Reflect on How Far You’ve Come

Posted on October 21, 2017 · Leave a Comment

I hope you’ve enjoyed our exploration of positive and creative thinking. More importantly, I hope you’ve taken the advice, tips, ideas, and strategies I’ve shared with you to heart and put them to good use. If you did, you should start to see some real change already. The good news is that it will continue to get better, more fun, and more creative, the more you practice what you’ve learned.

Let’s take a quick walk down memory lane and browse through all the different topics we covered over the past 29 days. Here’s a quick rundown of what we’ve covered.

  1. 30 Days of Positive and Creative Thinking
  2. The Power of Positive Thinking
  3. How Negative Thoughts Slow You Down
  4. How to Turn Negative Thoughts Positive
  5. What is Creative Thinking?
  6. Sometimes All it Takes is Time
  7. The Power of Combining Minds
  8. Affirmations Can Help You Stay on Track
  9. Creative Thinking Starts by Looking at the Problem from a Different Angle
  10. How Journaling Can Help You Cultivate Positive Thinking Habits
  11. Cultivating a Creative and Positive Thinking Climate Around You
  12. The Power of Open Ended Questions and Discussion
  13. Having Fun Helps Cultivate Positive and Creative Thinking
  14. Surround Yourself With Inspiration
  15. Never Stop Learning: It Keeps Your Mind Sharp
  16. Keep Your Eyes Open: Creative Solutions are Everywhere
  17. Your Brain is a Muscle: Work It Out
  18. Words to Watch Out For
  19. Time to Lose the Guilt
  20. The Power of Brainstorming
  21. Taking Risks Sparks Creativity
  22. Challenge Yourself to Say Yes More
  23. Kick Start Creative Thinking By Suspending Limits
  24. Dealing With Setbacks in a Positive Way
  25. Reading About Creative and Positive Thinkers is Inspirational
  26. A Mind at Rest Will Surprise You With Creative Solutions
  27. Don’t Let Critics and Nay-Sayers Get To You
  28. How to Get Out of a Funk and Back yo Your Positive, Sparkling Self
  29. Playing and Hobbies Aren’t a Waste of Time

What has had the biggest impact on you? What tips and ideas have you found the most helpful? Those are the posts that you want to come back to again and again.

Take a few minutes today to reflect on not only how far you’ve come, but more importantly how this simple 30 day challenge has influenced you and changed you for the better. What positive experiences have you had as a result of working towards creative and positive thinking? Real change takes time, but at the very least, you should have gotten a glimpse of what’s possible. Keep up the good work going forward, and keep making progress towards more positive and creative thinking.

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Playing and Hobbies Aren’t a Waste of Time

Posted on October 20, 2017 · Leave a Comment

We know that playing is good for young children. We encourage them play, solve fun puzzles, and use their imagination. It’s an important part of growing up and learning to think for themselves. It’s also a great way to encourage creative thinking. The good news is that kids aren’t the only ones who will benefit from playing and spending time on hobbies. There’s no cut-off date when we no longer benefit from those leisurely pursuits.

Society tries to tell us that taking out time to play, craft, play a sport, learn a language, play an instrument, and other ways of having fun with others is a waste of time for adults. As it turns out, society is wrong. Taking the time to have fun and doing something completely different from what you do for a living is very beneficial.

We’ve talked at length how creative thinking works and how we need lots of different ideas and experiences to give our minds something to work with. It turns out that playing is the perfect way to do that. Those hobbies you have may be very different from your day job and that’s a good thing. They give you more data and help your brain come up with creative ideas by making connections between seemingly unrelated things.

To get better at creative thinking, make time for hobbies and play. Come back to some things you enjoyed before you decided you didn’t have time for hobbies anymore. Try something new and see if you like it. Find some enjoyable things to do in your spare time. This will be time much better spent than catching up on work after hours or flopping down in front of the TV.

Don’t pick a hobby because it seems particularly enriching. Pick something that seems like fun. Take the pressure off yourself. Think back to our earlier post about giving the mind a rest. A hobby or even spending a couple of hours playing a video game or goofing off with the kids isn’t a waste of time. It’s a great way to give your mind a rest and create some very different syntactical connections in your brain.

The fact that you’re having fun and relaxing is an added bonus. That will help with you attitude and positivity. In the end, you’ll come back to work the next day in a much better frame of mind, more rested, and with a mind bursting full of creative ideas. Try and it and see for yourself. Most importantly make the time to go out and play. Pick up those favorite hobbies again, and don’t be afraid to try something new.

