Five thoughts, ideas, insights, or quotes to power up your mind to think differently and creatively about life and who we are. Put all previous thinking away and open up a brand new world of the Supermind. YOUR SuperMind.
This week – Mental Health.
Mental Health is a big, big subject these days. COVID challenged us on many levels but hardest of all was in our minds. It flagged up how important the once neglected mental side of health truly is. So this week, SuperMind Saturday takes a look at our mental wellness.
- Mental Health – as ever I’m going to start with the point on many people’s lips. In this case it’s the word mental. This conjures up someone crazy, out of their minds, and plain mad. Therefore it’s perhaps not the best word to be used to draw attention to good mind health. And so should that be used instead? Good Mind Health? Or do you have an even better term that promotes a better view on mental wellbeing?
- Most people don’t like to talk about their mental health. But, even more so, they don’t want to even think about it even though that’s the right thing to do. We seem so scared about looking at our own mental health. What do we think we will find???
- Quote – award winning actress Glenn Close wonderfully said, ‘What mental health needs is more sunlight…and more unashamed conversation’. Mental health doesn’t seem half as bad when spoken about by a celebrity. How can we use well known people to normalise talking about mental health?
- Thought. How ground breaking would it be if someone created a highly publicised programme and book about a thought diet? A healthy range of thoughts to fit into our daily thinking patterns. Would you love to participate in a thought diet and why?
- Best health is seen as bodily health. We eat well and exercise well and reduce harmful substances to maintain a sturdy system. But the mind is also part of our body as such, a key component of what keeps us alive. Is it time then that society encouraged mind exercises for us to undertake to keep our mental health as good as our physical one? How best can we do this?
That’s another SuperMind Saturday for your mind powers to work on. Thank you for being here for the SuperMind time. Keep asking yourself these through the week to open up more of your mind to evolve its potential. Consider more, generate ideas more, think on bigger possibilities more, activate your connection to your personal higher mind more and more. Employ your SuperMInd and Super Think!
See you next time for more super thinking.
Have you heard of a Mission Statement?
It’s the corporate equivalent of a big vision for a company or product. A giant, bold phrase that acts as a powerful aspirational target. It also helps embed a huge slice of meaning and purpose. It brings the whole endeavour alive and dripping in focus and possibility.
There are many well know examples. Let’s start though with one of the most famous in history.
In 1975 a small computer based start up was founded in New Mexico, USA to explore the potential of building small computers generally for business use. Combining the words microcomputer and software, Microsoft was born. The fledgling industry was in its infancy and growth was minimal. Five years later in 1980 joint founder, Bill Gates, decided they needed an overall vision to drive thinking and planning for the future. It was then that the famous mission statement was coined that would define their work and development…
‘To have a computer on every desk and in every home around the world’.
Mega bold and perhaps somewhat crazy in those days when there was no real personal computer market. But that’s what it was designed to do. To set their minds on actually creating a computer that would create that market. One where they would be the leaders.
Roll on a few decades and what name is synonymic with the personal computer? And found in homes all around the world? Yep, Microsoft. Mission accomplished.
The guiding mental light.
The Mission Statement acts a guiding light to the mind. It zeros pure focus and attention onto the final outcome it states. No going off at tangents. Not wasting thinking on the irrelevant. Silly airy fairy planning gone. There’s the aim. Mentally and physically get it in your sights and go after it.
Other highly successful companies have also won through employing a defined Mission Statement.
Coca Cola chose something (unsurprisingly) sweet – ‘To refresh the world’.
Nike took a different leap by making us all equally athletic – ‘Bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world. If you have a body, you are an athlete’.
McDonalds chose instead to drive the experience that their food creates – ‘To make delicious, feel good moments easy for everyone’.
And finally take a look at online used clothes/items platform Vinted‘s brash, confident statement – ‘To make second hand the first choice worldwide’.
Each one very different but perfect for them and for their chosen market. But the Mission Statement doesn’t just have to be uitilised by the business community. It’s a first class mental tool for adding meaning, purpose, and streamlining the mindset. And it also gives a life going nowhere a very big somewhere to end up.
Your mission is…
Companies have a chosen sector – finance, automobiles, cakes, gin and the like. Take a cue from this and choose your sector for your mission. For example mine could be writing, or blogging, or books, or very simple psychology which stimulates my mind to drill down and be exact at how or what I want to be/achieve within it.
