Why Try To Get Out Of Your Box, When You Can Use What's In It?
The benefit of Daydreaming is that, if it’s done for an extensive period of time, it’s exhausting. Exhausting to the point that it ends up easier to live that dream rather than daydream about it. Try it.
Stay Positive & Food For Thought Dreams
Garth E. Beyer
Previous generations had it easy didn’t they? Much easier than us anyway.
They didn’t have electronics to take them to a new world. They didn’t have the ability to Google all the things they love, the items they didn’t have or even focus on working hard to get them. They had a simple life. Hard, yes. But simple.
Our generation and any hereafter can Google more and further than our imaginations could previously take us. We Google surreal images, pictures representative of predictive futuristic consumerism. We now Google thinking it will help, yet we do very little or nothing that blogs suggest, that articles advise, that pictures inspire, that the world needs. We waste our time Googling for two reasons.
1. We seek safety, security and the knowledge that “everything is alright”. The same reason, in fact, as why you check Twitter and Facebook 20 times a day to see that everything is okay, nothing serious has happened. We never think that maybe, if something serious were to happen, if our security was breached, if we felt unsafe, that we may just feel it and know? Do we really think Googling, checking News, Twitter feed and Facebook will really be the primary acknowledgment that we are in trouble? No.
(It does good to take a moment to realize that this process is what has put us in trouble)
2. Our imaginations have been released, but not far enough. We search and stretch our minds as far as the web will let us extend them and then we feel like we got there ourselves, accomplished. We feel that since we imagined it, that it is real, attainable and easily reached. The ability to see and understand that which would not be attainable without the web is creating a surge of jobs not filled, inventions not made, and ideas not created. It is as though whatever is on the web is as far as the mind can reach, but this is false.
What you can Google, discover on Twitter, view and share on Facebook can well be used as a bridge to a further discovery. They are not your destinations, they are someone else’s and this means that there is a calling upon you to take what you view and learn to improve it, make it better, and most importantly add your imagination to it.
Or you can simply avoid this roadblock and let your imagination run as wild as possible. Of course, by doing this you will only find out that you can actually go further than what is proposed on the web, what can be dreamt of, created and achieved by another.
Stay Positive & It’s Sort Of A Win-Win
Garth E. Beyer
Lately, if you have noticed, I have been on a long riff about how information is being shared. After months of observance, I had the experience that gave me the ultimate understanding. I owe this post to every single persons experience because you have had it hundreds of times but specifically this post is the story of mine that happened to me a few days ago. I sent a link with the words “and I thought about you”.
A couple of times a week I stop by MentalFloss. I clicked a post about banana art and thought about my brother who refuses to accept he’s an artist because of what he would have to give up (his bad habits) to have his dream. I saw the bananas and had to share it with someone, someone special, someone whom I thought about immediately after seeing the bananas.
That’s the aim of content isn’t it? Or at least, it’s supposed to be the aim. Great content does good to one person but can only change the world if it’s shared with everyone on it. Whether changing the world is done through banana art or any of the billions of artistic niches, it has to be shared. To be shared, you must have the reader or viewer think of those five words.
Those five words are the most powerful words in the world because they employ action. The moment a person thinks about someone else after reading or viewing some form of content, they are held accountable to share it with that person.
Thinking about it again, this happened the other month when I sent a picture of this tiger to my friend whose favorite animal is a Tiger.
As a writer and creator of valuable content, the aim of having it shared is not based off the most Tweets, the most “likes” or the most reblogs. While the content can be shared with thousands of people this way, the connection of the shared knowledge is void of character, void of passion, void of care. The aim of providing invaluable content is to fit into someones worldview and you can only do so when you say or type those 5 words.
Stay Positive & I Wrote This Because I Thought About You
Garth E. Beyer
I have written a substantial amount of papers and reports throughout my educational career. The majority of which were written the night before or the day it was due. My reasoning is explained here. Besides implementing the Pareto principle, doing things near the last-minute is one of my talents. I work very well under stress.
As a result for producing A+ papers right before they were due, I was labeled the King of Bullshitting Papers.
The title is far from accurate so it’s time people understand the different types of smart people that school churns out. I am one of three types of scholars. Can you pick which one you are most like?
1. The Valedictorian: Reads the entire book, takes notes, reviews the book again and then writes the report.
2. The Bullshitter: Reads a review of the book online and adds unrelated information into the report as a filler.
3.The Unnoticed Genius: Scans the entire book and takes the most important parts and writes a report based on the important factors, previously learned content and personal experience.
