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Showing posts with the label Problem solving

One Simple Exercise To Expand Your Intelligence And Creativity

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One splendid braintenance trick to expand your analytic intelligence (reasoning and problem-solving ability) and your creativity (the ability to envision something in your mind without having seen it with your open eyes) is [believe it or not] doing algebraic word problems in your head. No pens. No pencils. No computers or mobile devices . This absolutely requires that you keep information filed in various parts of your mind while looking at new information, and then ultimately going back to those files and fitting these "saved" pieces together to find the solution. Your intellectual curiosity and perhaps your oversized ego demand that you meet this little challenge. It involves two brothers from Poland named Mario and Lorenzo (their parents had a particularly bizarre sense of humor ): Mario is currently three years older than his bother (this is a Freudian Slip inserted in the interest of making this exercise a bit more challenging) -- er, brother; The sum of the two di...

Paradoxes Are Wonderful Brainstrainers, Braintrainers!

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The mind secretly craves paradoxes that defy reconciliation. These little pieces of self conflictory speech are to the mind what a painting by M.C. Escher is to the the eye. Some Paradoxes get the mind running iteratively to the point of exhaustion, but not a single revolution of mental turnover is wasted . The mere cycles make the mind more resilient, the imagination more expansive, the ability to visualize keener, and general problem-solving skills more powerful. The mind strives for stability -- a one-root solution -- but is stimulated by the exercise of arriving at the point of stability through its own internal logical machinations. From a more mysterious and possibly sinister perspective, the mental fatigue caused by repetitive anti-logic and the essential bouncing from wall to wall effect can put the mind into a trance-like or increasingly suggestible state. This is excellent for meditation, but under certain controlled circumstances, it can provide an opening for elem...

Your Creative Orientation: Negative? Positive?

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Creativity is one of the greatest attributes of the Human mind that leads to almost all significant adaptations and advancements. Every product, service, or system is given the first seeds of its existence, its first chance at life, by the creative energy of thought. Metaphorically, the very energy of brain is converted, through a process, into a tangible, physical result -- truly an Einsteinian conversion of energy to matter. Being innovative is not quite enough. Your Creative Orientation is a major factor in what the outcome of your thoughts will be. By way of example, if your creative process is started based upon a negative premise ("We have a problem which must be solved.") instead of upon a positive premise ("I have a vision for a goal which I long to achieve.") your creative capacity, imaginative scope, and ultimate results are likely to be negatively impacted and limited. You see, the idea-generation process is immediately constrained by an obsessive ...