Tag: use your imagination

Deal With Bad Days: How Successful People Handle Them

I had a bad day. Ok, it was more tragic than bad. Recently I had a very close friend die. She died on a Monday, was buried that Thursday, and I returned to work full-time on the next Monday. I find it difficult to deal with bad days.
Full-time strikes me as a funny phrase in this situation.
Keep learning: A Story about Living as Told by a Six-Year-Old Boy about His Dog
I am working full-time if you do not count the time that my mind wanders. I just watched my friend’s daughter and son bury their mother — how could I think clearly?
The outpouring of support has been tremendous. Sarah was a powerful, well-known force. She was a leader in many non-profit groups and created innovative speech therapy training programs for a local School District. Here are just a few of the kind words that people have shared:
I am in tears, and that is ok. May her memory be a blessing. This is the time to mix it with work.
Thank you for sharing her fight. She beat cancer not because she did not pass (we all will eventually), but because she chooses to live while she was here!
The following comment hit me the hardest though. It was a bit different from the others, and reminded me that even successful people have miserable days:
Work is a great way of channeling emotion into fantastic outputs. It doesn’t always work of course – we have days when we don’t want to get out of bed.
This is true. Work is often an antidote to suffering, but it is not a cure-all. Long-time readers know that I reject work-life balance in favor of happiness in life. I believe deeply that everything worth toiling for involves work, and that we should do more of what makes us happy.
The problem is, life is not always happy. If we want to support sustainable happiness, we must also accept that tragedy will seep in. Bad news rarely waits for anything.
Whether you work from home or in an office, are the CEO or an intern, you will feel lousy at work. Sometimes it’s a low-grade malaise, and sometimes it makes you sick.
Do you have the occasional bad day at your job? Not every workday can be met with unbridled enthusiasm, can it? We all have moments when our mood lags far behind the “to do” list in front of us.
In many cases, we can’t identify the cause of the issue causing the problem. Ultimately, the “less than optimal” mood spells serious trouble for the day ahead. But there are actions you can take to turn your day around.
Certain days demand that you get your head in the right place in a hurry. Simple strategies can help. But, changing the negative dynamic — pronto — becomes the first order of business.
Employing a few well-traveled paths can help. A great piece music often helps me a great deal. Also thinking of family or looking at their pictures.
Another quick option is re-reading a few all-time favorite quotes about work, career, and inspiration. It can help to get “lost” in a couple of these and reinvent your day. Always seems to give me a lift.
Use of checklists? Ever given them a try? Lots of ways to use them. We like their use of attitude adjustment to start every day.
After college, I spent almost two years training as a naval aviator.  An important element of that training was the use of checklists in the learning and refresher process.  Checklist utilization remains an important part of my business life.
It is always a good idea to have a helpful checklist for daily reminders of improvements for your business or your personal life.
I keep a stack of 10 or so checklists that I rotate and update occasionally. I pull out one checklist to read and contemplate for five minutes as a way to start each day. 5-minute review of the checklist puts my thinking in the right frame of mind.
Related: Improving Your Positive Mental Attitude; It’s Not Just Business, It’s Personal.
So what do successful people do when they have a really bad day? Here is what my checklist tells me to do:

Deal with bad days … name it

Feeling lousy is part of life. It is okay to feel pain and more important not to run from it. The most important thing you can do when bad news arrives is to take a moment to acknowledge it. Name it and let it settle in.
Talk to people about it and shine a light on it through your words and actions. Talking helps to shine the light, doesn’t it?

Keep your routine 

If you are successful, you are already a disciplined person who lives by good habits. Hold on to as many of those habits as possible. Even when it’s hard. It’s why I kept working out last week — despite feeling sick.
We cannot stop bad things from happening, but we can control how we react to them. Get back to as much of what you did before things went astray.
doors of happiness
Have doors of happiness?

Deal with bad days … go, go, go

We all endure difficult times and have bad days. Depending on what happened, the deep pain can last for a few moments or several months. Some of us live affected our entire lives.
Set small, achievable goals each week to keep yourself moving forward. Respect what has happened and keep an appreciation for what you have.
 Here is another checklist example on my favorite “perspective changing” quotes. Hopefully, these will impact your day for the better as they often do mine.

