Vision – Quotes of Noted Visionaries of the 20th and 21st Centuries

I’ve been talking for a few weeks about Creative Intelligence, and the last few days about Vision and how being a Visionary is something innate we all have brewing within.

So today for some inspiration I would share with you quotes of some noted visionaries of the 20th and 21st centuries. I hope this gets your wheels turning and encourages you to start cultivating and evolving your own vision.

Words of Visionaries

Muhammed Ali: To be able to give away riches is mandatory if you wish to possess them. This is the only way that you will be truly rich.

Winston Churchill: We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

Albert Einstein: The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.

Anne Frank: Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don’t know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!

Buckminster Fuller: Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them.

Mohandas Gandhi: An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

Vaclav Havel: Genuine politics—even politics worthy of the name—the only politics I am willing to devote myself to—is simply a matter of serving those around us: serving the community and serving those who will come after us. Its deepest roots are moral because it is a responsibility expressed through action, to and for the whole.

Helen Keller: No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.

John F. Kennedy: The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were.

Robert F. Kennedy: There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why. I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?

Martin Luther King, Jr.: Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. The chain reaction of evil—hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars—must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.

Dalai Lama: With realization of one’s own potential and self-confidence in one’s ability, one can build a better world.

John Lennon: My role in society, or any artist’s or poet’s role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.

Nelson Mandela: I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.

Rosa Parks: I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.

Pablo Picasso: The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.

Jackie Robinson: A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.

Eleanor Roosevelt: Do what you feel in your heart to be right—for you’ll be criticized anyway. You’ll be damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.

Franklin D. Roosevelt: In our personal ambitions we are individualists. But in our seeking for economic and political progress as a nation, we all go up or else all go down as one people.

Dr. Albert Schweitzer: By having a reverence for life, we enter into a spiritual relation with the world. By practicing reverence for life we become good, deep and alive.

Dr. Benjamin Spock: Happiness is mostly a by-product of doing what makes us feel fulfilled.

Mother Teresa: It is not the magnitude of our actions but the amount of love that is put into them that matters.

Desmond Tutu: If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

Kurt Vonnegut: Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn’t mean we deserve to conquer the Universe.

Vision – What is Your Vision Quotient/Vision Intelligence?

Every person takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world. – Arthur Schopenhauer

High IQ doesn’t guarantee being a visionary and a leader. It takes a different type of intelligence. It takes using your VQ – your Vision Intelligence.

When you live a Low Density Lifestyle, your Vision Intelligence will naturally be higher.

For most people, having a vision and being a visionary is a learned skill, even though it is innate in everyone. Over the years, the various impediments of life that stop us from using our visionary capabilities and also stop us from freeing our mind and tapping into our genius nature get in the way.

Here is a self-quiz, a VQ test, to see if you are using your visionary abilities. Actually, it’s not so much a quiz as much as a listing of the traits of a visionary. You can make it a quiz by asking yourself if you have each of these traits, and then score each trait that you have on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest.

There are 10 traits. Score it this way:
60 and under: Your vision hasn’t yet manifested.
61-70: You occasionally are able to see in a visionary way.
71-80: You are starting to become a visionary.
81-90: Your visionary abilities are shining through.
91-99: You are someone who has a strong vision.
100: You are a true visionary.

1. Mindfulness - Do you know who you really are? How much of the time are you present and fully aware?

2. Idealism – Are you an idealist and someone who prefers to live a principled life?

3. The Capacity to Face and Use Adversity – We all make mistakes and we all face adversity. Do you own your mistakes and use adversity and the pain that goes with it to learn?

4. Being Holistic – Do you see the interconnections between everything?

5. Being Open – Are you open to new ideas, to things that are different? Or do you just have a knee-jerk reaction when something comes your way that is not the same-old same-old?

6. Thinking with Head and Heart – Do you integrate critical thinking with what your heart tells you? In other words, do you think with both your head and heart?

7. Courage – Do you have the courage to be independent, to not do what is expedient or what the group wants you to do? Are you willing to stand on your own two feet for what you believe in, and to do the right thing?

