7 Techniques to Supercharge your Creativity and Solve your Problems

4:00:00 AM in 7 Techniques to Supercharge your Creativity and Solve your Problems

7 Techniques to Supercharge your Creativity and Solve your Problems

Do you ever encounter problems, challenges or obstacles in your business? If you answered 'no,' then you can stop reading and continue to rake in the fortune you must be making. For the rest of us, the answer, of course, is 'yes.'

7 Techniques to Supercharge your Creativity and Solve your Problems

For the most troubling problems, the biggest challenge is your inability to come up with new and innovative solutions. This is because when you try to solve a problem, you probably use the same approach every time ('let me sit here and think about it until I come up with something...'). The next time you try to solve a problem, try applying any (or all) of these approaches:

1) Be Obvious - Chances are, whatever your problem is, there is some conventional wisdom about how to solve it. Ask yourself why you are not following it, and evaluate for yourself whether your reasons are valid. Sometimes the easiest solution is the one right in front of us.

2) Be Contrarian - The opposite of being obvious, being contrarian means to consider doing the opposite of what conventional wisdom says. If the standard advice is to buy, think about selling. Instead of working more, work less. Note: This does not mean you should automatically DO what the opposite is; it just means to let your mind wander over the opposite to get it working in another direction.

3) Start Where you are - Sometimes we get so caught up in the long-term goal that we lose sight of where we are. Think about your problem and what you might do right now to solve it. Usually, this results in frustration because we don't have a fully formed solution. But just because an idea is not fully formed does not mean that it does not have some validity. Start with your current idea and watch as new ideas present themselves.

4) Chunk up - If you can't figure out how to achieve your goal, try looking at the bigger picture. If your goal is to earn $10,000 this month and you can't figure out how, think bigger - maybe you want $10K because you want to earn six figures this year. Then start to brainstorm ways of earning six figures. Don't get so caught up in your problem that you lose sight of the bigger picture.

5) Chunk down - The opposite of chunking up. Think in terms of smaller details. Continuing with the $10K example, if you can't think of how to earn $10,000 this month, can you think of ways to earn $333 per day? Maybe, but even if you can't it gets the mind working in a new way.

6) Take a REAL Break - Stop working on the problem for a bit and let your subconscious work on it. This requires two things. First, you need to actually give your mind a break and recharge. Switching from thinking about one problem to another will not do it. Get away from the problem your work, even if for only five minutes. Second, make sure you are not dwelling on the problem. Taking a walk to get away from work is great, but if you continue to mull over the problem you are not really giving your mind a break from it.

7) Move-Get the blood flowing! Exercise, walk, run, stretch, whatever. Be it from blood flow, endorphins, or a change in focus, physical movement enhances creativity. I do some of my best thinking while shooting baskets. Find out what works for you and do it.

There are many different techniques you can use to solve a problem. Try the few above to start, and then come up with your own. Use them well, and watch yourself create new and exciting solutions faster than ever.
Avish Parashar is a dynamic professional speaker who shows organizations and individuals how to get what they want using the Art and Science of improv comedy. He weaves together humorous stories, witty observations, and interactive exercises from improvisational comedy to get people laughing, learning, and motivated!

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Five Basic Steps to Benefit from Your Creativity

3:57:00 AM in Five Basic Steps to Benefit from Your Creativity

Five Basic Steps to Benefit from Your Creativity

The ability to exercise your creativity is even more important to you than you probably think. Why? First, your creativity tremendously contributes to your self-actualization, which is essential for you to feel satisfied with your life and be happy. Second, it is exceedingly important for being successful in building relationships and earning money.

Five Basic Steps to Benefit from Your Creativity

Taking creative approach contributes to your emotional state the similar way as the spice contributes to the taste of a course stimulating the appetite. If you generate ideas and fulfill them, your life becomes more and more interesting and exciting. This does not mean that you must generate a waste amount of ideas to feel excited and call yourself "creative"; quite the contrary, you should rather be able to generate from time to time really good ideas. If you generate too many ideas and are unable to prioritize, select and fulfill them properly, you will finally feel exhausted and discontented. There are some important factors that should be taken into account to avoid this danger. Please read the five practical guidelines below and ask yourself: "How often do I follow them in my life?".

1. Liberate yourself from the overstrain. A stress is not only the bitterest enemy of your creativity, it is also a violent destroyer of your nervous system. There are simple effective ways to reduce stress or even entirely get rid of it. First, plan your time regularly. You should avoid emergency jobs to the maximum extent under your control. Schedule your jobs for at least 2-3 days and make reminders in order not to forget to do things in a timely fashion. Second, you should store all your important information in a convenient form, always accessible for retrieval. The inability to quickly find a required info cause stress. If you need a phone number, address, date of a meeting, or the latest result of a negotiation, you must be able to quickly find it. You should better make from time to time a few efforts to accurately write down your information, than to make later on incredibly huge efforts to search for the lost information. Remember, there is much more free space for brilliant ideas in a calm mind than in overstrained one.