Essential Oil: Joy™

Joy™ essential oil is a blend of Young Living’s most inviting oils, formulated to invite a sense of romance, bliss, and warmth when diffused. With Ylang Ylang, Geranium, Jasmine, Palmarosa, and Rose essential oil, Joy oil has a fresh, floral aroma with notes of citrus from the essential oils of Bergamot, Lemon, and Tangerine.

Joy essential oil blend is perfect for diffusing or applying topically. Members’ favorite Joy oil uses include diffusing it around the home for a pleasant, joyful aroma. Apply Joy essential oil blend topically and wear it as a fragrance to invite togetherness. You can also find Joy oil in Young Living’s popular Everyday Oils™ essential oil collection.

Filed Under: 30 Day Challenges, Positive and Creative Thinking Tagged With: , , , ,

A Mind at Rest Will Surprise You with Creative Solutions

Posted on October 17, 2017 · Leave a Comment

Thinking is hard work. If you’ve ever been stuck on a big problem or had to work through taxing meeting after meeting where you had to be at the top of your game, you know what I’m talking about. Heck, just think back on how exhausted you were after final exams at school. Thinking is hard work.

While there’s a lot you can accomplish with effort when it comes to thinking, sometimes taking a break and getting some rest is your best bet. This is particularly true when you’re feeling stuck. Our mind is an interesting creation. It works on two different levels, the conscious and the subconscious.

Much of our day to day thinking is on the conscious level. You decide what you want for breakfast, and you think about watching a movie before going to bed. You think at work, at home, and everywhere in between. These are the thoughts you’re aware of.

Then there are subconscious thoughts. Think of them as background processes that go on while you’re thinking and working on other stuff. You’re not aware of them, and frankly, the only time they make it into your conscious is when ideas pop up.

I’m sure this has happened to you before. You’re busy cooking dinner and the perfect way to phrase an offer to a new client pops into your head. Or how about this? You’re about to drift off to sleep, and the perfect solution for your living room organization problem pops into your head. These are subconscious thoughts making it to the surface.

This is why giving your mind some rest by going out for a walk, getting some extra sleep, or putting around the house or yard can be some time well spent. When you’re feeling stuck, stop thinking about the perfect answer or solution. Go do something else, ideally something that doesn’t involve a lot of hard thinking. This frees up space for your subconscious to go to work. And it will surprise you with the creative and out-of-the-box ideas it can come up with. All you have to do is give it space to work, and then listen when the solution presents itself.

Ready to give it a try? Slow down your thinking and start moving. Get some air and stop trying to force the solution. Walk away and let your subconscious get to work. Go play with your kids, hang out with your spouse, meet your friends at the bar and just give your mind a rest. It’s one of the best things to do when you’re stuck. You may not be actively working on it, but trust me, your subconscious is working all the harder for it.

Essential Oil: Cool Azul™

Cool Azul™ is a proprietary essential oil blend created by D. Gary Young that includes the light aroma of Dorado Azul and the warm fragrance of Plectranthus Oregano (both Young Living exclusive oils), along with Peppermint, Wintergreen, Sage, Copaiba, Blue Cypress, Elemi, and other oils. Apply this blend topically for a cool sensation and aromatic experience. Cool Azul is ideal for use before, during, and after physical activities. Attach an AromaGlide™ roller fitment to the bottle and pack it in your gym bag, purse, or backpack for quick and easy on-the-go use.

Filed Under: 30 Day Challenges, Positive and Creative Thinking Tagged With: , , ,

Reading About Creative and Positive Thinkers is Inspirational

Posted on October 16, 2017 · Leave a Comment

Young Living Founder D. Gary Young

In previous posts, I’ve mentioned how important it is to get and stay inspired. We’ve also talked about how learning new things will help keep our minds sharp and how it helps us think creatively. Today, we’re going to combine these two ideas and talk about the benefits of reading about creative and positive thinkers.

There are so many amazing people living today and who have lived in the past that we can learn from. It doesn’t matter if you’re admiring the foresight and creativity of technology gurus like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, or Mark Zuckerberg, if you admire ancient thinkers like Plato and Aristotle, or anyone in between. There are many great thinkers and inspiriting people out there, and you should be reading about them.

Head to your local library, bookstore, or favorite online bookseller and look for books written by or about your favorite big thinkers. Make it a habit to learn a little more about them each month.

