Valuable insights!

My way of dealing with ANTs (Automatic Negative Thoughts) is to make use of a notebook, which I have had designated as Distractions Notebook.

Whenever an ANT comes to mind, I just jot it down in this notebook, and plan to deal with it at a convenient time.

Oftentimes, the ANTs would dissipate on their own without my personal intervention.

Drawing intellectual cues from psychologist Dr Deepak Chopra who puts it this way, about 60,000 to 80,000 fleeting thoughts run through our mind on a daily basis.

According to him, 95% of them are the same as yesterday's.

Continuing from an earlier excerpt from Dilip Mukerjea's new book, Brainaissance: The Renaissance of the Brain & The Rebirth of Imagination:

HUMOUR IS SERIOUS BUSINESS

The Accidental Entrepreneur:

"So, what made you decide to go into business for yourself?" "It was “Something my last boss said."

"Really, what was that?" "You're fired."

A Philadelphia dentist, Sam Lipschitz, went off to India to find the meaning of life. Months went by and his mother didn’t hear a word from him. Finally, she took a plane to India and asked for the wisest man there. She was directed to an ashram, where the guard told her that she would have to wait a week for an audience with the guru, and at that time she would only be allowed to speak three words to him. She waited, carefully preparing her words. When she was finally ushered in to see the guru, she said to him, “Sam, come home!”

Two guys are hunting in the forest and they run across a bear. They both take off running, but after a while one guy stops, takes off his backpack and pulls out a pair of running shoes. The other guy sees this and is wondering what is going on, so he stops, runs back to the guy and asks "Why are you putting on your running shoes, do you really think you are going to be able to outrun that bear with those?" The other guy said: "I don't have to out run the bear, I just have to out run YOU!"

A robot walks into an Oktoberfest celebration, orders a drink, and offers some cash.

The barmaid says, "Hey, we don't serve robots."

And the robot says, "Oh, but someday you will."

A gingerhead is sitting next to a lawyer on an airplane. The lawyer keeps bugging her to play a game with him so as to determine who has more general knowledge. Finally, he says he will offer her hundred-to-one odds. Every time she doesn’t know the answer to one of the questions, she will pay him five dollars. Every time he doesn’t know the answer to one of her questions, he will pay her five hundred dollars.

She agrees to play, and he asks her, “What is the distance from the earth to the nearest star?”

She says nothing, just hands him a five-dollar bill.

She asks him, “What goes up a hill with three legs and comes back down with four legs?”

He thinks for a long time but in the end has to concede that he has no idea. He hands her 500 dollars.

The gingerhead puts the money in her purse without comment.

The lawyer says, “Wait a minute. What’s the answer to your question?”

Without a word, she hands him five dollars.

A man walks into a bank and says he wants to borrow $200 for six months. The loan officer asks him what kind of collateral he has.

The man says, “I have a fancy blue Mercedes. Here are the keys. Keep it until the loan is paid off.”

Six months later the man returns to the bank, repays the $200 plus $10 interest and takes back his car. The loan officer says, “Sir, if I may ask, why would a man who drives a luxury Mercedes need to borrow $200?”

The man replies, “I had to go to Europe for six months. Where else could I store a Merc that long for $10?”

Here's an excerpt from Dilip Mukerjea's new book, Brainaissance: The Renaissance of the Brain & The Rebirth of Imagination

HUMOUR IS SERIOUS BUSINESS

The True Entrepreneur

A mall manager has three spaces to rent, all in a row. A prospective lessee shows up and says he wants to rent the space on the left for a men's wear shop.

'That's fine,' the mall manager says. 'You get free signage; what do you want on the sign?' 'Men's Wear,' says the man.

A second guy comes along and asks to rent the right hand space for his gentleman's formal wear business. When asked he says he wants 'Men's Wear' on his sign. The mall manager tells him that the left hand shop will have the same sign. 'No problem,' says the man.

Finally a third man comes along to rent the middle space. The manager is somewhat concerned because this guy also has a men's wear shop. Warily the manager asks the third man what he wants on his sign.

The guy replies: 'Entrance.'

Indian Brains

Mathematician: How do you write 4 in between 5?

Answers by: Chinese : Is this a joke? Japanese : Impossible!

American : The question's all wrong! British : It's not found on the Internet And the Indian: F(IV)E

Two cows are standing in the pasture. One turns to the other and says, “Although pi is usually abbreviated to five numbers, it is actually goes on into infinity.”

The second cow turns to the first and says, “Moooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.”

Accounting for Life

A woman is told by her doctor that she has six months to live. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Yes, there is,” the doctor replies. “You could marry a tax accountant.”