2. Seize opportunities. Do simple jobs immediately as they arrive. Do you have to make a note for tomorrow? Write it down right now, or you will inevitably miss the deadline and will have to do an emergency job under time pressure. Is an idea flashing in your mind? Write it down right now, or you will forget it at once and forever being distracted by so many things you have to do. Do not lose the golden opportunity to generate a brilliant idea.

3. Concentrate your attention. Do not think about several things at a time, focus yourself exactly on the work being done. Try to reduce the number of distractions, or their impact on you at least. In order to do so, it is very essential to be able to quickly write down any incoming information securing it to be easily found later. If you can do that in an unobtrusive way, you will not get distracted and you will keep your mind focused in most cases. A good concentration is important for you to feel comfortable at work and it forms the solid background for ideas creation.

4. Spare your resources. Do not make too many efforts to immediately turn a newly arrived idea into a ready to implement a solution. When an idea is flashing in your mind, simply write it down. When you have time, read and think about it; then forget it for a while to revert back later. Repeat that process over and over again until you could finally decide whether the idea is good or bad. Do not worry about the fact that you are not deliberating on your idea; at this stage of the idea development, this does your subconscious. By forgetting an idea for a while you get a good chance to see it several times with a fresh look and evaluate it objectively. Moreover, and that is extremely important, by doing so you avoid wasting your personal resources on implementation of premature ideas and stop working on fuzzy goals.

5. Use your computer. There is a tremendous information processing power located inside the case of your computer. Make all those Gigabytes and Gigahertz work for you to solve simple yet very important issues: scheduling, quick setup of reminders, taking notes and ideas, archiving them into history and searching them. Take your time to find a software that really fits your needs, it will spare your time and efforts daily in the future. A good software for the everyday use must be convenient for you, smooth to operate, unobtrusive and it must in no way turn itself into another problem when you apply it to solve the original one.

In this article, you have been presented five practical guidelines to build a solid background for discovering and efficiently using your creativity. Regardless of how much creative you are, you need to perform appropriate actions in appropriate circumstances to get real results. If you are not doing actions, doing inappropriate actions or doing right actions in wrong circumstances, you will only waste your potential and lose opportunities. The guidelines above ensure that you are acting properly. This article deals both with your personal organization and creativity because they contribute tremendously to each other. That is why you should exercise them both to get practical results. This is the only solid bridge you can build your creativity to your success. Good luck to you!

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Tribal Tattoo Designs Why Are They So Popular

2:51:00 AM in Tribal Tattoo Designs Why Are They So Popular

Tribal Tattoo Designs - Why Are They So Popular?

Tribal tattoos have been practiced for thousands of years. Modern people still get them done for many reasons such as to belong to a modern 'tribe' even if they do it on a subconscious level.

Tribal Tattoo Designs Why Are They So Popular

Getting tattooed was also seen as a rite of passage into adulthood. A belief goes that if a girl can't take the pain of tattooing, she is un-marriageable because she will never be able to deal with the pain of childbirth. If a boy can't deal with the pain he is considered to be a bad risk as a warrior and could become isolated from the tribe.

Some primitive tribes use tattooing as a rite of social status. The Maori, of New Zealand, use tattooing primarily for this purpose. To the Maori, a person's Moko designs enhanced their prestige and show the transition from one social status to another. At its highest level, Moko designs proclaimed the sacredness of chieftainship.

Tribal Tattoo Designs Why Are They So Popular

The Hawaiians are prominent among people who have specific tattoo gods. In Hawaii, the images of the tattoo gods are kept in the temples of tattoo priests. Each tattoo session begins with a prayer to the tattoo gods that the operation might not cause death, that the wounds might heal soon, and that the designs might be handsome. Many modern American tattooists will tell you, "When you should get a tattoo, the tattoo god will tell you that it is time."

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Sources for Free Tattoo Ideas and Tattoo Design Ideas

2:44:00 AM in Sources for Free Tattoo Ideas and Tattoo Design Ideas

Sources for Free Tattoo Ideas and Tattoo Design Ideas

Have you been wanting to get a tattoo but don't have an exact idea or not sure what you want? Tattoos are so popular and there are so many ideas but many of us feel stuck at times on the exact tattoo we want to get. For me, I often feel stuck when I think of how permanent a tattoo is. I see a lot of cool designs that I like at the time but when I start thinking about the having it permanently done I start to change my mind and look for something else.