If you are a Valedictorian, you are the best at following orders, listening to directions, and having zero creativity. The Bullshitter of course, may not even read a review of the book. It’s likely that the bullshitter just reads the back of the book or only the introduction. The last type of smart person is the one most wrongly assumed as being the Bullshitter. The Unnoticed Genius takes the core of both the Valedictorian and the Bullshitter, squishes them together and with a bit of creativity, forms art.
Understand that knowing an idea and elaborating on it quickly, based off of both research and experience, is not bullshitting. Trying to act like you know the idea and pretending you are expert enough to elaborate on it – that is bullshitting.
Stay Positive & Remember Who You Mistakenly Call King Of Bullshitting, They’re The Ones Who Are Going Far In Life
Garth E. Beyer
“Not for too long”
I’m going to use a personal example, only because I know you can relate. All my life, I was told not to push it. To not do something for too long. To not over-do it. My parents knew I would burn out. If I was on the computer too long, I would get a migraine. If I lifted really heavy weights, I would pull a muscle. If I worked 10 or 11 hour days in construction, I would get muscle strain in my back. If I tried to memorize everything the night before a test, my brain would be kaput in the morning. I burned out, I crashed, essentially I failed.
Sound familiar?
You get pushed down. You get hit. You fall repetitively. You fail over and over. Yet, somehow, you never fail to get up. It’s something engrained into your character, your heart and your minds desire to constantly adapt and improve. Setback is only temporary. It may last a day, a week, a year, but it will always subside and something will replace it: Success
Down and Out
When you burn out from doing something. You’re being gets that much better at doing it. How about the time you got sick because you stayed up too late for a few nights. Yet, the next month you were up late four days in a row and turned out fine. Or what about the time you got a headache from writing at your computer for 6 hours straight. Yet, after getting 3 more headaches, your average writing time at your computer became the same as a full-time job – with ease. You will noticeably experience this at least a few times each month that you are able to perform harder, put forth more effort, dedicate more time to the things that you constantly burn out doing. In fact, this is actually the source of constant adaptation.
Stay Positive & Failure Is Friendly To Those Who Don’t Fight It
Garth E. Beyer
It’s easy to show and tell.
You can give any person a red dipping bird and have them place it in a position for all to see and begin telling about it. Not only will they show and tell about the red dipping bird, but they will do it perfectly.
“It is a red plastic bird that for some reason dips forward and puts its beak into a glass of water “emulates the movement” and dips back and continuous going back and forth. You can purchase them in all different sizes, colors and with goofy extras like flamboyantly colored feathers or an old Abe Lincoln hat.”
Done. They showed and told.
But there’s a flaw.
It’s boring.
Everyone who’s seen one knows this. Everyone who owns one, probably laughed at the flamboyant feather color comment but still thought the presentation was dull. Everyone else who were shown and told to, they could get up and do the same exact thing.
Show and tell, which is ultimately done in k-5 grade levels, can set incredible examples and offer intelligent insight into creativity – if done right. There’s a often an overlooked variable to show and tell that can make the experiences result artistic, unique and altogether attention-informative (Information people actually want to pay attention to). Simply showing and telling doesn’t do this. Doing it the old school way is bland and banal.
The correct format is to figure out THEN show and tell.
Having to figure something out taps potential on the shoulder and tells it to get to work. In the case of the red dipping bird and according to How Stuff Works, The Dipping Bird (also called the Drinking Bird or the Dunking Bird) is a popular novelty item or toy in the United States and other countries.
A Dippy Bird has the following parts:
To operate the Dippy Bird, you get its head wet. As the water evaporates, fluid moves up into the head, causing the bird to become top-heavy and dip forward. Once the bird dips forward, fluid moves back into the abdomen, causing the bird to become bottom-heavy and tip up.
Here is how a Dippy Bird works:
Show And Tell No More
Rhetorical questions :
Which show and tell of the red dipping bird did you like more?
Which one did you learn more from?
Which one was presented in an interesting way?
Which description do you think there was plenty of effort behind?
Figuring It Out
We are doing the world a great injustice when we don’t incorporate this critical variable to the Show and Tell process we teach our youngest students. What makes matters worse is that more than three quarters of adults still follow the same routine system of show and tell that they were taught as kids.
The variable of “figuring out” how something works, what something is, or why it does a particular thing is essential to producing real results. Results that are human, that are original, and that are backed with experience. These are the results that create profit.
The market used to be in the pocket of those who could show and tell well, even more so to those who mastered it. Now it goes to those who figure it out, who provide content and experience it, who make sure that what they are showing and telling is their art, their invention and their creation.
Stay Positive & You Have Some Figuring Out To Do
Garth E. Beyer
Success is really what you call “Mastered Creativity”. What you will find below are some constructed writing challenges and exercises to push your creativity. They are formed in a way to apply practice to parts of writing (and thinking) you have rarely practiced before. The goal is to get your creative mind to push limits, stretch its imagination and to give it a game to play.
