccer coach working to motivate 10-year-olds who have yet to win their first game, or a smitten young man trying to string together just the right words to ask the woman of his dreams to become his wife.

Entrepreneurs are the modern equivalent of the great adventurers of history. Entrepreneurs pledge their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to create new products and services that make life better for some people in some meaningful way. They listen to the little voice inside them that says, “I can make a better product and find a better way to deliver that service in a smarter way,” then they set forth to do it.

Personality Traits that Drive Creativity—Here’s the Hard Data

As part of an ongoing Eureka! Ranch investigation into the invention process, we engage in lots of research. In one such effort, we pooled random groups of people and asked them to come up with new ideas for eyeglasses using a variety of Eureka! Stimulus methods.

Each group was given 45 minutes to complete the task. Afterwards they answered 100 questions designed to form profiles of their values, personalities, and attitudes. We then compared the quality and quantity of each person’s creative output with his or her personal profile.

The overwhelming conclusion: The power of creativity is tied most directly to an adventurous mindset. The strongest correlation between quantity and quality of ideas turned out to be a person’s sense of adventurousness. Those tested who thought of themselves as having a spirit of adventure averaged 72 percent more wicked good ideas in 45 minutes than those who saw themselves as more cautious.

In other words, to leverage all the assets available to you in the process of jumpstarting your brain, you have to embrace adventure. And a tentative squeeze won’t do it. I suggest a big-time bear hug.

An analysis of the profiles of those who saw themselves as being more adventurous found that they are much more likely to:

1. EXHIBIT HIGH LEVELS OF DISCONTENT WITH STATUS QUO

Adventurers ask themselves, “Is this all there is?” They see accomplishments as stepping stones, not resting places.

Their open-mindedness is tinged with pessimism, tempered with an edge of cynicism. Their discontent spurs innovation—and it is the individual, not the masses, who are responsible for innovation. Henry Ford gave us the mass-produced automobile. But it took Charles Kettering to invent the self-starter, thus making it possible for us to turn over our engines with an ignition key instead of a hand crank.

2. ACT SPONTANEOUSLY

Adventurers are willing and eager for new experiences, if for no other reason than the exhilaration of it. They have a lot in common with the fool, whoever it was, who first climbed to the top of some craggy precipice, strapped bungee cords to his or her ankles, yelled “Geronimo!” and let it rip.

Those who have bungee-ed invariably tell me it was a huge rush. Still, the feeling that seized the heart of that first jumper when he or she went sailing into space that first time must have been monumental; everyone who jumped after that point was just following.

3. CALCULATE THE RISKS

Adventurers weigh the odds, contemplate obstacles and plan for contingencies. Adventurers are not daredevils.

Christopher Columbus had good reason to believe the planet was not flat when he set sail for the New World; he’d noticed that the masts of departing ships appeared to shorten as they approached the horizon, a phenomenon he took to mean that there was a curvature in the earth’s plane.

4. HAVE LIBERAL ATTITUDES

I’m talking the literal definition, not the political one. Creative people embrace and encourage new views, fresh perspectives, and differences of all kinds.

The data indicates adventurers are significantly more forgiving, more adaptable, and more open to fresh ideas. They’re comfortable in many different settings and able to function equally well under wildly extreme circumstances. Given the opportunity, a proper adventurer can get along with an aborigine on a desert island as easily as with a head of state at a rodeo.

Likewise, adventurers don’t require perfection. They’re absorbed with the process, as in what’s happening at the moment. The sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski spent three and a half decades blasting away, ton by ton, on a granite mountain in the Black Hills of South Dakota, slowly shaping it into a colossal statue of the great Sioux chief Crazy Horse astride a mustang, his arm outstretched toward the horizon.

For sheer magnitude, Ziolkowski’s project remains the most ambitious undertaking in the history of art. It’s 641 feet long and 563 feet high. All four of the 60-foot high presidential heads of nearby Mt. Rushmore would fit easily under Crazy Horse’s headdress.

At the time of Ziolkowski’s death at the age of 74 in 1982, it was estimated the project would require another five to ten years of blasting before any actual carving could begin. As of this writing, the face of Crazy Horse has been finished and work now moves to the horse’s head. For more details, visit http://www.crazyhorse.org.

Ziolkowski had a vision. He was not focused on the thought that, someday, he would actually behold the finished sculpture. He realized early in the project that he probably wouldn’t live to see it completed. What drove him was the process, the knowledge that with each detonation, each ton of rubble, he was inching toward his destination.

5. POSSESS HIGH LEVELS OF SELF-ESTEEM

Adventurers are predisposed to saying “I can.” Or to put it another way, “What, me worry?” They can’t help it. Repeated failures fail to daunt true adventurers. They see setbacks as lessons and each lesson as another step forward.

Adventurers respect others’ accomplishments, but aren’t intimidated by them. They tend to think that, if they applied themselves with sufficient dedication, they could do the same thing. In fact, the accomplishments of others often inspire them to reach further. Paul McCartney was so impressed upon hearing Brian Wilson’s landmark Pet Sounds album that he sat down and wrote most of the songs for the iconic Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album.