8. Asking Questions – Do you take things at face value or do you want to know more, and to get at the heart of the matter, in order to form your own opinion and to think for yourself?

9. Re-Framing Ideas – Do you take things you are presented with and put it into a larger context of meaning, something that has practical value for you and others?

10. Spontaneity – Do you make decisions and react to things based on fear, so that you have an immediate and negative knee-jerk reaction? Or are your responses based on the situation at hand, so that your response is appropriate to the situation?

Creative Intelligence and Vision

In Friday’s article, which was Elizabeth Gilbert talking about genius and the creative process, I said that was the end of the series on Creative Intelligence. But as I thought about it over the weekend, I decided I wanted to extend the series a few more days, because I wanted to talk about how Creative Intelligence is so closely related to Vision.

I also have received a lot of positive feedback on this series, so that also made me decide to stretch it out a few more days.

Vision is the ability to see the world in the largest way possible.  Living a Low Density Lifestyle is something that will help you develop your visionary capabilities.

You can use vision to to find happiness, love, prosperity, a successful career, fulfilling work or to change the world.

You can vision small or large, and you can make the vision a reality. Many have done it before us, and many will do it after us. And most importantly, many are doing it right now. You have the power to be one of those who are doing it now.

To vision you need to learn to think different (and that should sound familiar, one because it’s the theme Apple Computer uses, and secondly because that’s what Creative Intelligence is about), to add space in between your thoughts, and to let go of your current way of thinking in order to see something new.

In other words, you need to interject a certain amount of dreaminess into your thinking, whether it be daydreaming, gazing into space or applying your night dreams to situations that arise during the day.

I believe John Lennon’s song “Imagine” strikes such a resonant chord because it is a song about the power to vision, and it empowers us to vision the highest calling of humanity — living in a world of peace (which, sad to say, is such an elusive thing — could that be because so few people know how to vision?)

And so, the question is, What is Your Vision?

It might be something you’ve never thought about before, primarily because it is a quality that none of us are encouraged to cultivate. But what and who are we without a vision? If you have a vision, then you have a dream to live by, and it becomes a passion, something that can fire you up and inspire you every waking hour of your life.

And when this occurs, your actions in everyday life will be performed with effortless effort.

So ask yourself, What is My Vision?

Take some time to ponder that question. It’s not a test. Come back to it. And your vision can change and evolve, so what you come up with now may change tomorrow, next week, or next year.

I will continue on with Creative Intelligence and Vision tomorrow.

Creative Intelligence and the Creative Process

As a finale for the series on Creative Intelligence, here’s an excellent talk given in Feb. 2009 by Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert about the creative process.

In the talk she states the same thing I have been getting at in this series on Creative Intelligence – that we are all geniuses, and that it is not just something that is bestowed on a select few.

We all have an inner Einstein, an innate genius lurking within. You just have to tap into its potential. The best way to do so is by living a Low Density Lifestyle.

By the way, this talk on Creative Intelligence and the Creative Process by Elizabeth Gilbert comes from the TED conference.

The TED conference is an annual conference that brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes.

Where Does Creative Intelligence Come From?

Deepak Chopra on Quantum Physics and Consciousness

Where does creative intelligence come from?  Yes, I know it comes from the mind, but it’s a different mindset to think in a creative fashion than it is when you are thinking logically.

When you use your creative intelligence, you are accessing the dreaming mind, the aspect of your mind that taps into a greater world.

You are actually accessing the world of quantum physics when you use your creative intelligence, a world that tells us of a vast and unlimited universe, a world of infinite energy, infinite potential and infinite information.

This is where the source of the creativity lies.

The Zero-Point Field

Quantum physics tells us that the source of all matter is what is called the Zero-Point Field. It lies at the core of the universe and it is where matter emanates from.

When you dream and use your imagination, you are tapping into the place where consciousness, stillness, breath and wisdom originate from, the place that Eastern philosophies call Universal Mind, or Big Mind. This might sound mystical, but you have to remember that the source for most famous ideas throughout history have come to their originator in a flash, often when they were least expecting something. The inventor Nicola Tesla said, “Creative ideas come to us like a bolt of lightning.”