Doors of happiness

When one door of happiness closes, another one opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.
  • Helen Keller

Helping others

One of the most beautiful compensations of life is that no man can help another without helping himself.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson

How you see

When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.
  • Wayne Dyer

Deal with bad days … change

If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.
  • Lao Tzu

Careful for what you settle for

You are what you settle for.
  • Janis Joplin

Feeling good

People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
  • Maya Angelou

 

  • Decisions
Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.
  • Abraham Lincoln

 

Risk-taking 

To avoid situations in which you might make mistakes may be the biggest mistake of all.
– peter McWilliams

 

 Kindness

 The two most powerful things in existence: a kind word and thoughtful gesture.
–  Ken Langone

Making a difference

Unless you walk out into the unknown, the odds of making a profound difference in your life are pretty low.
–  Tom Peters

Optimism

The pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
–    Winston Churchill

Pathway

The difference between stumbling blocks and stepping stones is how you use them.
– Unknown

Learning

We learn something from everyone who passes through our lives. Some lessons are painful; some are painless … but, all are priceless.
– Unknown

 

Problem solving

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.
Albert Einstein

The bottom line

 

Pain makes us all equal; how we handle it and the compassion we show makes us special.
As humans, we all are vulnerable to events that hurt us. As a leader, I have wanted to share my pain and provide space for others to express theirs. This is how successful people conquer what ails them and make everyone stronger along the way.
Have a favorite quote you use? Share it here so that we can craft the second checklist.
BUILD INNOVATIVE CHANGE
Build successful innovative change.

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.

When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy improving your enthusiasm?

Do you have a lesson about making your motivation better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?

 

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change.  We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. 

  

More inspirational stories from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:

A Story About Living as Told by a Six Year Old Boy

Never Give Up Your Dreams

Surprising Story Lessons on Making a Difference

 

18 Awesome Ways to Improve your Creative Thinking Skills

A young Albert Einstein struggled to solve the perplexing problem of relativity. He took to one of his many famous thought experiments and imagined what he would see if he traveled alongside a beam of light. By imagining the perspective of such an observer, he was able to improve his creative thinking skills.
creative thinking skills
Creative thinking skills.
This led to him solving the theory of relativity.
The power of critical thinking skills can be equally useful to us as it was to Einstein.
By having a means to interact with a problem we have a way to model ideas and experiment in ways not available to us in reality.
Here is a short video to explain the power of a creative mind.
A creative imagination can help get us outside of the proverbial box.
But, ironically, imagining that which we have never experienced can only by realized by the experiences we have.
Lev Vygotsky stated:
“the creative activity of the imagination depends directly on the richness and variety of a person’s previous experience because this experience provides the material from which the products of fantasy are constructed. The richer a person’s experience, the richer is the material his imagination has access to.”
creative thinking skills
Creative thinking skills.
Therefore, a great way to improve our critical thinking skills is to improve the diversity and quality of our experiences.
Related post: How You Are Destroying your Creativity and Imagination
Here are effective ways to do just that:

Try new things

By trying new things, we gain new experiences.
Listen to a genre of music you would ordinarily never listen to. Watch some movies you would normally scoff at.
Take up a hobby you’ve never considered. Forcing yourself into experiencing the world in new ways helps you be more creative and imaginative.
By having a diversity of experiences, you have more building blocks to build your imagination with.
When my two children were younger, they were fortunate to inherit several large bins of Legos from a family friend.
What made their eyes light up was not just that there were so many pieces but that there were so many different types. There were helicopter pieces, house pieces, car pieces, animals, people—you name it.
The diversity gave us (yes, me too) the ability to build so many more imaginative things.
If we compared that to a box of 10,000 pieces—but all of the same size, shape, and color—the extent of imaginative possibilities would likely be limited.
In the same way, a diversity of experiences can give your imagination more to build from.

Creative thinking skills … build on others

One of the misunderstandings around creativity and imagination is that you have to be utterly original to do it.
The truth is all creative people stand on the shoulders of those who came before.
Writers learn to write by reading. Painting students are sent to museums to copy the masters. Great chefs learn the already tested basics of cooking to create some new dish.
Innovation stands on a platform that already exists.
Yes, inspiration is involved, those flashes of insight, the ah…ha moments. You start with something that already exists and takes it to another level.
So relax. Let go of thinking you have to do something original. Take the pressure off.
Celebrate that there is all this help available.

Investigate ‘thought experiments’

Construct a few of your own. One such experiment might be to imagine you are a microscopic entity and place your awareness somewhere in your room.
Perhaps leaping from key to key on your keyboard..inhabit the keyboard with a world of imaginary civilizations.
Enact massive wars on a microscopic scale, within your mind…again, let your mind run free.

Develop a taste for novelty

Explore artwork and the result of other people’s imagination. Discover how other people conceived their ideas. Look at the abstract and surreal artwork on Deviant Art.

Change your thought patterns

By this, I mean consciously make an effort to look at the world differently and in a more creative way, as if you were a child.
On a more intellectual level, attempt to vocalize these creative insights.
The more you make an effort to see novel ways of looking at the things, the more these efforts will turn into habits, and the easier it will become.
People are rarely born creatively acute, or funny, or negative, or optimistic; it is learned behavior.
The underlying behavior of creative people is their thought patterns are creative.
creative thinking skills examples
Creative thinking skills examples.

Question everything

Want to think what nobody has ever thought? Start by questioning all assumptions.
There comes a moment in time where everyone agrees with everybody about pretty much everything.
For any sized organization that is focused on creating a culture of relentless innovation, hardened dogma is an innovation obstacle they must overcome.
And that starts best with questioning everything, assumptions included.