Even in the most regimented system, you can be a swashbuckler. I dedicated a decade of my life to Procter & Gamble, one of the most blue-blooded, buttoned-down corporations in the world. But I wore my colors proudly. I forsook ties and suits and declared a personal embargo on all nonproductive meetings and paperwork. My office was festooned with a six-foot Bugs Bunny, a humongous Kermit the Frog, two eight-foot cardboard palm trees, and several surfboards. I filled the air with Jimmy Buffett tunes, thought big thoughts, and made them real.

I hear you. You’re saying, “Hey, that’s fine for you. You’re different.”

So are you. You’re different too. That’s the point. Be yourself. Whoever you are.

As we grow up, we become progressively more cautious. We learn not to touch hot stoves and stick our tongues on monkey bars in winter, but we soon begin confusing hot stoves and frozen metal with potential adventures. We fall into deep, cavernous ruts.

We encourage children to reach out to new experiences. We arrange dance lessons, swimming classes, and soccer leagues for them. But we don’t do as we preach. We’re too quick to slap our own hands. As adults, we live predictable, restrictive lives.

ENOUGH! WAKE UP! DARE TO DARE! If you want to grow, force yourself out of your ruts.

If you want to Jump Start your imagination, you have to feed it new stimuli, new people, new experiences. Choke off the stimuli, and you choke off your brain.

Take those first few tentative steps. Here are some suggestions for climbing out of ruts. But be careful—as simple as they are, they can lead to unsettling new levels of stimulation:

1. Be adventurous. Take a different route to work or school.

2. Be adventurous. Buy five magazines you’ve never read about subjects in which you know nothing about.

3. Be adventurous. Buy the No. 1 and number 10 paperbacks on the New York Times bestseller list and read them.

4. Be adventurous. Ask the seventh person you talk to at work to lunch.

5. Be adventurous. Write the numbers of the channels on your TV or cable system on little scraps of paper. Put the scraps in a hat. Pull out a scrap and turn to that channel. Set a timer for five minutes and watch. Pay attention. When the timer runs out, pull out another slip. Repeat until your eyes are bloodshot. Absorb each different world.

6. Be adventurous. Call the family member you have a grudge against—a really long-standing, hostile bout of bad blood—and say you’re sorry and want to start over.

7. Be adventurous. Convince a Rolls Royce salesman that you’re wealthy and take one for a test drive.

You’ll surprise yourself. You’ll discover you like things that you used to know you wouldn’t. You’ll tap into a whole new set of ideas, options, and perceptions. You’ll be taking the critical first step to recapturing your lost spirit of adventure.

The key to becoming an adventurer is in learning to be at ease with two of the most central elements of life—CHAOS AND UNCERTAINTY.

Too many of us have decided we need a certain guarantee before we embark. Or we think we have to know the answer before we ask the question. So we never take the first step. Or the question never gets asked.

But no matter how many travel brochures you read, you won’t know how it feels to stand with your feet planted on the beaches of your destination until you get there. And you most assuredly will never get there until you take the first step. Granted, you’ll be risking failure. At the same time, you’ll be enhancing your odds from “impossible” to “possible.” You’ll also be running the risk of accomplishment.

HOLD IT RIGHT THERE!

You’re not listening. You’re nodding your head, but you’re not internalizing. You know in your mind I’m right, but you don’t know it in your heart, which is where all such knowledge has to be known before you’ll act on it.

Put this book down right now and engage in some off-the-wall act of spontaneity—something that makes your toes tingle and the hairs on the back of your neck prickle. Something that makes your heart gallop and reminds you you’re alive. Step outside yourself.

Can’t Think of Anything?—Here’s an Option

My informal survey indicates that virtually all adults at one time have tossed some tennis balls, apples, or rocks in the air and wondered what it would be like to juggle. However, few have actually learned how to make three objects dance in the air.

Myself I’m a big fan of juggling as a way to de-stress. Because it demands single-minded concentration, juggling is just the ticket for sweeping cobwebs from a tired brain. When you’re juggling, you can’t be thinking about anything else. If your mind wanders, you’re liable to get beaned with a ball, ring, or club.

The purpose of learning to juggle here at this moment is to give you an adventure that feels a little scary but that in truth is not nearly as hard as it looks.

As a life member of the International Jugglers’ Association, I’m sworn to pass the art along to as many non-jugglers as humanly possible. What follows is the method I used to teach it to thousands of folks of all ages while kicking around New England as a performer.

DOUG’S JUGGLING METHOD

(Read entire instructions before starting. If you’re left-handed, I’m sorry, but you’ll have to reverse these instructions.)

Step 1: Find three tennis balls. Better yet, get three bean bags. They don’t roll as far. To minimize spinal stress from excessive bending over, practice over a bed. Or, to minimize runaway tennis balls, situate yourself in a sandbox, on a beach, or in the middle of the Sahara Desert.

