Page 133 - THE DO-IT-YOURSELF LOBOTOMY Open Your Mind to Greater Creative Thinking

124 COLLABORATE WITH GENIUS

MENTAL GYMNASTICS OF SORTS

The greatest thinkers of all time have used other people’s minds.

Sir Isaac Newton, when talking about his own brilliance, said, “If I
have great vision it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants.” (Can
you picture these geniuses balancing on one another’s shoulders?)
If you follow the development of astronomy and physics and some
of the sciences, you will see that Newton’s work built upon Coperni-
cus’s, Einstein’s work built upon Newton’s, and Stephen Hawking’s
work built upon Einstein’s. All these were within one category, but you
can also, of course, be inspired by people outside your category.
In the music business, the early Stones hung around with the Bea-
tles, and their first hit was written by the Beatles. Pete Townshend was
inspired by Jimi Hendrix’s opening at a club in London and, if you
believe some of the stories, a little envious of Hendrix’s capabilities.

BIRDS OF DIFFERENT FEATHERS

In many areas we see high-achieving people just hanging out with
other high-achieving people. You’ve probably seen some of the famous
photographs at the beginning of the twentieth century with Thomas
Edison and George Eastman (of photography fame) posing with Har-
vey Firestone and Henry Ford. These were all brilliant men of their
time in different areas of endeavor who associated with each other to
borrow each other’s brilliance and to stimulate each other’s thoughts.
In contemporary life, Steven Spielberg hangs around with some of
the icons of Silicon Valley; they’re not even in the same industry, which
is an excellent way to germinate ideas, as we discussed earlier.
In one of the original professional and personal development books,
Think and Grow Rich, author Napoleon Hill speaks to a concept he calls
a “Mastermind.” He says that in order to be high achievers, we need to
associate our thoughts with other high achievers, and they don’t even
have to be people we know. They can be dead people. They can even
be people from fiction: Sherlock Holmes, Nancy Drew, Indiana Jones.
When I first started my ad agency years ago, I had a “psychic board
of directors.” Ad legend Bill Bernbach, who is deceased, was on that
psychic board of directors. The Beatles were on my psychic board of