Sources for Free Tattoo Ideas and Tattoo Design Ideas

Others have the idea or rough plan of what they want but they can't find any good source material or flash that matches what they want. Some of our customers state that they have spent months looking for a certain tattoo design. They look through all of the flash sites and etc. but still can not find what they are looking for.
This is a huge problem, you end up wasting a lot of time and feeling frustrated. However, there are some simple ways around this problem.

1. First, you should always pull ideas for tattoos from things that you like or are into. Don't go and get a tattoo just because you saw someone with one and you thought he or she was cool. A tattoo will be with you forever and so it should be something from you not from outside. Along these lines don't do the stupid thing of going out to get a tattoo with a friend and be pressured into getting the same thing he or she gets just because you don't want to look stupid. Tattoos are permanent and therefore should state something about you and what you love. Therefore if you spend time just thinking about the things you like and things that you identify yourself with you are likely to come up with some great ideas. For example, for me, I love being outdoors and nature and so I like star tattoos a lot and nature themes. I also like a lot of the Native American and traditional Japanese designs. My wife is from Japan and she has this plan of getting a Cherry tree branch full of cherry blossoms across her back. These are very significant images for the Japanese. They symbolize the new year and new life or even renewal of life. So as you can see your tattoo should be something you identify with.

2. Once you have some rough ideas it is typically a time to go online and look for some images. Now let's take the Cherry blossom for example. Someplace you could look for a tattoo would be clip art. You can search using Google's image search feature or go to Microsoft online clipart gallery. Either place you can find either a clip art was drawn piece or actual source photos. Both will lead you to some good source materials that will help in the design stage.

3. Next, you want to take you source materials (photos or clip art) and show them to tattoo artists. You might also try some initial sketches if you are artistically inclined. Even something with simple line art or pigeon scratches can tell you tattoo artists a lot about what you are looking for. So take everything you got and show it to your tattoo artist and then let them design the tattoo for you. Remember the more accurate and detailed you can be with your description the happier you are going to be with the results and the whole process will be much easier.

Sources for Free Tattoo Ideas and Tattoo Design Ideas

4. Most tattoo artists will then provide you with an actual design shaded in and with color and the line art of the design. If you are getting this done online then you can take that to your local tattoo parlor and find someone to do the actual tattoo for you. Often you can also ask for referrals from the original tattoo artists. Typically they can do the work themselves if you live within driving range.

If you take these steps into consideration and actually do a little bit of homework and find your source materials and provide lots of details about what you are looking for then you are sure to get the design of your dreams.

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Good Friends Great Life

2:37:00 AM in Good Friends Great Life

Good Friends, Great Life!

While I was in high school, I developed this habit of always watching people and how they responded to things. When I'm walking, when I'm talking, and when I'm eating, I love to watch people. I don't know why I do it, but I think it's just my curiosity of wanting to understand all of the various human characteristics.

Good Friends, Great Life

About two years ago, in one of my high school math classes, I met this unbelievably down to earth girl (let's call her Sarah), but she always seemed to be sad. Every day when I had a class with her, I would try to take a look at her when I can to observe and perhaps better understand why she seemed so sad. Later as I began to talk to her I soon found out why and I was shocked: she always has gone out with the wrong guys and some of them raped her.

I was in disbelief. I have so much respect for girls and when I find out that other guys mistreat girls I often get quite angry about it. However, in this case, as I kept on talking with her, I couldn't believe why she let things like this happen. She seemed so strong, so focused, so appreciative of life, but she let herself hang out with the wrong people.

Life is a series of light and darkness. We all want to be in the sunshine, feeling the warmth, that great feeling when you're out in the sunshine. At times cloudy storms tend to disrupt that light, making us feel uncomfortable and uneasy. However, we can always get back in the light; we can always push the darkness away: light and darkness cannot be in the same room.

I have this quote hanging up in my room and I live it every day: "you are who your friends are." In my life, I try to be around positive and successful people because that is who I am. I know that may sound selfish and egotistical, but you must set high standards for yourself. If you want to lead and achieve, you must receive the friends who fit your standards. Your standards are there to protect you and to guide you to success, don't lower it for anyone or anything or you'll regret it for the rest of your life.

As for Sarah, I am truly sorry for her and the things that the guys have done to her, but she shouldn't have been there in the first place. She shouldn't continually be around the same negative people who may do that kind of things. She needs to understand the power of saying "no". It's not rude in life to sometime say no to the wrong people, it's not rude at all. If you were driving down the highway and you noticed a roadblock, you wouldn't try to run into it. You would go around it or move it aside. That's the way you must be with your friends: life is short, you don't have time for people that will bring you down or hinder your success.

