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How to Trigger Great Ideas
Six Behaviors that Increase Self-Esteem
How to Trigger Great Ideas
By Brian Tracy
A major stimulant to creative thinking is focused questions.
There is something about a well-worded question that often penetrates to the heart of the matter and triggers new ideas and insights.
Questions Stimulate Creative Thinking?
Some of the best questions I've found for business problem solving are the following:
Clarify Your Desired Result
Question #1 "What are we trying to do?" Whenever you become frustrated with slow progress for any reason, step back and ask this again and again, "What are we trying to do?"
Analyze Your Current Methods
Question #2 "How are we trying to do it?" If you are experiencing resistance, perhaps your method is wrong. Be willing to objectively analyze your approach by asking, "How are we trying to do it?" Is this the right way? Could there be a better way? What if our method was completely wrong? How else could we approach it?
Could You Be Wrong?
It requires courage to face the possibility that you may be wrong but it also leads to your seeing new possibilities. The rule is: Always decide what's right before worrying about who's right.
Question Your Assumptions
Another good question is, "What are our assumptions?" About the person, the product, the market, the business? What are our assumptions? Could we be assuming something that is incorrect? Someone once said that "Errant assumptions lie at the root of every failure".
What if your unspoken or implied assumptions were wrong? What would you have to do differently?
Put Past Decisions on Trial?Another form of focused questioning is what I call "Zero based thinking." This method requires that you put every past decision on trial for its life regularly by asking, "If I had not made this decision, knowing what I now know, would I make it?" If I had not hired this person or gotten involved in this project, knowing what I now know, would I do it over again?
If the answer is "NO" to one of these questions, then your aim should be to get out of the decision as fast as possible. Be willing to "cut your losses," and try something else.
Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do to trigger more and better ideas.
First, be very clear about exactly what it is that you are trying to do. Write it down and describe it as if it were already achieved.
Second, question your assumptions continually. What if there were a better way? Be willing to try something completely different.
Reproduced with permission from Denis Waitley's
Weekly Ezine. To subscribe to Denis Waitley's Weekly Ezine, go to
www.deniswaitley.com or send an email with Join in the subject to
subscribe@deniswaitley.com Copyright © 2005 Denis Waitley
International. All rights reserved worldwide.
Keywords: personal development, self-improvement, self-esteem, confidence, self-confidence, motivation, confidence, creativity
Six Behaviors that Increase Self-Esteem
by Denis Waitley (excerpted from The Psychology of Motivation)
By Denis Waitley
Following are six behaviors that increase self-esteem, enhance your self-confidence, and spur your motivation. You may recognize some of them as things you naturally do in your interactions with other people.
But if you don’t, I suggest you motivate yourself to take some of these important steps immediately.
First, greet others with a smile and look them directly in the eye. A smile and direct eye contact convey confidence born of self-respect. In the same way, answer the phone pleasantly whether at work or at home, and when placing a call, give your name before asking to speak to the party you want to reach. Leading with your name underscores that a person with self-respect is making the call.
Second, always show real appreciation for a gift or complement. Don’t downplay or sidestep expressions of affection or honor from others. The ability to accept or receive is a universal mark of an individual with solid self-esteem.
Third, don’t brag. It’s almost a paradox that genuine modesty is actually part of the capacity to gracefully receive compliments. People who brag about their own exploits or demand special attention are simply trying to build themselves up in the eyes of others — and that’s because they don’t perceive themselves as already worthy of respect.
Fourth, don’t make your problems the centerpiece of your conversation. Talk positively about your life and the progress you’re trying to make. Be aware of any negative thinking, and take notice of how often you complain. When you hear yourself criticize someone — and this includes self-criticism — find a way to be helpful instead of critical.
Fifth, respond to difficult times or depressing moments by increasing your level of productive activity. When your self-esteem is being challenged, don’t sit around and fall victim to "paralysis by analysis." The late Malcolm Forbes said, "Vehicles in motion use their generators to charge their own batteries. Unless you happen to be a golf cart, you can’t recharge your battery when you’re parked in the garage!"
Sixth, choose to see mistakes and rejections as opportunities to learn. View a failure as the conclusion of one performance, not the end of your entire career. Own up to your shortcomings, but refuse to see yourself as a failure. A failure may be something you have done — and it may even be something you’ll have to do again on the way to success — but a failure is definitely not something you are.
Even if you’re at a point where you’re feeling very negatively about yourself, be aware that you’re now ideally positioned to make rapid and dramatic improvement. A negative self-evaluation, if it’s honest and insightful, takes much more courage and character than the self-delusions that underlie arrogance and conceit. I’ve seen the truth of this proven many times in my work with athletes. After an extremely poor performance, a team or an individual athlete often does much better the next time out, especially when the poor performance was so bad that there was simply no way to shirk responsibility for it. Disappointment, defeat, and even apparent failure are in no way permanent conditions unless we choose to make them so. On the contrary, these undeniably painful experiences can be the solid foundation on which to build future success.
Reproduced with permission from Denis Waitley's Weekly Ezine. To subscribe to Denis Waitley's Weekly Ezine, go to www.deniswaitley.com or send an email with Join in the subject to subscribe@deniswaitley.com Copyright © 2005 Denis Waitley International. All rights reserved worldwide.
Keywords: personal development, self-improvement, self-esteem, confidence, self-confidence, motivation