“How will that help my illness?” the woman asks.

“Oh, it won’t help you illness,” says the doctor, “but it will make the six months seem like an eternity.”

This elegant quote to me is the best definition for success.

It shows that success is more of a journey than reaching a destination.

It implies sort of a work in progress, with juice of growth.

It necessitates preplanning as a goal striving endeavour.

More importantly, it has to be expressed in personal terms.

In retrospect, my nascent exploration of developing personal mastery has had started with my initial participation in Paul J Meyer's Dynamics of Goal Setting back in the late seventies.

I was then a young manager.

It led me to reading the classic works of Napoleon Hill, Dr Maxwell Maltz, Dale Carnegie, Earl Nightingale, Og Mandino, just to name a few of my perennial favourites, which had impacted me tremendously, as I traversed the Highway of Life for more than seven decades.

As a matter of fact, Paul J Meyer's elegant quote:

"Whatever you vividly imagine, ardently desire, sincerely believe, and enthusiastically acted upon... must inevitably come to pass,"

is still framed and hung on the wall of my private sanctuary a.k.a. personal library today.

It's self explanatory! 

It's self explanatory!

 Just to present a quick round-up of all the published works of Dilip Mukerjea:

Introducing the latest book from Dilip Mukerjea:

Strategic Blueprinting: High-Speed Deep-Depth Learning Skills for Winning in the World of Competitive Intelligence;

This elegant quote is music to my ears, so to speak :

“Every time I read a great book I felt I was reading a kind of map, a treasure map, and the treasure I was being directed to was in actual fact myself.

But each map was incomplete, and I would only locate the treasure if I read all the books, and so the process of finding my best self was an endless quest.

And books themselves seemed to reflect this idea. Which is why the plot of every book ever can be boiled down to ‘someone is looking for something'.”

Matt Haig, Reasons to Stay Alive;

From my own personal experiences, this is sometimes not the best option, for you invariably also need competent folks, especially those holding contrary and diverse perspectives, outside your tribe to challenge you and demand more of you.

I subscribe to the Law of Requisite Variety.

In a nut shell, the book breaks down the different ingredients required to help you reach your flow state of peak performance:

- motivation, learning, grit, creativity, innovation, and flow.

Motivation is what gets you into the game.

Learning and accelerated learning skills allow you to continue to play, so does grit.

Creativity and innovation skills are how you steer, and finally “flow” is how you turbo-boost all of the ingredients to incredible heights.

As Steven Kotler sums up, each of these ingredients tap into one major attribute common in impossible-doers: embracing the power of multiple perspectives, for he argues, looking at a problem from multiple perspectives creates a systems-thinking approach that is at the heart of The Art of Impossible!

Godspeed!

I certainly share the sentiment of Charlie Brown and Snoopy, with whom I grew up together from the late fifties.

Yep!

To me, personal courage is the one critical value that provides a leader the drive and stamina to follow your values in the worst of times and against the greatest adversity.

It requires taking the initiative to face fear, danger, and adversity.

Also, it includes the notion of taking responsibility for decisions and actions.

Additionally, it involves the ability to perform critical self-assessment, to confront new ideas, and to change.

Valid observation! 

Remember the popular Aesop tale, the Tortoise and the Hare? 

Hard work beats talent any day but if you're talented and work hard, it's hard to be beaten.

Drawing on my own personal experiences, it takes more than desire. It takes also the decision to act as well as the discipline to see it through till the intended outcome is achieved.

Here's another quick cocktail dose of powerful vitamins for the mind!

My response to a question on Quora:

"How does one recover the curiosity lost in childhood?"

A quick one. Some ideas to share with you:

1) Act like a child, but don't be childish. More precisely, adopt a child's mindset of a beginner.

2) Understand that curiosity starts with interest, and interest permeates all learning endeavours. So develop a personal interest in things, places, people, ideas all around you. The world out there is full of possibilities.

3) Strive to break patterned routines, so as to be able to see something different or think something different or do something different; more precisely, to see the world afresh and anew.

4) Naturally, embrace a warm, sincere and genuine interest in people all around you, as people are your greatest resource, as well as your wonderful opportunity to learn, grow and change.

5) Listen attentively, and talk less. That's why we have one mouth and two ears. Just kidding!

6) Keep learning - and doing - new things, so as to gain expanded perspectives and new experiences. Evolving experiences = more applied knowledge!

7) Since as much as 90% of what we learn in a life-time always come to us via visual cues, according to information scientists, we should constantly enhance our perceptual sensitivity to the environment.