To access the Zero-Point Field, it is a matter of being still and calm, and feeling your center. In other words, you become light of body and mind. And you know what we call that—that’s right, that’s the Low Density Lifestyle.

When you are in that Low Density Lifestyle mode, you don’t have blockages that impede your ability to access the Zero-Point Field in order to use your creative intelligence to your utmost potential.  When you are living a High Density Lifestyle, you have too much static and densities in body and mind, blocking your ability to fully utilize your creative potential.

This is why when someone gets a creative thought, a new idea or new insight that comes to them, it comes when they fully relax and allow themselves to just be in the flow.  That sounds familiar, right?  That’s because, as I’ve said before, to get into a Low Density Lifestyle, you have to be FREE—you have to Flow, Relax, and do things with Effortless Effort.

In the above video, Deepak Chopra explains the world of quantum physics. After watching the video, you may understand these heady ideas better.

As I have been saying throughout this series on creative intelligence, we all have it.  We all have tremendous innate genius potential, it’s just waiting to be utilized.  So start right now.

In tomorrow’s last installment from this series on creative intelligene (I know, I know, all good things must come to an end) we’ll hear from Elizabeth Gilbert, best-selling author of Eat, Pray, Love on genius and the creative process.

Creative Intelligence and and New and Visionary Ideas That Were Rejected – Part 2

One Idea That Was Rejected Was a Bunch of Blokes From Liverpool

I told you about Creative Intelligence and New and Visionary Ideas that were rejected in yesterday’s article. Because the list is long, I will tell you about more rejections.

It takes creative intelligence – which is a mix of creative and logical thinking and the imagination – to come up with new and visionary ideas.  But it takes no creative intelligence whatsoever to reject them.  People who reject them are too stuck in a High Density Lifestyle to recognize brilliance.

So let’s examine some more of the things that have become commonplace that were rejected at first.

How Could They Tell Them No?

The Beatles
“We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.” — Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962

Xerox
In 1938 Chester Carlson invented xerography. Virtually every major corporation, including IBM and Xerox, didn’t think much of his idea and rejected it. They felt that since carbon paper was cheap and readily available, no one would buy an expensive copying machine.

U.S. Patent Office
In 1899 Charles Duell, the director of the U.S. Patent Office, suggested that the government close the office because everything that could be invented had been invented.

The Radio
“The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?” –David Sarnoff’s Associates in rejecting a proposal for investment in the radio in the 1920s.

Talking Pictures
“Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” –H.M. Warner (Warner Brothers) before rejecting proposal for movies with sound in 1927.

The Airplane
“Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.” –Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.

Nautilus Machines
“You want to have consistent and uniform muscle development across all of your muscles? It can’t be done. It’s just a fact of life. You just have to accept inconsistent muscle development as an unalterable condition of weight training.” –Rejection letter to Arthur Jones, who invented the Nautilus Fitness Machine

The Computer
“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”– Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.

The Personal Computer
“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” — Ken Olsen, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

Tomorrow I’ll look at where creative ideas come from, and tie it in with ideas from quantum physics.

Creative Intelligence and New and Visionary Ideas That Were Rejected

Apple Computer – A Company Rejected by the Experts – and their Think Different TV Ad

When you use your creative intelligence – and remember, everyone has it – you are using the mind’s greater potential. You will be able to come up with new, visionary and brilliant ideas.

In yesterday’s article, I told you how you can use your creative intelligence to come up with visionary ideas. I also mentioned how some brilliant ideas are rejected when they are first proposed. They are rejected because the people who judge them have limited creative intelligence and are caught up in a High Density Lifestyle.

But because the people who came up with these ideas were visionaries living a Low Density Lifestyle, and believed in the power of their ideas, they were able to overcome the entrenched way of thinking of the experts and bring their ideas to fruition.

In today and tomorrow’s articles, I will tell you about some ideas, concepts and people who were rejected at first, but have gone on to tremendous success. So here goes – I think you will get a kick out of this:

How Could They Tell Them No?

