MIMA Blog Carnival posted another question that I think I can tackle quite easily. The question is “What’s the process for creative brainstorming at your company? Who gets involved with creative exploration, and how do they do it?”

My first response is a sarcastic “all brainstorming is creative”. But I won’t go too crazy on that because I know what they meant, I’m just being nit picky. My second response is “did my people read and understand my book.” Because if you do the things I speak against in the book, chances are you won’t be very creative in life let alone brainstorming.

But I digress. As far as a process for me and the work I do the process involves the 4P’s of creativity. When I look for freelancers to help out one of my biggest questions or things to look for are what they do in their everyday life. Do they try to do something different often? If not, it is likely I won’t use them. For me, and part of what I bring to light in my book is that you can’t prepare to run a marathon the day of the marathon. You have to prepare long before. Now you can still enter the marathon, and you may get a couple miles, but its likely you won’t finish in time, if at all. So the people I use, practice daily being creative. Looking for different perspectives on life.

As far as who gets involved, that all depends. I work on an equality experience system. Ideas come from experience and matching those experiences with the current project/brainstorming. Meaning it does not matter who the idea comes from, but it does matter who takes the idea and makes it work with meaning and a successful bottom line for the client.

Also, I’ll add that any idea that comes out of ideation must move the clients bottom line first, and then we can execute any and all creative aspects of the idea. If I think that all we’ve come up with is a way for us to get to the beach on the clients dime, while fun, won’t cut it for me.

So that’s my two cents. Let me know what you think.

Had a great time talking to Jeff Cadwell of Conscious Choices radio talk show.

Listen Here:

The question is posed “in a perfect world, an ad network would … ?”

My response is that in a perfect world and an ad network would not exist. Given the tendency for our views of “perfect” seem to still include the “imperfect” I would say that in a perfect world, we would not need advertising or any type of network. In a perfect world, we would have perfect ideas for products and perfect execution of them. There would be no redundancy of products because there would be no cause to compete with the other “bad” products out there. Hence no need to advertise.

BUT since, I’m sure the question was meant to reflect more of a “less imperfect world” in its sense, I’ll answer that one too. In a less imperfect world an ad network would be easier to filter out bad ideas, bad deals and bad networkers. Also access to the ad network would be of greater value because of a cleaner system in with to barter, sell, engage, et al…

So that’s my quick two cents. See other responses here

This could be the last post for a while on the Being Yourself Series, but I think its a good one. If any self help person had a great reputation its Zig Ziglar. Rick Dudnick sent in this story on his client Pam.

Rick writes: Pam Lontos was an overweight, depressed housewife who was sleeping 18 hours a day. She was sick of the way she was leading her life but didn’t know how to change. Then one day she went to a self-help rally in Dallas and heard Zig Ziglar say that she could change her life if she changed the picture in her mind. Somehow that clicked and she bought everything she could that Ziglar had recorded. She listened to the tapes over and over. Well, her life did change. She got a sales job in a health club. She was good at sales and soon out sold everyone there. She also took advantage of all the exercise equipment and got in shape.

I don’t want to go on and on in this response, but the upshot of it all is that in three years from listening to those tapes, she was VP of sales for the Disney owned Shamrock Broadcasting in charge of 8 radio stations, 2 TV stations, and a production company.

When people heard this they would invariably say, “You can’t do all that in just three years.” To which she would respond, “Don’t tell me it’s impossible until after I’ve already done it.” And that became the
title of her first book.

Here’s where it gets funny and interesting:

Rick writes about Pam calling Zig: Zig, this is Pam Lontos. I used to be a depressed housewife sleeping 18 hours a day and then I listened to your tapes and got motivated, joined a gym, got hired there in sales, did really well and then went to a radio station where I increased their sales 500% in one year and now they’re asking me to do a presentation at the National Association of Broadcasters and I’ve never spoken to a group before so you have to help me because it’s all your fault!”

This led to Zig helping her and becoming her friend. Pam went from the radio station to doing her own speeches on motivation and sales.

Gary inserts: Now don’t go calling Zig thinking he’ll pick up the phone or will become your friend. But if you do and he does, give me a call. I want to meet you. But the idea here is that Pam took bold actions and had the actual gumption to change. What are you going to do? In my book its one of my main points in that you have to act in order to change into a genius. Even if that action is likely to “fail”.

Pam is president of PR/PR, a public relations firm in Orlando, FL

Generation Y is the up and coming generation. Bea has a book, blog and radio show that focuses on them and how to relate.

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When I wrote my book, I had visions of it being placed in the Arts or Creative sections of book stores. Because that’s where people tend to go first when they want to become more creative. And when it got classified as self-help, I cringed. But you take what you can get sometimes. I don’t see my book as self-help, even though it does. One of my intentions for the book is for you to see yourself, before you realize that I’ve shown you yourself. And I think Lisa closes her story out well.