So, more than 500 years ago, Leonardo da Vinci was absolutely right when he said, use all our senses, especially our sense of sight.

viii) When looking at a problem or challenge or issue at hand, explore beyond the positives and the negatives, like what's interesting here.

9) When you arrive at a seemingly endpoint, intentionally ask: what else is there? what's missing here? where's the gap? what is NOT yet happening?

10) Constantly strategise and think through your problems, by seeing ahead, seeing beyond, seeing from above, seeing from behind, seeing sideways, seeing beneath, seeing within and seeing through.

11) Suspend judgment and make unlikely connections, especially from disparate spheres of activity, no matter how weird they may be. Use them as jump off points.

12) Don't hesitate to play with crazy questions: what would Sherlock Holmes see and/or do? what about Iron Man? Mike Wazowski (Monsters)? Hiro Hamada (Big Hero 6)? Ralph (Wreck-it-Ralph)? Po (Kung Fu Panda? Skipper or Kowalski (Madagascar)?

13) Occasionally, don't hesitate to play, explore and experiment, with analogies:

Personal/Direct/Symbolic/Fantasy (from Synectics).

14) Learn how to imagine possibilities by copycatting, piggybacking, hitchhiking and leapfrogging on other people's ideas. Remember, Ideas Build on Ideas!

15) Playing with all kinds of scenarios in the head - best-case, realistic-case, and worst-case is fun! Indulge in it.

16) Don't be afraid to play, explore and experiment with unorthodox methods to imagine more possibilities: image streaming; constructive daydreaming; creative visualisation; deliberate doodling (with nondominant hand); vision boards (cut and paste collagework); mandalas.

17) Not to forget, read, read, and read widely and deeply, all kinds of published works, mainstream as well as from the fringes, so that you can have continual sustainable intellectual horsepower.

18) Write, write, and write, so as to garner people's attention to your evolving acumen and growing expertise, which often can lead to more public speaking and consulting engagements.

19) Develop a continual and never-ending idea/insight generating mindset, and a pro-active problem solving attitude, so that folks around you can turn to you for advice and help.

20) Go all out to share your knowledge, experience and acumen, as "Knowledge Shared is Power Squared".

21) Last but not least, be humble.

Enjoy your continuing journey with a sense of curiosity, wonder and discovery!

Frankly, this candid sentiment of the great actress is shared by and among a lot of people.

This reality doesn't mean education or studying is irrelevant.

It simply means that the policy makers and the so called educators need to rethink on the topic, essentially the original ideals of the Latin term, "educare", and that's bringing out the best of people.

What do you see?

Is it an optical illusion or is there something wrong with your eyes?

Here's another quick cocktail dose of powerful vitamins for the mind!

I beg to differ.

The ability to recognise opportunity has a lot to do with opportunity! It's followed by the ability to assess, develop and sustain it as a viable courseof action.

They are the #1 skill attribute of successful entrepreneurs!

My point, drawing intellectual cues from the late creativity maestro Dr Edward de Bono:

"The reasons that many opportunities pass us by is a perceptual one - we do not recognise an opportunity for what it is. An opportunity exists only when we see it." ...

"Everyone is surrounded by opportunities. But they only exist once they have been seen. And they will only be seen if they are looked for."!

Here's another quick cocktail dose of powerful vitamins for the mind!

As I read and ponder, the quote reads in the same vein as Robert Schuller's elegant quote: 

'Persevere, don't give up. Tough times never last, but tough people do.'! 

Frankly, you can only create them via the process of assessing, developing and sustaining them, immediately after recognising them in the first place. 

Just as the late creativity maestro Dr Edward de Bono, often acknowledged as the Father of Lateral Thinking, put it: 

"The reasons that many opportunities pass us by is a perceptual one - we do not recognise an opportunity for what it is. An opportunity exists only when we see it." ... 

"Everyone is surrounded by opportunities. But they only exist once they have been seen. And they will only be seen if they are looked for."! 

He added: 

"If you wait for opportunities to occur, you will be one of the crowd." ... 

"Opportunity ideas do not lie around waiting to be discovered. Such ideas need to be produced."! 

His parting shot: 

"Studies have shown that 90% of error in thinking is due to error in perception. If you can change your perception, you can change your emotion and this can lead to new ideas."! 

These astute observations of his reinforce the fact that enhancing one's perceptual sensitivity to the world is a critical leadership as well as entrepreneurial issue, when it comes to recognising and creating opportunities. 

Oh, Yeah!

In reality, Mother Nature was here first! She can't be wrong.

More importantly, Mother Nature has had been our first teacher in innovation! Just think about biomimicry.