Apple Computer
“So we went to Atari and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we’ll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we’ll come work for you.’ And they said, ‘No.’ So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, ‘Hey, we don’t need you. You haven’t got through college yet.’” — Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and H-P interested in his and Steve Wozniak’s personal computer.

Federal Express
Fred Smith, while a student at Yale, came up with the concept of Federal Express, a national overnight delivery service. The U.S. Postal Service, U.P.S., his own business professor, and virtually every delivery expert in the United States predicted his enterprise would fail. Based on their experiences in the industry, no one, they said, would pay a fancy price for speed and reliability.

Mrs. Fields Cookies
“A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports say America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make.” — Response to Debbi Fields’ idea of starting Mrs. Fields’ Cookies.

Handwashing for Doctors
In the mid-1800’s in Vienna, Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, an obstetrician, proposed that obstetricians wash their hands before delivering babies to lessen the possibility of spreading disease. He even proved his point by doing a study that showed how washing hands would lessen disease in newborns. The physicians involved refused to believe his idea could make a difference and ran him out of Vienna. He ended up committing suicide as a result of the emotional stress he suffered.

The Telephone
In 1861, in Germany, Phillip Reiss invented a machine that could transmit music and was on the verge of inventing the telephone, but was persuaded there was no market for a telephone, because the telegraph was an adequate way to send messages. Fifteen years later Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone.

Tomorrow: More ideas that were rejected.

Using Your Creative Intelligence

You Can Use Your Creative Intelligence to Create New and Visionary Ideas

“An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.” – Victor Hugo

When you live a Low Density Lifestyle, your creative intelligence is heightened, which will allow you to create new and visionary ideas.

And in this day and age, this is very important.

Why?

Welcome to the Imagination Age

Because this is no longer the information age. This is the imagination age. The highest achievers are people who create new ideas, people with imagination who fully use their creative intelligence.

Imagination is dynamic, and your ability to creatively think and tap into your inner genius is infinite.

It is not hard to use your creative thinking abilities and come up with new ideas. It’s the same process you use to vision. It is an innate ability that all of us have, but because it is not encouraged or cultivated, it has atrophied – it is like muscles that you never use.

Creativity is Key

The physicist David Bohm once said, “Creativity is a fundamental principle of the Cosmos and what needed to be explained were the processes that were not creative.”

If creativity is a fundamental principle of the cosmos, then we all have great capabilities of thinking of brilliant ideas.

The French philosopher Voltaire said, “Good is the enemy of great.” We’re at our best when we’re forced to stretch beyond what we know, yet we tend to come up with ideas that are predictable and within our comfort zone. We settle on good when we could keep going all the way to great.

Part of this is because we don’t cultivate our imagination, and part of this is because we’re afraid to come up with new ideas because they may sound crazy and make us look foolish. But often new ideas, because

they can be so farsighted in scope, look outlandish to those who can’t think that far ahead.

New Ideas and the Experts Who “Know it All”

Most of the time new ideas, because they are visionary in nature, are rejected by many – especially the experts who claim they know it all.

History is littered with brilliant ideas that end up on the rejection pile, but because the person who believed in their idea felt so strong about it, it was able to rise to the top and eventually succeed.

Tomorrow I will tell you about some brilliant ideas that were rejected when they were first proposed. They were rejected because the people who were judging it had limited creative intelligence and were caught up in a High Density Lifestyle.

Imagination and Creative Intelligence

Check out those crazy hamsters! That’s really creative and imaginative.

“An act of imagination, a speculative adventure…underlies every improvement of natural knowledge.” – Sir Peter Brian Medawar (1915-1987) British Zoologist

“The imagination is not a State: it is the Human existence itself.” - William Blake

As I mentioned in my articles on Creative Intelligence and I.Q. Part 1 and Part 2: Imagination is an important part of creative intelligence.

And to repeat what I said in the articles on Creative Intelligence and I.Q., imagination, in combination with creative and logical thinking is what creative intelligence is about. And using creative intelligence is much more important than I.Q. in being able to access your innate genius potential.

The Imagination

So let’s talk some more about the imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge, Albert Einstein once said.