Step 2: Hold one ball in your right hand with your arms bent at a 90-degree angle as if you’re carrying a tray. Slide your right hand to the center of your body, right about where your bellybutton is. Open your hand and pop the ball up and across to your left, to a spot just above your left ear.

Step 3: Catch the ball in your left hand. Then slide your left hand to the center of your body and pop the ball up and across to your right, to a spot just above your right ear.

Step 4: Practice the slide, pop, and catch until you can do it without thinking. The ball should follow a sideways figure-eight trajectory. Pop the ball with your wrist up and across your body. Don’t use your arm. Your elbows should not move. A common beginners’ mistake is known in juggling circles as the “stiff-wristed roll-off.” Instead of popping the ball across their body, they roll it off their fingertips causing it to go forward instead of across.

Step 5: Put a ball in each hand. With your right hand, slide and pop up and across. When the ball reaches its peak, slide and pop the ball in your left hand up, across and under the ball in the air. Continue practicing: RIGHT - LEFT - STOP - RIGHT - LEFT - STOP. Now do it the other way: LEFT - RIGHT - STOP -LEFT - RIGHT - STOP. Remember this tempo. When you’re juggling three balls, the rhythm is the same.

Step 6: Now it’s time for partner juggling. Recruit an assistant, lovely or otherwise. Stand side-by-side. Put your adjacent, inside arms behind your backs or, if you and your assistant are on intimate terms, around each other.

• The person to the right puts two balls in his or her right hand and makes the first toss up and across to the left.

• As ball No. 1 reaches its peak, the person on the left tosses ball No. 2 up, across, and back to the right.

• As ball No. 2 ball reaches its peak, the person on the right tosses ball No. 3 across and back to the left … etc., etc., etc.

• Continue popping back and forth until you establish a rhythm.

Step 7: Juggle solo. Put two balls in your right hand and one in your left. Remember to pop each ball up, across, and underneath the ball that preceded it. Always use your wrists.

Relax. Don’t watch one ball at a time. Concentrate on the three moving parts as a whole. Picture yourself as the nucleus of an atom, the balls orbiting around you like electrons. Don’t rush—gravity controls the speed of the balls. Get a feeling for the speed of gravity. Once you understand the tempo, you’ll have it made.

If you have problems with tossing balls forward instead of up and across, practice in front of a wall. The balls will hit the wall, then they’ll hit you. After you’ve been clunked in the noggin a few dozen times, you’ll learn to pop up and across.

The International Jugglers Association is a wicked good organization. To learn more visit http://www.juggle.org.

NOT INTO JUGGLING?—HERE’S A GROUP ADVENTURE TO TRY

Pick up the phone and call the couple you always get together with on Friday night. Invite them to a Friday Night Eureka! Adventure. Tell them to expect a surprise. Do the Eureka! adventure as part of a group—there’s safety in numbers. Doing a Eureka! adventure night with friends also makes it more fun.

Do the following:

• Have appetizers at the fifth restaurant listed in the yellow pages.

• Have your entree at the thirteenth restaurant listed in the yellow pages

• Have dessert at the twenty-third restaurant listed in the yellow pages.

If this is all a tad too random and free-spirited for you, then have each person in your party write the name of a restaurant that they want to try, but have never visited, on a slip of paper and put the slips in a hat. Pull them out and have drinks, appetizers, entrees, and desserts at the restaurants in the order they are pulled from the hat.

If time allows, go to the movie with the greatest number of letters in the title. In the event of a tie, flip a coin.

NOTE: A friend in New York City did this and e-mailed me that they also found some great new restaurants as a result. Sounds like they have a real appetite for adventure.

My wife, Debbie, once suggested we go to the movie with the greatest number of letters in the title—we ended up at The Making Of An American Quilt, a tear-jerking chick flick. I was the only guy at the show; I think it was a set up. However, the experience did inspire some fresh marketing ideas for a telephone company client a month later. You never know where adventures will lead or pay off.

WE INTERRUPT THIS BOOK UNTIL AFTER YOUR ADVENTURE. PLEASE PUT THE BOOK DOWN AND ENGAGE YOURSELF IN A SPONTANEOUS ADVENTURE. NO, REALLY. PLEASE.

E-mail your stories, digital photos, or videos of your adventure to DougHall@DougHall.com. I’ll respond to every e-mail and post the most inspirational ones at http://www.EurekaRanch.com.

Imagine how it would feel to live out an adventure every day, all day long. Imagine being able to transform the obstacles that life dishes out into opportunities. Imagine taking control of your circumstances, rather than allowing your circumstances to control you.

Adventure is about thinking big and taking action on the thoughts. It’s about having the courage to be bold and brave.

Adventure is not something you simply imagine—it’s how you must live.

Good for you, traveler. You’re on your way!

MUSIC BONUS: The link below takes you to a web page that with a song called “Let Your Dreams Come True” written and performed by Scott Johnson of Google Press. It captures in lyrics and music the essence of this chapter.

The web page also has a link to a Brain Brew segment where David and I did helped a caller quit her job and pursue her dream.

Visit http://www.doughall.com/JSYB2