My Mission Statement therefore could be – ‘To be the world’s foremost writer on the power of the inner mind sharing how anyone can create an extraordinary life for themselves through their thinking’.
It states writing (which I love), the mind (what I write about) and two end results, world’s foremost writer, and anyone creating an extraordinary life from reading my words.
Therefore each post I write must encompass these on every occasion. Anyone anywhere can read and understand them and put them to instant use in their own mind.
So, over to you. What life sector matters to you that needs a PERSONAL Mission Statement? A pure individual life aim or major plan that captures fully who you are. To complete and fulfil yourself. Small and basic won’t do (to learn how to bake a lovely cake isn’t going to change your world).
That’s your homework here. Zero down to where you want to accomplish something of a deeper nature. A self realisation at your very best level come true. Set that higher bar and then craft your Mission Statement to capture it in bold words. Words that will instruct your mind the only direction you are going to go from now on. Meaning becomes a mission becomes your mastery.
Just like Gucci who embeded their thinking into this – ‘To become the leader in the luxury market at a worldwide level’.
Life itself is a mission, so make the most of it and turn it into your statement. YOUR MISSION STATEMENT!!
Five thoughts, ideas, insights, or quotes to power up your mind to think differently and creatively about life and who we are. Put all previous thinking away and open up a brand new world of the Supermind. YOUR SuperMind.
This week – Education.
Education is at the root of the quality of society. It teaches and prepares our young generations for the future. It also aids us in our adult lives to improve and progress. It’s the bedrock of humanity. Yet, despite this, week after week it appears in the news regarding some aspect of it. Are we getting it wrong? Is it failing our children? Or are we tweaking it too much too often? This week let’s put our SuperMind Thinking onto the subject.
- Let’s go straight at it. The word education is often followed by the word system. That word means part of a complex whole. So, maybe education has become too clever itself. We are trying to do many things in too many ways. How can we make education more simple delivering the basics we all need?
- That said the world is fast evolving. Traditional subjects once (and still taught) in schools are less relevant than ever in modern life. Is it time to ditch certain subjects? What new ones should be part of the 21st Century schools curriculum?
- Another facet of education are teachers standing in front of a class of students pointing at a board with information on relating to a book or text in front of them. While that has changed over the years, this style chiefly still remains the major manner by which learning is delivered. Is there a better way to teach people (especially young people) via less learning and more doing or using technology as the main teacher?
- Nelson Mandela famously said, ‘Education is the most powerful weapon by which you can change the world‘. But is that true in today’s modern culture? Is there another stronger solution to change the world for everyone of any age?
- Thought – education has always been planned to prepare us for life, or for some skill or role to come. But this preparation is non-emotional. It is actual based and not aesthetically so. In a modern society of feelings somehow emotional awareness and resilience have to be factored into teaching as a full and whole method of education. Is it time for this biggest shift in education in hundreds of years?
That’s another SuperMind Saturday for your mind powers to work on. Thank you for being here for the SuperMind time. Keep asking yourself these through the week to open up more of your mind to evolve its potential. Consider more, generate ideas more, think on bigger possibilities more, activate your connection to your personal higher mind more and more. Employ your SuperMInd and Super Think!
See you next time for more super thinking.
Words are everything
They are how we communicate. How we get what we need, asking for help, connecting with others, and solving problems to mention but a few. Without them we would never understand each other. And, most telling, ourselves.
The words we speak have HUGE meaning. It’s not just what we say but how we say it.
And words have even helped bring down Governments and altered the balance of power. That’s precisely what happened in the UK at the end of the 1970’s.
In 1978 the British economy was struggling with over 1.6m people out of work. The ruling Labour government itself was struggling to stem the tide. The opposition Conservative party wanted to appeal to the nation in a big way to win back power as a General Election was predicted by 1979. It chose to employ the creative minds at the Saatchi & Saatchi agency to come up with a memorable campaign idea. They did this amazingly in a clever and brilliant reframing of words.
In an infamous poster and series of magazine ads they featured a long snaking line back into the distance of jobless people queuing for their dole (unemployment) money with the slogan ‘Labour isn’t working’. A stunning double meaning in one.