If they are current big thinkers, read their blogs, watch the videos they publish, or follow them on social media. Get your hands on anything you can and pay attention to how they think and how they share information. You know you’re striking gold when you get a glimpse of their daily habits and what they do to encourage creative thinking.

Not only will you learn a lot directly from reading about these people, you’ll also get and stay inspired to do your best on this journey towards creative and positive thinking of your own. Very early on in this series, I told you that you can do what you think you can do.

It’s a great motto to live by and something that definitely holds true. The only problem is that it can also limit us. If we don’t think we can do something or haven’t even considered the possibility that we might be able to do something, we won’t be able to do it. That’s why it’s important to read about other big thinkers.

They open our eyes, expand our horizons, and show us what’s possible. Look at some of the advances we’ve made in technology over the past 100 years. If you lived a century ago, you could not possibly have imagined ideas like blogs and social media, high speed internet and video conferencing, or little devices like smartphones that hold entire libraries and allow us to communicate at the touch of a button. No matter how creative of a thinker you may have been, you couldn’t possibly have thought about these ideas… and with that they were out of your realm of possibility to reach.

When you read about and learn from other big thinkers, it opens your mind to what’s possible. Study them, follow them, learn from them, and most importantly, be inspired by them.

Essential Oil: Inspiration

Inspiration™ is a blend of pure essential oils that were traditionally used by native people of Arabia, India, and North America for enhancing spirituality and meditation. You will benefit from this combination of Cedarwood, Black spruce, Myrtle, Coriander, Royal Hawaiian Sandalwood™, Frankincense. Furocoumarin-free Bergamot, Vetiver, Ylang ylang and Geranium when you diffuse up to 1 hour three times daily.

Filed Under: 30 Day Challenges, Positive and Creative Thinking Tagged With: , , , , ,

Dealing With Setbacks in a Positive Way

Posted on October 15, 2017 · Leave a Comment

No matter how hard you work on personal development, on positive thinking, and on how good you get at coming up with creative solutions to any problems and roadblocks you encounter, there will be a time when things simply don’t work out. Life isn’t all roses and sunshine. We all face difficult times and setbacks. How we deal with them is what sets us apart. In today’s post, I want to walk you through the process of dealing with setbacks in a positive way.

Forgive Yourself And Give Yourself A Break

When you are dealing with a setback, it’s important to forgive yourself. We’re all human. We make mistakes. We make the wrong choices. We don’t get as much done as we’d like. We miss our goals. It happens. Don’t let a small setback wipe out all the hard work you’ve done towards positive thinking. Don’t start beating yourself up. Instead, forgive yourself and move on.

If you have a hard time with forgiveness, just give yourself a break. Things happen and often they are out of your control. Another good way to look at it is to imagine if this had happened to someone you love. Would you forgive them? Then why aren’t you being just as kind to yourself?

Figure Out What Went Wrong

Next, it’s a good idea to give some thought to what went wrong. If you take the time to review and retrace your steps and figure out what happened, there’s a lot to be learned. Isn’t that a much more positive way to deal with mistakes and setbacks than giving up? I think so too.

Take the time to figure out what didn’t go right so you can do better next time. While you may not have an obvious answer every single time, I’m sure you can learn something from the experience. That in itself is a positive action. Of course even when you do figure out what went wrong, there’s no guarantee you’ll get it right the next time. But if you never try again, you won’t know.

Come Back Better Than Ever

This brings us to the last step. When you know what went wrong, it’s easy to avoid making the same mistake again. Figure out what went wrong, put on your creative thinking cap to come up with a better solution, and try again. And again, and again. The point is don’t let setbacks stop you from reaching your goals. Don’t give up. Stay positive, get creative, and keep going until you make it work. That’s what sets truly successful people apart from everyone else.

Essential Oil: Geranium

Geranium essential oil (Pelargonium graveolens) is carefully steam distilled from the fragrant flowers and leaves of the popular plant native to southern Africa. With a sweet, floral scent, there are many topical and aromatic Geranium oil uses, including high-end perfumes and skin care products.

Add this oil to lotion, body wash, and hair care products to instantly upgrade the aroma of your personal care products or use Geranium oil to create a pleasant environment by diffusing. Its calming, rose-like aroma can encourages peaceful, spiritual feelings, making it a great oil for your living room or meditative spaces. You can also add Geranium oil to a steamy bath to create a relaxing, spa-like experience.

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