All the great artists and scientists throughout time have understood how important imagination is. Most great ideas don’t come when we use only our logical thinking capabilities. They mostly come when we let down our guards, enter into a Low Density Lifestyle, and let the imagination take hold.

Nicola Tesla, the great scientist and inventor, once said, “Creative ideas come to us like a bolt of lightning.”

Steven Weinberg won a Nobel Prize for physics for his electroweak theory and said the idea came to him in a flash one day, while he was driving his car.

Albert Einstein once wondered, “Why is it I get my best ideas in the morning while I’m shaving?” This is because when we allow ourselves to relax and let the mind space out, the imagination can take over.

History is filled with many stories of creative insights that arrived like flashes of light, whether in daydreams, creative reveries or dreams. When you let go of your current way of thinking in order to see something new, you are letting your imagination take hold.

Imagination is Infinite

Imagination is infinite. All it takes to touch it is to close the eyes, quiet the mind and be silent – in other words, to enter into a Low Density Lifestyle. And then it flows – it may be images, thoughts, ideas or whatever, but the key is not to silence it or to criticize it. You may then want to express what you imagined – through written or spoken words, images, musical notations, or however you are most comfortable.

The key is to go and use your imagination. We are not encouraged to. But it is an important part of our lives.

“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious…He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead.” - Albert Einstein

Creative Intelligence and I.Q.: Part 2

Creative Intelligence and I.Q.: In yesterday’s post, I told you that I.Q. is not the true test of whether a person is a genius. I told  you about Albert Einstein, and how not-very-bright he seemed growing up.

I also told  you that the key to tapping into your inner Einstein, or your innate genius capability, is using your creative intelligence, which is a combination of creative thinking, logical thinking and imagination.

Now I want to talk about this more, and discuss two types of tests.

Test Your Intelligence

An I.Q. test is what is called a convergence test. It is where you sort through the answers and converge on the right answer.

To test your creative intelligence you would take a divergence test. A divergence test asks you to use your creative intelligence and take your mind in many different directions. There is no single right answer in this kind of test.

In a divergence test, the tester is looking for the number and uniqueness of your responses.

Here is a question from a divergence test. Try it out yourself:

A Brick, a Blanket and Two Students

Write down as many different uses that you can think of for the following objects:

1. a brick

2. a blanket

This question comes from an actual divergence test that an English researcher named Liam Hudson used for a study of creative intelligence and I.Q.  He found that average students had much more diverse answers than students with high I.Q.’s. Here’s an example of answers:

A student named Poole said for a brick:

To use in smash-and-grab raids. To help hold a house together. To use in a game of Russian roulette if you want to keep fit at the same time (bricks at ten paces turn and throw – no evasive action allowed). To hold the eiderdown on a bed tie a brick at each corner. As a breaker of empty of Coca-Cola bottles.

And this same student said for a blanket:

To use on a bed. As a cover for illicit sex in the woods.  As a tent. To make smoke signals with. As a sail for a boat, cart or sled. As a substitute for a towel. As a target for shooting practice for short-sighted people. As a thing to catch people jumping out of burning skyscrapers.

Pretty creative, wouldn’t you say?  This student with an average I.Q. has really high creative intelligence.  (Then again, we all have high creative intelligence).

Now, another student named Florence, who had one of the highest I.Q.’s in the school,  answered the question with these answers:

Brick: Building things, throwing.

Blanket: Keeping warm, smothering fires, tying to trees and sleeping in (as a hammock), improvised stretcher.

And that’s all his answers to the two. He was very functional, but he lacked creative intelligence – he showed no imagination with his answers.  And this was from a high schooler who was considered one of the top students, based on his I.Q.

Use Your Intelligence

I.Q. isn’t it.  Creative intelligence is.  I.Q. tells you how smart a person is within a limited scope.  But it tells you nothing of their imagination and their range of thought.

You want to use your innate genius potential? Forget trying to raise your I.Q.  Instead raise your C.Q. – your creative intelligence.  You do this by thinking creatively, thinking logically and using your imagination.

Using your creative intelligence – how radical a thought.

Living a Low Density Lifestyle – how radical a thought too.

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