To have an open and expanded mind that is capable of using objects, sounds, movements, etc., and turn them into something solid and applicable is exactly what the most successful creators do. So why not start with the basics – Creative Writing. You might just realize that there are some life lessons to be learned from the writing exercises.
1. Newspaper Headline: I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of reading all the negativity in the newspaper. Old Zig Ziglar always said that the reason foreigners can come to America and become millionaires within a year is that they can’t read all the negativity in the newspaper. For this challenge, write your own headline article for the newspaper and share what you think is important enough for all to know. Lesson: Make sure the positive is what remains on the front page. Focus on the good, the happy, the love and remember to share it with everyone. Put all of the negativity in the obituary section.
2. Oddvertisement: You have seen great advertisements that may have even gotten you to buy something, but you have also seen terrible ads that feel like a continuous prod in the ribs. Advertisements are only fun when you see an advertisement for something odd. That’s why I call it an Oddvertisement. Open up your pantry or closet and dig for something in the far back that never gets used. Now it’s time to sell it. Write an oddvertisement that is creative and encouraging enough for someone to consider buying it. Lesson: Anyone can make a sale, but only the creative make a living off of it. There is always a different way to look at things, you just have to have the right mindset.
3. MadLib Promotion: While MadLibs are extremely fun. The joy can be even more fruitful when you are the one who created the MadLib for someone else to complete. Lesson: Challenge others by giving them the authority to choose what word goes in a certain spot.
4. Word Of The Day Stories: Dictionary.com has a Word of The Day every day. For a beginner writer, try freewriting and using the words from the last seven days. For a more expert writer, create a story using all of last months words. To take it a step further, you can even start your story by using the time and setting of the actual month that you are using the new words from. Lesson: Time really does go by quickly, yet it’s still possible to learn something new everyday and apply it to your life.
5. Improv Writing: Improv, Improv Character Building, Improv-ing Writing Skills Lesson: People-observation skills and the ability to make a correct judgement can be critical in some situations. In others, it’s necessary to keep an open mind about a person since truly, you don’t know where they come from, what they are thinking or where they want to go in life.
6. Who’s Quote Is It Anyway?: Have a list of famous quotes you absolutely love? Create a story that implements them word by word, as the theme, or by using your own derivative of the meaning. Give the quote an all new definition and background. Who knows, if you switch it up enough, you just might be quoted for it. Lesson: Emulating The Successful Through Quotes.
7. Poetry Walk Or Meditation. While walking and becoming aware of all that is around you, carry a journal and write down notes and ideas to create a poem from. Lesson: Living in the moment and remaining aware.
8. Connect-The-Sentences: Either pull random sentences from different books or use sentences you have recently heard someone say. Make three columns and in the first and third, write down the sentences that you gathered. The middle column is for you to write your own sentence that can connect the first and third sentences. The more challenging you want it, the more columns you can add, making every other column blank. Lesson: To achieve anything in life from where you are, you have to create a bridge. There is never skipping steps. You can’t just skip the middle column of this writing game or skip the work you need to do to get to where you want to be in life. It’s also great to realize that you can make the bridge as interesting and be as creative as possible.
9. Word Jump. While freewriting, start every sentence with the word that you blindly land your finger on in a book or newspaper. Lesson: You never know what’s going to pop up in your life to knock you off track. Are you creative enough to adapt and overcome?
10. Guest Post: Instead of getting a guest to write a blog post for you, you write it. Open up the post like you normally would on a subject of your choice (preferably controversial, but it doesn’t need to be). Then introduce your guest that will be writing a post on the subject (Create an alias for yourself). Now begin writing from a different perspective, as the guest blogger. Lesson: Getting different perspectives.
11. Word Play: Write a poem with word play… wait, weight, waste, waist, hole, whole. Lesson: Simply just fun!
12. I Write Dead People: Open up a newspaper to the Obituary section and write a story about how a person died. Lesson: Makes you happy to be alive doesn’t it? Life’s too short to not be creative.
13. Telephone Book Tale: Open to a random page of your yellow book, placing your finger on a part of the page and using what is written in that ad, put it in your story. Did your finger lie on a Muffler shop? Has there been a recent murder there? Was all that was left at the scene a piece of paper and the phone number which has been disconnected? Big yellow phone books don’t do any good unless you can write a story from them. Lesson: Nothing is ever as it seems.
14. Where Do You WANT To See Yourself In 5 Years?: Simple as that. Write every detail, every dream come true, every aspect of the life you want. Get crazy with it! So many people will ask you this throughout your life. Create an answer that will blow them away.
Stay Positive & Then Follow Through To Make That 5th Year Come True
Garth E. Beyer
