Creativity booster exercises (c) by Eric S. Meyer. Created in 2005 for restricted use.  Sale or other transfer prohibited. All Rights Reserved. 800-71USALL

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The purpose of this text is to help empower the reader to be happier and more focused on what is truly important to him or her. The exercises provided her were designed to provide clarity in one’s own values and priorities, breaking down falsely understood insights, to allow for greater intrinsic motivation and expressive capacity.

If you like this product, you might like other related products. Please call the author at 800-71USALL to learn about the other fine resources available to make your life more deliberate and focused on what matters most to you.

Now, for the start of this text:

Imagine you see a student researching something meaningful to you, and the date is 500 years into the future. They find a list of your accomplishments, and you begin to read the great things that you did during the early part of the 21st Century. Visualize in your mind what those great deeds were.

Write or talk about what you accomplished.

Write or talk about why you devoted so much time to those accomplishments.

Now, write or talk about how you accomplished those great things.

Close your eyes, and notice all the good feelings of those accomplishments. In a few moments, when you are ready, write about all the good feelings you feel about yourself.

Now, think about the steps between where you are today and those great accomplishments. What are the intermediary steps that you need to cross? Write or talk about it.

How will you get to those steps? What resources do you need? What is in your way?

Who do you believe is in a position to help you with these goals? Do you know them already or do you still need to meet them?

Where you believe you might meet the person or persons who can help bridge your present with great accomplishment?

What do you like about yourself most?

Why do you think that is most important?

How can you make yourself more likable by yourself?

Who can help you to like yourself more?

How can they help you to like yourself more?

Did you ask for help? If not, why not?

What do you need to say to get help being more likable by yourself?

What can you do today to improve how much you like yourself?

What qualities do you like about yourself least?

Why do you dislike those traits?

Why is it important to you for you to change and break bad patterns?

How can you achieve this goal?

Who can help you with this change?

Why have you not asked for help already?

What can you do today to become free of undesirable traits?

Write out on a piece of paper 8 to 10 good and the same number of bad things about yourself.

Now, tear out the pieces of paper with the writing on them, and place them on your table.

Now, arrange these pieces of paper to create combinations of who you want to be more like or less like.

Try to connect with each piece of paper and what it symbolizes.

Now, focus on one negative trait that you want to dispel from your personality.

Look at it, and decide and tell yourself that it will start fading beginning today.

When you are ready, pick up that piece of paper, and tear it all up in a small ball, and throw it onto the floor, and notice your negative feelings going away as that paper leaves your table.

Notice how you feel better about yourself.

Let yourself enjoy the new liberation from that negativity.

Repeat with the other negative feelings or qualities.

When all you have is positive qualities, try to absorb two of them at a time by arranging the paper fragments.

Continue by adding a third, shuffle those three pieces of paper around until you accept those desirable traits as you.

Then, add the fourth, then the fifth, repeating the above process.

Finally, accept and recognize all the positive traits within yourself, and feel that goodness within as you look at the pieces paper.

       “I leave the grades to the road crews to be concerned with.” -Eric S. Meyer

Imagine you had a friend with ideas for new inventions. One of these ideas were presented to you, and you then thought about how you could get involved and benefit. Consider the following:

Invention: a device for the car or truck which will automatically reduce the temperature of a parked vehicle when a pet is detected. Will use a sound recognition computer to detect your pet is uncomfortable and will immediately open windows and even start the vehicle to run the air conditioner. Will also detect people, such as your children. Will be programmable to learn your pet’s and child’s voices. Will include a carbon monoxide detector to switch off the engine in the event the air gets too toxic. Will save the lives of children and pets.

Questions:

Who will benefit? (Parents, children, pets, society.)

How can they be made aware of the invention? (Direct mail, billboard, AAA maps, car dealers, schools, pet care clinics, medical doctors for your children, television ads, radio ads, or other?)

How much would they likely pay for the working invention? (Five hundred dollars installed, or more or less?)

What would be necessary to create this invention? (Engineering time and supplies and materials, legal patent protection, time necessary to develop and test the invention?)