I don’t need to insert comments on Lisa’s story, she’s done so well with telling the story below.

Lisa writes: Why is it that every friend of mine who consistently reads every got to have it, best -seller, self-help book is perpetually screwed up. “Lisa, since reading, “Take Back Your Life” (this of course is a fictional title of a popular non-fiction book) I understand what it has taken me twenty years to realize, I only need me,” says Sheila with great enlightenment. You have to read this book. Having known that she’d previously read such classics such as “The Rules” and even Dr. Laura’s masterpiece “Ten Stupid Things Women Do To Mess Up Their Lives, with idle zeal, I continued to offer my optimism to her cause. “Great”, I applauded to Sheila for her newfound independence and optimism. Hanging up the phone I thought, hurrah (and actually did buy the book). Enter scene two one month later: I call Sheila only to discover that she’s called in sick from work and is throwing a pity party for herself all morning because another relationship with a married, but separated, man is not turning out to be the fantasy she’d planned. “His wife is trying to real him back in. She’s claiming him.” Well she is only married to him I think to myself and am dying to ask, “What happened to the power you’d found in “Take Back Your Life”. I thought the sister who wrote this book had broken it down. Last we talked you were on your way to celibacy and Wednesday night Bible studies.” Alas, after finishing yet another important, all knowing self help book, Sheila is once again finding her old self and helping herself to her old destructive ways.
My other very dear friend, Brenda, follows a similar pattern in her lifestyle. Having nearly the same man troubles, but more serious troubles in her career, she actively pursues the next great self-help book to get her past her self-defeating behavior. On any given afternoon (since she is again unemployed) one is certain to find her in the self-help section of her local bookstore. Similar to Sheila’s story, I’d talked with her after she’d finished self-help book 244 where upon she had found a great job, felt appreciated, and was making a great salary. My first warning that things were falling apart was the disconnect message I got when I dialed her cell phone. Oh no, I thought. This is always how it starts. Talking with her confirmed my fear; she had been let go from another good job.
I must declare that both women are extremely bright, beautiful, healthy, and intelligent women. They are creative, wonderful mothers, caring, and above all great friends. Aware that they have not had the best go of it in certain aspects of their lives, they have sought solutions. Certainly, self-help books are intended to remedy unpleasant circumstances in some fashion, or else no one would by them. But I do have to wonder if they make you perpetually dependent on self-help without helping.
None of us have it together all the time, but, why do some us not have it together most of the time? And, when we seek to get it together long term and self-help doesn’t help, what can? I am of the opinion that most self-help does not really help unless the reader is willing to confront themselves in the raw. Reading and discovering the way one should handle themselves, others, and certain circumstances is one pot of soup, but to really understand the core of oneself is more complex type of stew. The author knows not our secret desires, inner conflicts of rage, insecurity, vanity, and lusts. Until we are willing to be perfectly honest with what makes us tick, we cannot nor or we willing to discern patterns of behavior from incidences and situations.
For example, Brenda is extremely beautiful. In every case of the fizz going out of her career, she always mentions that she has a problem with her female co-workers. No self-help book is going to point out to her that she is extremely wrapped up in every detail of her looks from the first and last curl of her hair, to the crease in her pants. The books can in no way inform her that she secretly hopes to have a conflict with her female co-workers to confirm to her that she is beautiful. She thrives on these conflicts because it is more important to her to be beautiful (jealousy of her beauty and conflict therefore comforts her) and it shows in not only her interactions with others, but also, affects her performance at work. Brenda must recognize this about her inner self and be diligent about working through it so that it doesn’t proceed to ruin her career and her life.
“Take Back Your Life” obviously neglected to get to the root cause of Sheila’s problems with men. She is in plain truth lustful; looking for love, comfort, and affection by using her body to woo a man into her life. Through all of her travels on the self-help bandwagon she is unable to turn around the episodes of depression over her relationships.
In essence, we can all really help ourselves if we are courageous enough. Self-help can assist us in assuring us that we are on the right path, but only ourselves can deliver the result. Only we can manifest our wishes, desires, and the life we want. We cannot read it to happen. We must will it by being completely honest with who we are, assessing our strengths, weaknesses, faults, and the resources around us. Like reading a book on building homes is only helpful to someone intricately aware of homebuilding, reading a book on the self is only useful when we are intimately aware and knowledgeable of all the nuts and bolts of our existence. For no book can even come close to describing or telling who we are – what has molded us making us unique, hungry, indifferent, at times ugly, and beautiful. Self-help cannot help those who continually self-medicate on reading what they should do and who they should be. Self-help cannot help those who find therapy in only the reading. The way to recognize that those self-help books are not helping is to track your life. If you are still reading, still searching, still crying, and still reading the books but not reading deeper into yourself, self-help is not helping.

Lisa’s website: www.lisafritsch.com