Can a Story Initiate Personal Growth?

Did you by chance read The Celestine Prophesy?

If so, did you wonder how that book could end up on the NY Times Bestseller list for three years!

 

WHY did this happen? Dr Jill Ammon-Wexler here. I have spent years  teaching mind power and personal growth to people from around the world — and before that I did the same in a clinical environment in California’s Silicon Valley.

And although I have developed many of the best personal development tools on the web, there is something I must still admin: WE LEARN MORE, AND LEARN MORE DEEPLY, FROM STORIES.

Here is a ell-written adventure fable that, Like Celestine Prophesy, will drop personal transformation right into the back of your mind:

Go read a sample from BOOK  of the “Birth of a Warrior: A Novel of Personal Power” click here!

The Intelligence of Smart Plants

Do Plants Really Think?

There’s new research indicating that smart plants really are intelligent. They can communicate with  each other, and even call in reinforcements when the going gets tough.

Who says so? Australian gardener Don Burke and Australian National University chemistry Professor Ben Selinger, in reviewing research on smart plants over the past 10 years, have come to the conclusion that many plants are actually very smart, and have qualities that can only be called “intelligent.”

Smart plants communicate with each other using a range of chemical signals. “If a plant muncher such as a caterpillar … starts chewing on a plant, the plant will start sending chemicals to its leaves in an effort to repel the chewer,” Burke said. “(And) nearby plants will also start emitting these same chemicals, anticipating that they’ll also be attacked.”

Burke also said plants are also smart in another way — they’re capable of releasing specific chemicals that attract certain protective insects.  “So …  they call in good insects to fight the insects that are attacking them,” he added.

Scientists have identified the plant genes responsible for these “smart plant” actions, and are trying to combine it with other plants, Burke said. The breakthrough, recently published in the journal Science, suggested that its possible gardeners and farmers may not have to use pesticides any more.

“It has huge implications for the world,” Burke said. “In years ahead, instead of pouring vast amounts of toxic chemicals all over the world and therefore ourselves in one form or another, we should be able to add these genes, which are naturally occurring genes in plants, to other plants, so that they can also repel insects.”

Burke said plants also used a lot of other smart qualities. “Venus Fly Traps or sensitive plants can move, pitchers plants can eat animals, peaches and cherry trees can count the number of cold days each year before they produce their leaves in spring,” he explained.

Australian National University chemistry Professor Ben Selinger described the smart plant research as astounding. “Plants have always been sort of relegated as primitive compared to animals and it’s just not true,” he said. But there’s still room for a lot more research in the smart plants area.

Posted by Jill Ammon-Wexler
Amazing Solutions

Can Creativity Be Increased?

Increase Your Creativity

There is strong evidence that certain strategies definitely increase creative output. These strategies include…

Strategy 1. Embrace Your Problems
One of the most fundamental skills of creativity is the ability to recognize an opportunity and seize it. You have countless opportunities to expand your creative thinking skills. Such opportunities present themselves daily at home, while driving to work, during meetings or lunch – or while just hanging out with friends. There’s really no shortage of opportunities to refine and develop your creativity. The most basic approach is to recognize that a problem  may actually be a golden opportunity for a creative explosion – and seize the moment.

Strategy 2. Challenge Your Creativity Assumptions
It’s natural and necessary to make assumptions about the reality of our everyday world. We would otherwise spend all of our waking hours performing unnecessary mental analyzes of ordinary things. As a result, many times we see only what we expect to see. Our analysis of a situation or a problem is based entirely on assumptions based on our past experience or accepted knowledge. Plus assumptions can become so entrenched it doesn’t cross our mind to challenge them.

A problem may arise simply because we perceive a situation or condition through a set of false assumptions preventing clear thinking. Challenging your assumptions is an important component of creativity. This allows you to look beyond what is obvious or already accepted. And it leads straight to the creative breakthroughs you’re looking for.

Truly creative people in all fields of interest tend to automatically challenge both their own assumptions, and the commonly accepted knowledge about a problem. This mental attitude is the true source of all of the world’s great inventions and businesses. The moment you choose to challenge one of your assumptions as possibly untrue or incomplete,” you are on the way to discovering something new and different.

Strategy 3. Take Some Creativity Risks
A willingness to take risks is at the very heart of creativity. No creative person succeeds without first failing – as failures are part of the process of testing one’s assumptions. There is simply no creativity without failure.

To experience major creative breakthroughs, it’s important to become comfortable taking risks. Each failure you encounter will actually supercharge your creativity by generating new information. If you’re unwilling to take risks and deal with what ordinary people call failure, then you cannot expect to become a great creative thinker.

Modern neuroscience has shown that our brains are literally rewired each time we learn something new by making a mistake. The brain is designed to learn through the trial and error process. 

Strategy 4. Use Alternative Thinking
To come up with a creative idea, you will often need a new vantage point. Creating a new solution to an existing problem, for example, may require looking at the problem from a fresh perspective.

There are many tools used by creative thinkers to create such a fresh perspective, including: Brainstorming, MESV creative visualization, and various other means of considering the problem from a fresh vantage point.

Additionally, a great way to kick start your creativity is to look at your problem from the vantage point of another profession. If you are a mechanical engineer, for example, how would an architect view your problem? Or if you are a product designer, how would an interior decorator approach your problem? This approach can lead to some remarkable creative breakthroughs.

Strategy 5. Accept Ambiguity
Many people prefer that everything be clear and unambiguous. They are uncomfortable with anything that seems vague, or could have more than one meaning or application. As a result they tend to be rigid, highly predictable thinkers.

A touch of ambiguous thinking during the idea generation stage of the creative process has the power to bring out genius-level ideas. People who can think ambiguously are fluid and flexible thinkers. The ability to think ambiguously can yield amazing creative insights. This is ability is experienced (and built) when you indulge in wordplay or humour.

Strategy 6. Expand Your Vision
An excellent way to build your creative muscles is to read and explore outside your normal area of interest. This can be especially useful when you are struggling to solve a creative problem. 

Strategy 7. Massage your brainwaves
Creative thinking best occurs when your brain is in certain states called alpha and theta. You are in an alpha/theta state when your brain is producing a predominance of slower brain-waves, as opposed to the faster beta brain-waves associated with normal waking consciousness.

Alpha /theta brain-waves are the reason many people have creative ah-ha experiences during a nap, a stroll, or some other mentally-relaxing activity. But consciously entering into an alpha/theta state can be a challenge. Meditators spend years learning to initiate this state on will, but modern technology has introduced a much faster method of building alpha/theta expertise – brainwave training. Be sure to check it out – your creativity will never be the same. Incidentally, a great side benefit of entering into the alpha/theta brain-wave state is virtually instant stress reduction.

Supercharge Your Brain
The one thing that robs you of creative energy more than anything else is stress. Bust your stress and you will raise your IQ, develop clear mental focus, study and learn better, and increase your creative output.  Get Creative

Posted by Jill Ammon-Wexler
Amazing Solutions

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