“I want to know God’s thoughts; the rest are details.”
Albert Einstein

The human mind is a very powerful but limited tool. It usually constrains things in a universe that it can understand.Throughout the human history there have been quite a few bright minded individuals that managed to break beyond these limits. Genius minds like Aristotle and Einstein used very efficient thinking strategies that helped them achieve great things.

Even if you’re not a genius, you can use the same strategies as them to harness the creative power of your mind and better manage your future.

You must think productively in order to find solutions to problems.

1. Attack a problem from many different perspectives. Take a step back and aproach it fom another angle. This way you learn how to restructure it in many different ways. Leonardo da Vinci felt that the first way he looked at a problem was too biased. Very often the problem reconstructs itself and becomes a new one.
2. Visualization is key. Very often words and numbers don’t play such a significant part in the thinking process. Formulate your problem in as many ways as possible, use diagrams, drawings, or anything that could have the potential to help produce a better visualisation of the problem.
3. Produce! This is a distinguishing characteristic of genius. Thomas Edison held 1,093 patents. He guaranteed productivity by giving himself and his assistants idea quotas. The most respected scientists in history produced not only great works, but also many “bad” ones. They weren’t afraid to fail. Failure is a process that is necessary in order to arive at excellence.
4. Combine and recombine ideas, images, and thoughts into different combinations no matter how unusual they would look. The laws of heredity on which the modern science of genetics is based came from the Austrian monk Grego Mendel, who combined mathematics and biology to create a new science.
5. Form relationships and make connections between dissimilar subjects. Samuel Morse invented relay stations for telegraphic signals when observing relay stations for horses.
6. Use opposite thinking. This helps suspend your thought and move your mind to a new level. Niels Bohr’s ability to imagine light as both a particle and a wave led to his conception of the principle of complementarity. Suspending thought (logic) may allow your mind to create a new form.

I stumbled across this while randomly surfing the net.

While my previous article ”56 tips for a happier life” has generated both good reactions and criticism (on some forums that is), I belive this one will only have good reactions.

Here it goes.

Things that everybody should know:

• You can’t be all things to all people so you have to find out who you are and be that. Then you will have learned to accept your own uniqueness and dare to believe that you are a wonderfully unique person.
• You can’t do all everything at once so you have to decide what comes first and do that. Then you will have learned to set priorities and make decisions and dare to believe that you are the only one just like you in all of history.
• You can’t do all things equally well so you have to discover your strengths and use them. Then you will have learned to live with your limitations and dare to believe that it is more than a right, it is your duty to be who you are.
• You can’t do everything better than everyone else. You’re human, just like everyone else so you have to learn not to compete with others because no one else is in the business of being you. Then you will have learned to give yourself the respect that is due and be on the road to being the best “you” that you can be. By doing so you’ll realize that life is not a problem to solve, but a gift to cherish and you will be able to stay on top of what used to get you down and achieve the impossible.

Many people think that the ones living in huge houses and have tons of money are happy – but they’re not. I belive that the real happy ones are those who managed to simplify their lives and freed themselves from the chains of this consumer society.

One thing that this society will always teach us is to lack. Always lack… we never have enough no matter how much we try.

Simplicity drives stress away.

Look at the little ones. They are very happy when they have a tiny toy car to play with – happier than their parents are with a big expensive Mercedes. Ask a little girl “what do you wish for? A doll or a huge mansion?”, and you’ll see that she would answer “a doll”.

This reminds me of a nice story about simplicity:

The American businessman was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.

The Mexican replied only a little while. The American then asked why didn’t he stay out longer and catch more fish? The Mexican said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs. The American then asked, “But what do you do with the rest of your time?” The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos, I have a full and busy life, senior.”

The American scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat with the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually NYC where you will run your expanding enterprise.”

The Mexican fisherman asked, “But senior, how long will this all take?”

To which the American replied, “15-20 years.”

“But what then, senior?”

The world is in a constant fight. Fighting darkness, good fighting evil and truth fighting lie.

Today we must be on our guard more than ever, because many fake prophets are out in the world and they are trying to rob us of our souls and freedoms with their tricks and lies.
That’s why I thought that it would be a good thing to write a few words on the subject.

According to Wikipedia, a prophet (or prophetess) is a person who has directly encountered the numinous or the divine and serves as an intermediary with humanity. Prophets existed in many ancient cultures, including the Sybilline and Delphic Oracles in Ancient Greece, the Völuspá in Old Norse, Zoroaster in Persia, and many others. In Abrahamic religion, a prophet is seen as a man who has encountered, and speaks as a formal representative of, God; some are understood as founding or revitalizing a religion based on their teachings.

How do we know the true prophets?
The first sign to recognize a true prophet is that his prophecies come to realize.

What are prophecies?
Prophecies are visions that predict future events, or the speaking of divine words regarding the future that God has planned for us all. These truths come to happen precisely as foretold.

How to recognize true prophecies?
They must meet the following conditions:

1. They must preach of only one God;
2. True prophecies don’t bring madness to the one that foretells them;
3. They are not deceiving;
4. The one who foretells them isn’t chasing any fortunes, he doesn’t take special care of the things that are necessary to his life; he is content with the natural state of things and survives only by the mercy of God;
5. True prophecies always come to happen exactly as predicted;
6. The ones who foretell prophecies belive in them all their lives. They don’t change their minds if exposed to suffering or threathened by death.

Who are the false prophets?

Information overload (aka information flood or information asphyxiation) is a term that is usually used in conjunction with various forms of computer mediated communications. It refers to the state of having too much information to make a decision or remain informed about a topic.

Fighting the data asphyxiation is difficult, but not impossible.

The typical business manager is said to read one million words per week (the equivalent of one and a half full length novels per day).
A Sunday edition of the New York Times has more information than the average 19th-century citizen accessed in his entire life.
Think about these facts…

The information overload has become a worldwide issue, affecting more and more people each year. Its symptoms are the following:

• Increased cardiovascular stress, due to a rise in blood pressure;
• Weakened vision (a Japanese study predicts a nearly-universal near-sightedness in the close future);
• Confusion and frustration;
• Impaired judgement;
• Decreased benevolence to others;
• Constant feeling of tiredness;
• Short attention span;
• Constant feeling of helplessness.

There is a common piece of wisdom which holds that any given fact can be twisted to fit one’s needs. And it’s totally true. Let’s take the global warming issue as an example. It is really such a great threat to our lives or not? The answer, of course, depends on whose report you read, and there are so many reports emerging on a constant basis that one is left not knowing what to believe. This is a condition that is sometimes referred to as “paralysis by analysis”, and it may account for some of the decline in the American (and not only) health.

The web presents huge amounts of information to its users, cable and satellite TV offer dozens of channels of meaningless drivel and the newspapers and magazines also try to feed us with lots of information. The problem is that our brains didn’t evolve as much as the communication methods and information quantities have grown.
The key decision that one has to take is: “when do I have enough?”.

Because we can’t look at everything, we’ve got to establish some boundaries and deadlines, we’ve got to recognize what quality is and filter all the information coming our way. In short, we have to take control.

Key to information management is focusing on the quality of the data that you receive. Decrease quantity, increase quality.

Do help you do that, I’ve compiled a short list which can serve as a guide in your information management process.
What to do:

1. Starting with the obvious: decrease quantity, increase quality.
2. Be careful with your phone time. Call only with planned discussions and teach your friends and family to do the same. It’s important to keep calls short and focused.
3. Get organised, clean your desk.