Motivational Minute
May 08, 2000
Hello
Friends!
Here is a message of POWER and PASSION to get your week started with
ENTHUSIASM!
Please feel free to share it with your friends and associates.
CREATIVITY...
Edward de Bono defines it as follows: "Creativity involves breaking out of established patters in order to look at things in a different way." Notice he didn't say a wrong way.
Each and every person on this earth is different. We all have different viewpoints, different perspectives and different ideas. Yet we fear being seen as unconventional or unusual. We worry about being not part of the crowd. For a world of people all wanting to be seen as unique, we are, oddly, submissive conformists.
Freedom of expression is one of our most cherished rights. This even applies to the smallest every day tasks. Sometimes, the most off-the-wall ideas are the ones that work best. And often, we stifle those imaginative impulses because we think maybe they are too unconventional.
Thomas Lipton was a man of creative ideas -- even from early childhood. He arrived in America as a stowaway from Scotland, with eight dollars in his pocket. At one point, having neither a place to live nor money to support himself, Thomas convinced his landlord to let him live in his home at no cost...if Thomas were able to provide 12 additional lodgers who would pay full price. He was a teenager at the time - and delivered the lodgers as planned.
Later, after returning to Scotland, he opened a shop in Glasgow. His time in America had taught him a lot about creative marketing, and he put this knowledge to good use. He installed fun-house mirrors in the shop for the kids, and even advertised bacon by hiring someone to walk a pair of pigs through town.
In 1881, Lipton created and sold the "Largest Cheese Ever Made." When the cheese was made, he inserted several coins. Shoppers lined up to buy hunks of the cheese just in the hopes of receiving one of the coins.
On vacation, Lipton passed through Ceylon and was intrigued by the tea-trade. Tea, at the time, was sold openly in large chests, and shipped in huge bulk amounts. A successful businessman by that time, he bought five tea plantations, and marketed his product in individual packets. This was, according to Lipton, to insure freshness for consumers. His creativity paid off - Lipton sold FOUR MILLION PACKETS IN THAT FIRST YEAR.
So you see creative expression, no matter how odd, can really pay off. Of course, sometimes, it's not as strange you may think. According to John Hoyer Updike, "Creativity is merely a plus name for regular activity - any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better."
Don't worry that your new ideas aren't good enough. In the words of Henry Van Dyke, "Use what talents you possess. The woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best."
From now on, if the thought strikes you, consider it. If you have new way of doing things, don't discount it as wrong. Think it through. Your way may well be the better way that no one has yet considered. What have you lost by simply thinking it through?
STRIVE TO BE DIFFERENT, AND CHALLENGE YOURSELF TO BE CREATIVE!
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LAUGH-A-DAY
FAMILY DEFINITIONS OF COMMON ENGLISH WORDS:
FEEDBACK: The inevitable result when the baby doesn't appreciate the strained carrots.
IMPREGNABLE: A woman whose memory of labor is still vivid.
INDEPENDENT: How we want our children to be as long as they do everything we say.
HEARSAY: What toddlers do when anyone mutters a dirty word.
DUMBWAITER: One who asks if the kids would care to order dessert
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QUOTE-OF-THE-DAY
"Discipline and focused awareness contribute to the art of creation."
- John Poppy
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