Page 18 - THE DO-IT-YOURSELF LOBOTOMY Open Your Mind to Greater Creative Thinking
P. 18

Knowledge versus New Ideas               9

                      “Knowledge is power,” you’re told. Daily you strive to know as
                   much about your field as possible to be competitive, to have an edge, to
                   gain success.
                      But who gains the greatest success in business? Those who cram
                   existing knowledge into their brains? Or those who generate the new
                   ideas, the fresh thinking, the creative sparks that ignite new areas of
                   business growth?
                      At a point in most every high-
                   achieving professional’s
                   career he or she makes a     A great many people think they are thinking
                                               when they are merely rearranging prejudices.
                   profound discovery. The
                   greatest success comes not
                   from memorizing and processing
                   other people’s ideas, but in conceiving, giving      William James
                   birth to, and bringing to maturity their own ideas.
                      For many people, finding truly new ideas is not nearly as easy as it
                   seems. Most people in business, while seeing the value of original
                   thinking, find it extremely difficult to achieve. As a professional cre-
                   ative thinking coach, I understand this problem better than most peo-
                   ple in business. I work with thousands of businesspeople annually:
                   professionals in all corners of the corporate world and beyond, in For-
                   tune 500 companies, in ad agencies of all sizes, in small firms, in pro-
                   fessional organizations, one-on-one, and everywhere in between. I see
                   that, in spite of their sincere intentions, most people are prisoners of
                   what they know and are virtually helpless when it comes to generating
                   new ideas. Their minds have become enslaved by traditional thinking:
                   “the way it’s done,” “the tried and true,” “the known.” Their grooves of
                   thought lead them to the same place time and again. The world around
                   them is changing at breakneck speed, but they are stuck in the traps of
                   old thinking patterns, being run over by those few players who are
                   unattached to the old and are creating the new.


                                               7

                                HOW THE DO-IT-YOURSELF
                                LOBOTOMY WILL HELP YOU


                      The Do-It-Yourself Lobotomy will help you let go of your preconcep-
                      tions, enabling you to have fresh ideas whenever you need or want them.
                      •  First we help you better understand creativity, because you can’t mas-
                         ter something you don’t truly understand. We cover some of the
   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23