Pay attention to patterns

Treat patterns as part of the problem. Recognizing a new pattern is very useful, but be careful not to become part of it.

Observe with all senses

Truly creative people have developed their ability to observe and to use all of their senses, which can get dull over time.
Take time to “sharpen the blade” and take everything in. Add thoughts as you go.

Meet new people

Brian Grazer is an Oscar-winning producer and co-founder of Imagine Entertainment. In his book, A Curious Mind, he writes about a personal discipline he has had since his earliest days in Hollywood.
In what he calls “Curiosity Conversations” Brian would schedule meetings with top influencers in the industry.
He found such benefit from these encounters that he branched out to meet with the most successful people in all areas of life.
He has met with Jonas Salk, Barack Obama, 50 Cent, Muhammad Ali, Gloria Allred, F. Lee Bailey, Jeff Bezos, Mark Cuban, Henry Kissinger, John McCain, Wolfgang Puck, Ronald Reagan, Condoleeza Rice, Tony Robbins, our Betty above Edwards, and countless others.
“It’s refreshing to be reminded, over and over, how different the world looks to other people.” — Brian Grazer
Each meeting exposed him to new angles on familiar concepts and produced an understanding of altogether unfamiliar ideas.
By gaining different perspectives from different people he has been able to imagine and produce stories in a way, he might not otherwise—stories such as A Beautiful Mind, Splash, The Da Vinci Code, Apollo 13, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and many others.
In the same way, by opening ourselves to new people, we open our minds to new understandings of the universe.
As we develop relationships with different people, we will find the quality of our imagination increased.

Continuous learning

Both creativity and innovation are based on knowledge.
Therefore, you need to continually expand your knowledge base.
Read things you don’t normally read as often as you can.

Defer judgment

Your perceptions may limit your reasoning. Be careful about how you perceive things.
In other words, defer judgment. Let it all hang out.
Related post: Secrets to Unlocking the Genie in the Creativity Bottle

Creative thinking skills … widen your experiences

Experience as much as you can. Exposure puts more ideas into your subconscious.
Actively seek out new and very different experiences to broaden your idea thinking experience portfolio.

Look for what is not easily seen

Look where others aren’t looking to see what others aren’t seeing.
creative thinking techniques
Creative thinking techniques.

Be observant

Betty Edwards is a world famous author and art teacher known for helping people see what is in front of them as opposed to their perceptions of what they see.
For instance, the average person asked to draw an apple will produce an image symbolic of an apple. Such a drawing often has a high degree of abstraction to catch the essence of apples everywhere.
It’s called drawing what you know, not what you see.
Someone trained to see models properly, however, will draw an apple in front of them with great realism. The exact contour, the angle of the stem, blemishes, even tonal differences are repeated in exact detail.
Her students often produce the symbolic version on the first day of her course and end with extraordinary examples of the realistic.
To produce such results, Dr. Edwards teaches a technique of viewing models upside down to trick the definition-prone left hemisphere of the brain to bow-out.
In its absence, the spatially-oriented right brain can begin to dominate perception. Invariably, observation improves dramatically and immediately because of the part of the brain that judges and names what it sees take a backseat.
Drawing is one of the only ways I know of that this degree of improvement in observation can be developed.
When I was taught this method in my college graphical drawing class, I immediately began to notice things for what they were.
I could see shape and form as something very individual to each person or object I drew. Texture and tone became real to me. I even began to experience light.
A deliberate way to strengthen our experiences is to become more observant by recording them through drawing.

Be able to overlook rules

Rules, to the creative person, are indeed made to be broken.
They are created for us by other people, generally to control a process; the creative person needs the freedom to work.

Ask“what if…”

Seeing new possibilities is a little risky because it means that something will change and some action will have to be taken.
Curiosity is probably the single most important trait of creative people.

Push the boundaries of mistakes

A photographer doesn’t just take one shot, and a composer doesn’t just write down a fully realized symphony.
Creation is a long process, involving lots of boo-boos along the way. A lot goes in the trash.

Collaborate

The hermit artist, alone in his garret, is a romantic notion but not always an accurate one.
Comedians, musicians, painters, chefs all get a little better by sharing with others in their fields.

 The bottom line

Since as much as 90% of what we learned in a life-time always come to us via visual cues, we should constantly enhance our perceptual sensitivity to the environment, according to information scientists.
So, more than 500 years ago, Leonardo da Vinci was right when he said, use all our senses, especially our sense of sight.
Our power of observation and imagination depends on it.
Productive thoughts often have their origins in the combinatorial play and dynamics of sensory inputs from environmental cues.
In my view, our thinking cap is often governed by how far we can stretch our power of vision and imagination.
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Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy continually improving your continuous learning?
Do you have a lesson about making your learning better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
 
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change.  We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
  
More reading on creativity from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
10 Different Ways to Enhance Creativity
Secrets to Understanding the Genie in the Creativity Bottle
13 Motivators for Creating a Change and Adaptability Culture
 
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