Creative Intelligence and Vision – One Company That Cultivates It

What happens if a company determines that they want to encourage Creative Intelligence and Visionary Thinking in all their employees? What could possibly result from it?

Imagine This

Before I tell you who the company is and some of the results of the creative intelligence of the employees, I just want to say that imagine if all companies cultivated creative intelligence and vision?

And how about schools? Imagine if creative intelligence and visionary thinking was the guiding force behind the education process? (Hint: creative intelligence is not cultivated in the education process and is usually squashed.)

So if all companies—and schools—truly cultivated creative intelligence and vision, all I can say is: Wow! This would be a world of creative thinking visionaries, people who were willing to dream up big ideas and put them into practice.

It would be a world filled with people living a Low Density Lifestyle.

Ok, so now back to about that specific company. You may have heard of them. Their name: Google.

Google

Google allows all employees to spend 20% of their time on whatever endeavors they fancy. They are totally allowed the free rein to do whatever they want with their work time, and to dream up ideas and then to see if they can come to fruition.

And this is why the folks at Google have created a cutting edge company that is never at a loss for new and fascinating ideas. By letting employees truly use their creative intelligence and by encouraging them to live a Low Density Lifestyle, they are a rich resource of original thinking.

How do I know Google encourages employees to live a Low Density Lifeestyle? Google offers a free dining facility for their employees that serves organic whole foods, offers free massage services to their employees and has places on their campus where employees can go to take a nap.  These things are part of the 12 steps to attaining a Low Density Lifestyle.

And so, whether you are a technophile or technophobe, it’s worth checking out some of the really cool things Google employees have developed, thanks to the corporate climate of encouraging creative intelligence. It may not be your inclination to think up these kinds of things, but I just wanted to show you the possibility of what can be done, if it is cultivated and encouraged, in order to inspire you:

IGOOGLE:  At iGoogle (google.com/ig), you can dress up all that white space with useful miniboxes containing additional info. Hundreds of useful displays are available: a clock, local weather, movie listings, incoming e-mail, news, daily horoscope, to-do list, Twitter updates and whatever-of-the-day (joke, vocabulary word, quotation, Bible verse and so on).

GOOGLE READER: Why spend your time finding and navigating to the Web sites that cover your favorite topics? They can all come to you — all nicely congregated on a single page, called Google Reader (reader.google.com).

You type in a topic, inspect the search results, and click the Subscribe buttons that look interesting. After that, Reader displays the first paragraph from each site or blog; click to read more. Star items to read later, or pass along your favorites to friends.

FLU TRENDS: Google figured out that whenever people get sick, they use Google to search for more information. By collating these searches, Google has created an early-warning system for flu outbreaks in your area, with color-coded graphs. Google says that Flu Trends (google.org/flutrends) has recognized outbreaks two weeks sooner than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has.

GOOGLE MAPS: You probably know this one, but it’s still worth pointing out (maps.google.com). Choose the directions you want: by car, by public transit or on foot. Drag the path line with your mouse around construction sites or down interesting streets. View current traffic conditions. Turn on Street View to see actual photographs of your destination.

GMAIL LABS: Gmail is already the world’s best free Web-based e-mail service, with terrific organization tools and a superb spam blocker. But if you click Settings and then Labs, you find a huge list of on/off switches for cool enhancements.

There’s Text Message in Chat (send text messages to your friends’ cellphones from within Google Chat or Gmail); Offline Mail (work on Gmail when you’re not online); Canned Responses (build a menu of stock answers to your mail); Multiple Inboxes (manages mail by auto-creating multiple mail folders); and Send & Archive (one click sends your reply and removes the original from the list).

TRANSLATOR: Translate any text or Web page to or from 40 languages (translate.google.com). It’s not perfect, but you’ll get the gist of that spam from Russia.

800-GOOG-411: Possibly the best voice-recognition cellphone service in existence. Call the number, say what you’re looking for (“comedy clubs, Chicago” or “Domino’s Pizza, Cleveland”), and Google’s auto-voice reads off the closest eight matches. You can speak the number of the one you want, and he’ll connect your call automatically — no charge. You never know or care what the phone number was; it’s like having a personal secretary.

Or you can say “text message” at any time to have the address and phone number zapped to your cellphone in one second.

GOOGLE SMS: Send a message to GOOGL (46645). In the body of the message, type the sort of information you want: weather report (“weather dallas”), stock quotes (“amzn”), movie showtimes (type “slumdog millionaire 44120”), definitions (“define schadenfreude”), directions (“miami fl to 60609”), unit conversions (“liters in 5 gallons”), currency conversions (“25 usd in euros”), and so on. Five seconds later, Google texts back the details.

GOOGLE SETS: At labs.google.com/sets, type in several items in a series (like “cleveland browns” and “dallas cowboys”); Google fleshes out the list with others like it (all the other football teams). Great when something’s on the tip of your tongue (a kind of fruit, president, car, holiday, currency) but can remember only something like it.

GOOGLE SCHOLAR: You can search all published academic papers at once, at scholar.google.com, for whatever subject you are interested in.

SECRETS OF THE SEARCH BOX: Usually, whatever you type into Google’s Search box is treated as a quest for Web pages. Certain kinds of information, however, get special treatment.

For example, you can type in an equation (like “23*9/3.4+234”); press Enter to see the answer.

Think of Google, too, for conversions. For example, type “83 yards in inches,” “500 euros in dollars,” or “grams in 3.2 pounds”; then press Enter.

The search box can also serve as a dictionary (type “define:ersatz”), package tracker (type your FedEx or U.P.S. tracking number), global Yellow Pages (“phonebook:home depot norwalk ct”), meteorologist (“weather san diego”), flight tracker (“AA 15”), stock ticker (“AAPL” or “MSFT”), and movie-listings (type “movies:10024,” or whatever your ZIP code is).

And there’s more, but that’s all space allows.

That’s one company with mega amounts of Creative Intelligence and Vision.

Come back tomorrow for a final article on Creative Intelligence and Vision. It will be a video that will move and inspire you.

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.

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.

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