How much involvement would you want to have in it? (As partner, to have 50% ownership and risk; as investor, to have perhaps 5% of stocks; as owner, to buy up all rights at 100% ownership; as sponsor, with zero rights but allowing the public to benefit with your name becoming a household name in saving lives of children and pets; or something else?)

What are the perceived risk/profit ratios? (Would you prefer high risk but high possible gains? Or low risk but a pretty sure chance your principal would not be lost?)

What, in consideration of the above, what would you want to risk and invest? Why? Can you afford to loose your money?

Would you invest your money if it was clearly going to be donated to the public good, e.g. as a contribution to society? (Like the lightning rod, by Benjamin Franklin.)

Which is more important to you: fame, wealth or power? How could you meet your desires with a balance of these three? 

Why is fame important? (So you can be well-liked, popular, so that your suffering and efforts can be heard by a compassionate listener?)

Why is wealth important? (So you can have an easy life with more opportunities, so that your creativity and dreams can become a reality, thus allowing you to benefit others with your wisdom and generosity?)

Why is power important? (So you can be listened to, thus making your pain in life be worth something to others, allowing you to empower the lives of others due to your insights and caring?)

To reach the above, what do you do? For instance:

Are nice clothes important? This may build a sense of confidence, in that you feel more privileged than others, and privilege is scare, and scarcity is often valued, so you may feel more valued by looking less casual but more business-like.

Is a nice car (or cars) important? This may help you feel powerful and confident. Powerful because not everyone is able to move along a road so fast, weave in and about traffic so gracefully, and get a mate more of YOUR choosing, instead of the “normal” process of finding someone and waiting to see if they accept and like you. Confidence with the possession or control of expensive items is common, and a sports car is an apodeme of this.

Go to school to get a degree but without caring about learning? This may mean you believe in the idea of “the end justifies the means” or, in other words, education is about playing a game, not about being capable. Thus, the focus might instead be on being well-adjusted in the social fabric of your community, by doing work to help your town or city, and yourself and family, and by helping to maintain the democratic structures and freedoms given to you by your country, and by being able to communicate well so that you can maintain healthy relationships with all those important to you. However, if you are NOT well-adjusted, you might only do something to get ahead of someone else, not truly care about yourself or anyone else, lack integrity by doing differently than what you believe, and quite simply not caring much to benefit yourself or others.

Now, repeat the above exercises for 500 years into the future, and change it to 5,000 years into the future. Notice the different context; notice the similarities, too.

Next, repeat the above, but for 20 years from now, adjusted so the age of your future children have just moved away from home.

Visualize all your children; their ages, appearances, how they make you feel, the joy they bring you.

Ask yourself, what could you have done today that would benefit them in the future.

Focus on your aspects for your children: their career, personality, goals, relationships, values.

What can be done today to change those aspects favorably?

Are you taking this action now?

If so, how? If not, why?

Now, ask yourself, what parts of this dialog were most pleasant? Most uncomfortable? What make you think the most? The least? How long did you take to think on each question? Were you deliberate or impulsive in your answers? 

What would you suggest be changed in this dialog to make it more useful and constructive for others? 

The maker of this dialog was Eric S. Meyer. You may call the author at 877-talk-to-Eric or send email to usallsys@aol.com  All feedback welcomed and will remain confidential.

About the author:

Eric S. Meyer lives in San Francisco, CA in the Mission District. He enjoys reading, writing, computer programming and creating educational and cultural works. He owns USALL Systems, a small educational enterprise which he hopes will someday become an online University. He is commissioning a professional programmer to write learning software called Sonic Eye (www.digitallearningtools.org) He values being a good listener and friend over all else. He is single and lives alone with a small garden, and likes talking on the phone very much. He feels grammar is for academics, rhetoric is overused by politicians who are both eloquent in style and are by definition, neither academic nor reasonable most of the time, while logicians study how we reason, how to best communicate using clear, unpretentious, direct language and are halfway between Grammarians and Rhetoricians. The author considers himself to be a Logician. .