The result? The Tory party swept to power in 1979 with a 43 seat majority under Margaret Thatcher. The genius reframing of words also reframed the mentality of the public because we all think in words more than images. But with the two combined together, no-one could forget it.
Reframe for gain.
I am an avid runner. And runners often play the reframe game. Not to show off, but to encourage their inner thinking about their achievements and spur them on to even better results.
Recently my running club took a trip to Benidorm for their half marathon. It was humid and a tough little course and even though my time was decent it was a little way off my usual. But I was proud of it given the conditions and route so I happily announced to all who asked how I got on that ‘It was my International PB (Personal Best)’.
Sounds good, huh? Well, I had never ran an international event before so whatever my finishing time, it was bound to be a PB. But that’s the point. I reframed it to feel good about the result. It also fosters self-encouragement, and to harness determination to achieve faster on the next one abroad. No harm done and a win-win in mindset and spirit. It’s how many club runners roll.
And that’s how the reframing works. Its paints a different picture in your mind. To take situations and to reposition the outcome or scenario in a way that introduces the beneficial flip side out of it. Not to mention the fact that it might even drive you to what you should be doing anyway. Take a look below to see this at work.
How to reframe.
Here’s a couple of reframing examples for you that show you how it’s done.
- You have been turned down again for promotion. REFRAME – It’s proof that it’s time to recognise you are far more adept and talented than where you currently work, and now you are going to go after that dream career move you really want.
- Another wrong relationship ends. REFRAME – no longer will you date girls/guys just to have a partner, from now on it’s only the ones you are really attracted to that you haven’t had confidence to get to know before.
- Bank account all empty again at the end of the month. REFRAME – You are worth so much more as a person but first you are going to spend less on things that don’t matter and grow some investments with big goals at the end of them.
Effectively this is the turn around factor. Like the Conservatives turning around something bad (they were not in Government and the unemployment levels were growing) and making into some thing good for them, and soon after for the nation itself. You can mirror that too. At the same time you reset your words on a given situation, you will be resetting your mentality as well. The first automatically updates the second.
It’s said the mind plays tricks but it can also be tricked. Reframing is the trick to play. A winning trick.
Change the words, changes the thinking and perspective, And that changes your small beliefs into bright new elevated ones.
Reframing is retraining for gaining the good times back (and yes, a double meaning for my running intended!).
Five thoughts, ideas, insights, or quotes to power up your mind to think differently and creatively about life and who we are. Put all previous thinking away and open up a brand new world of the Supermind. YOUR SuperMind.
This week – Crime and Jail.
SuperMind Saturday explores new thinking and ideas on life’s many key subjects. Especially ones that many people are talking about. This week a subject that has come to the fore in the last decade. That of crime and going to jail. Every single week there seems to be some headline or other on a convicted criminal and their sentence. It’s a hot topic. That kind precisely I believe SuperMinds are made for. So….let’s get involved.
- It’s a fact that jails are jammed with inmates who have committed some crime or other. There has never been so many prisoners than before. But that is the effect. Somewhere else there has to be cause. Why are so many people turning to crime or acting in ways that lead to being in jail and how do we stop this?
- Historically being sent to jail acted as a deterrent to would be law breakers. Today it seems it’s an accepted risk for their chosen criminal activity. How can we make jail an outcome that potential offenders simply do not want again?
- Let’s got metaphoric. Being in jail means being in a prison you can’t get out of, something you are stuck in or with for many years. On that level, what is the biggest personal jail most people are held captive in across the world? How would you change that?
- Jails everywhere are full to bursting so is it time to re-think jails as such. Rather than large centralised buildings like now should there be alternative prisons built such as whole ready made built communities deeper in the country or islands that can house greater numbers or even underground lairs? What could be the ‘new jails’ of the future?
- It used to be said that crime doesn’t pay. But with modern organised gangs using worldwide supply routes that is a thing of the past it appears. As such low level crime like shoplifting, muggings, and break-ins are no longer investigated by the police. Is this the future of crime? How is crime developing and how can we beat it before it does.
That’s another SuperMind Saturday for your mind powers to work on. Thank you for being here for the SuperMind time. Keep asking yourself these through the week to open up more of your mind to evolve its potential. Consider more, generate ideas more, think on bigger possibilities more, activate your connection to your personal higher mind more and more. Employ your SuperMInd and Super Think!
See you next time for more super thinking.