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Tattoo Pictures & Tattoo Designs for YOU

4:52:00 AM in Tattoo Pictures & Tattoo Designs for YOU

Tattoo Pictures & Tattoo Designs for YOU

Anyone who is seriously into tattoos will tell you how long it takes to choose the right one. After all, they should last a lifetime so are not something to be rushed. It can take up to 20-30 hours to find the right tattoo design. But that is only the first step.

Tattoo Pictures & Tattoo Designs for YOU

If you are serious you will want to have something that is unique and not taken from a book or-or copied from a picture in a tattoo gallery. A tattoo should speak about who you are and not be ripped off someone else. Not only that but a lot of artists will refuse to copy another artists work. And quite rightly. While you can be done for copyright infringement for copying another person's work in other mediums the same rules don't seem to apply to tattoo art.

It is still a form of plagiarism to take another person artwork and reproduce it as your own. In any other form, this would result in legal action. So just because there is no precedent set for copyright infringement does not mean it is cool to claim another tattooists work.

So how do you come up with original tattoo designs?

If you are like me you have looked at literally thousands of tattoo pictures and tattoo designs from a variety of different tattooists from around the world. Or maybe you keep visiting your local tattoo studio and have started getting dirty looks from the tattoo artist who thinks you are stalking him because you go there every weekend and still haven't chosen a tattoo!

There are so many different styles of so you need to be really clear about what you want before you get inked. It is a good idea to visualize the type of tattoo you want before you even get it. You need to be able to see yourself with a particular tattoo before you get it. It is a tribal tattoo on your arm imagine yourself walking down the street with the tattoo for all the world to see.

Next view some examples of different styles that you like. So if it is tribal tattoos source pictures of that particular tattoo style. If it is work from another artist do not take it to your nearest tattoo studio and ask for it to be copied onto you. Tell the tattoo artist that you like that particular style and would like a tattoo designed for YOU. This is where the visualization exercise comes into play. Tattoo artists are very visual people and are highly talented at rendering a nebulous idea into a full on the customized tattoo.

Think of the bigger picture. Don't be tempted to choose some generic tattoo flash off the wall because you can't make up your mind. Don't settle for something less if you cannot afford the tattoo you really want. Tattoos are organic and are constantly changing and growing with you. Avoid painful mistakes!

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Treating and Avoiding Body Piercing Infections

4:46:00 AM in Treating and Avoiding Body Piercing Infections

Treating and Avoiding Body Piercing Infections

Infection is a danger whenever we get pierced. While it's not a significant risk, infections do happen, since a piercing is a wound in the body. However, treating your piercing carefully and using the right aftercare can seriously reduce the danger of an infection. If you do get one, taking care of it correctly could mean the difference between keeping and losing your new mod. Here are a few tips to help you avoid or deal with a body piercing infection.

Treating and Avoiding Body Piercing Infections

1. Have your piercing performed by a professional. Prevention is the best cure when it comes to body piercing infections. That means finding a good piercer who you trust and making sure that he or she uses clean sterile techniques and instruments. If you feel nervous about what's going on, don't go through with the piercing. There's always time to find a new piercer or studio.

2. Follow your piercer's instructions. You'll probably receive a written sheet with information on caring for your new piercing. While it might seem like this sort of care isn't necessary, don't skip anything! The right aftercare will help you avoid a body piercing infection and the discomfort that comes with it.

3. See your piercer regularly. This is usually free and is a good way to make sure everything's healing okay. Just drop by and talk to your piercer about how the mod is healing. If there's something wrong, you'll find out right away and learn what to do about it.

4. Know the signs of infection. If you see an unusual amount of redness, the piercing is especially painful, or a lot of bleeding or discharge occurs, you may have an infection. Pay close attention to your body and what it's telling you about the condition of your new modification. As soon as you see signs that indicate a problem, take action - allowing an infection to progress is not just a bad idea. In some cases, it can be dangerous.

5. Keep the piercing site and jewelry clean, especially if you think you have an infection. Don't handle the piercing with dirty hands, and be sure to keep your hair, clothing, and other objects away from a fresh body piercing. They can all promote body piercing infections and may jar or irritate the tissue surrounding the jewelry. Don't let other people touch your piercing, either.

Getting your piercing done correctly the first time, then taking care of it are the keys to making sure that you'll successfully keep your new mod. Keep all piercings clean and care for them well, according to your piercer's instructions. Body piercing infections aren't something you want to mess with if you can avoid them since they increase the chance that you'll lose your mod, and in rare cases can even mean a hospital visit. Be smart, and prevent infections before they can begin.

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