Innovative Techniques for Planning Your 2008

Innovator’s Digest focuses on innovation within business; but their Technique-of-the-Week tips easily apply to improving your own life. Here are 3 fun and useful exercises that will help you prep for 2008:

• Predict next year’s headlines—with the headlines being about you! What might happen in 2008? This technique allows you to identify where you truly want to be. It’s similar to that time-honored exercise of writing your obituary only more quick and short term.
• Challenge your assumptions—such as if you’re saying you can’t do XYZ for whatever reason. Imagine ending every wall you put up with a “Why not?” instead of “Not.”
  • Step 1: Write down at least three assumptions you’re making about the problem to be solved.
  • Step 2: Now challenge each assumption by stating it’s opposite (or its negative).
  • Step 3: Write down any potential benefits or ideas that spring from you challenge to the assumptions.
• Use music to let your mind flow. Record a creativity concert to free your mind. Here’s how.

These ideas come to you from SolutionPeople, a company which over 20 years has helped innovators generate over 2 million ideas valued at over $2 billion U.S. dollars.

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Finding Work That Matters As Your Next Career or After Retirement

Someone asked the Wall Street Journal’s CareerJournal the eternal question: How do I find my passion and work that relates to my passion?

Their helpful answer also mentions Civic Ventures, an organization offering brilliant resources for people considering career changes, especially later in life:

Encore.org helps professionals and executives find “encore” careers that match their passions with the ability to earn an income. Their five-step guide includes a self-evaluation quiz, helpful books on this topic, and a list of sites to start looking for such opportunities.

Experience Corps is a service program now operating in 20 U.S. cities that places older adults in schools to test whether they enjoy working with children or teaching.

P.S. Make sure to nominate someone worthy for the Purpose Prize contest!
The Purpose Prize® provides five awards of $100,000 each to people over 60 who are taking on society’s biggest challenges. It’s for those with the passion and experience to discover new opportunities, create new programs, and make lasting change.

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How to Record Your Child’s Voice or Dog Bark As a Mobile Phone Ringtone

Just recently I had an idea to personalize my cell phone ringtone with the voice of someone calling out: “The phone’s ringing!” Or better yet that time honored landline yell: “Telephone!!!”

Now I smile whenever my phone rings.

It’s Easy to Record Your Ringtone

Don’t have a microphone? A stranger to digital recording? No worries. You can make these recordings with a simple phone call.

1. First get directions on how to add ringtones to your cell phone from your manual or a net search. This will vary depending on what phone you have. For some phones it’s not possible so that’s good to find out first!
2. Sign up for a an Internet voicemail service.
3. Then start recording! Call up your Internet voicemail phone number and make whatever recordings you want. They’ll be emailed to you as an MP3 file. You’ll be able to preview how it sounds by opening it in the media software on your computer.
4. Add the ringtone to your phone, if you can.

Even if you can’t add ringtones to your phone, Internet voicemail is a great way to capture recordings of anyone near and dear to you, without needing a microphone or other recording device.

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The First Time I Read Wayne Dyer (I Felt Fulfilled)

I’ll admit in the past I’ve kind of avoided Wayne Dyer altogether. Never read him. Never kept up on the 29 books he published or what he was teaching. All because the first time I flipped through one of his books the word “God” popped out at me numerous times. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, just that I knew a religious-based book wouldn’t speak to me.

Then today I read a year old article Wayne Dyer wrote for Forbes called The Moment of Change, about reinventing yourself. It was part of a provocative “Blank Slate” series they ran asking various luminaries if something in time could be re-done what would they choose and why.

In just a few hundred words, Dyer’s article tells you how to reinvent yourself along with examples of how he’s changed.

Take a few minutes to read the article. It could change your life. You’ll learn advice like:

1. Keep your mind open to anything
2. Don’t die with your music still in you
3. Notice what you really want in life
4. Stay inspired
5. Get back in balance

I’m pleased to know that SuperViva will at least get you started along the right path.

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October 14th, 2007 | Leave a Comment