Five thoughts, ideas, insights, or quotes to power up your mind to think differently and creatively about life and the future. Put all previous thinking away and open up a brand new world of the supermind.
This week – the high street.
The High street – what used to be everyone’s favourite regular place to visit for all our needs from food to clothes, from bread to greetings cards. The lot was there. But now almost none of it is there as we flood en masse online instead for our buying. We are watching the slow death of what was once an institution for society so is it the end of the high street? Well this week let’s put our SuperMinds to high thinking use to see if that’s really true.
- Idea – online companies were legally made to provide every shopper with a high street style voucher to use on their local high street, that could help re-balance spending patterns back from pure online to bricks and mortar. Should we enforce some action like this on online companies to protect our high streets and downtown? Or do you have a better solution?
- Shopping has become a home comfort based activity from the convenience of our sofa. Why leave the house when you can get all you need in a click or two on your computer? It’s too easy. How could we make it more difficult to shop online so that high street shops (which are often local businesses supporting their community) can get some footfall back?
- Many high street shops are empty because they are large units once occupied by huge chain stores that went bust. Trouble is landlords who own them are happy for them to remain idle awaiting larger tenants. How can we encourage them to split these into smaller units at an affordable rental to help spur growth? What win-win might work?
- Quote by Scottish actress Karen Gillan – ‘Basically I go to vintage shops rather than going shopping for new clothes’. Could the high street be turned into ‘special zones’ with such type of different shops on protected rents guaranteed by governments to boost footfall in towns and cities? What would you put there?
- Finally it’s clear we need new ideas and visions for our high streets. Current retailers can’t make a reasonable profit there anymore. You can form THE committee with the power to bring suggestions to your Government and business leaders to reshape shopping areas. Be brave, what five types of people would you have on the committee with you (children, working Mums, sports leaders with management skills…different people than the norm)? What five would be best to come up with a strong plan for the shopping future and WHY?
Ok, SuperMInds, thank you for being here for the Saturday SuperMind time. Keep asking yourself these through the week to open up more of your mind to evolve its untapped power. Consider more, reflect more, think more, activate your connection to your personal mind more. Let’s work the SuperMInd and Super Think!
See you next time for more super thinking.
Everyone wants the truth.
We often say we can’t tell what’s true and what isn’t.
I say we can absolutely see the truth, but we’re way too close to it that it makes us blind.
In his superb book, ‘Rebel Ideas’, Matthew Syed narrates the true story of English football’s quest for answers. In 2016 a specialist team was gathered to analyse why one of the most successful nations in the game in England, with all its mega money and skilful players, the very founders of the sport, had not won a major trophy for 50 years.
That team though were only made up of one knowledgeable ex-international football player and pundit. The others were a founder of high-tech start ups, an Olympic administrator, the former head coach of the England Rugby squad, a top level cycling coach, and a female commander at the Royal Ministry Academy Sandhurst. Why then, when they were meeting to study and find an answer to such a huge problem in the national game, did they have only one (no longer playing) football expert?
Simple. The view was if you brought in other managers and football stars, they would provide the ruling FA with the same issues and awarenesses that the current manager and staff were already aware of as they were party to it week in, week out. There would be nothing new.
These football aces were far too close to the situation that they would not have the necessary perspective to work out where the shortcomings were. They would not be able to see the wood for the trees. Or the goal from the corner flag (Ok, bit cheeky that one).
It’s often obvious.
The truth is often in plain sight. It’s like the tale of the Emperor’s New Clothes where the crowd could ‘see’ he was wearing no garments but they would not truly recognise it even though it was right in front of them. It took an innocent young boy onlooker to identify what was glaringly obvious once he spoke up.
The background to the sad crash of Korean Airlines flight 801 in 1997 and the loss of 229 on board is another example. The plane has descended below the minimum safe altitude in mountainous terrain as the captain believed he was nearer the airport than he actually was with devastating consequences. Black box tapes show that neither the first officer nor flight engineer questioned the captain until six seconds before impact. Far too late to make a difference.
The investigation found that they considered the captain had been aware of the wrong height and would make corrections that he didn’t. The other insight was that Korean society made it offensive for subordinates to challenge a high ranked person despite the truth again be right in front of their eyes so they delayed until their own doom was upon them.
And so it goes with all of us. We can quite clearly see the truth most of the time but as we don’t step back enough from it or let others guide us to what we may be missing in our blind spot, we plough on making the same mistakes, errors, or missed opportunities. Or simply don’t smell the roses.
In the movie, ‘A Few Good Men’, Jack Nicholson’s character Colonel Jessep rages in court, ‘You can’t handle the truth’.
I believe we can handle it but as we’re far to close to it that we simply aren’t able to realise it’s right there in front of our eyes. Our own Emperor’s New Clothes.
Maybe it’s time we honestly looked!
Five thoughts, ideas, insights, or quotes to power up your mind to think differently and creatively about life and the future. Put all previous thinking away and open up a brand new world of the supermind.
This week – news.
If there is one place the majority of the world first turns to every day, it’s the news. It’s their ‘go to’ in search of understanding how life is and what events are occurring around the world and the people that go with them. But, in doing so they are exposing themselves to increasing amounts of negativity and shaded presentations of life. Therefore, this week I want to look at news and put our SuperMinds to good use on its presence.
- News was designed to inform us of the current affairs of the day. But that has clearly morphed into world politics, celebrity gossip, sports highlight stories, and even now opinion of what might happen next on a whole range of topics. News has changed. So, that begs the question for us all to consider. What IS, and should only be, news?
- Radical thoughts – news programmes are a dark space often fear filled featuring the worst in the world. They negatively impact people’s minds. News programmes should therefore be limited to 10 minutes only on mainstream channels permitted to share just the headlines. Any other news (such as rolling news channels) is behind age protected premium pay walls.
- Social media is the main source of fake news, of people sharing stories in an instant that they haven’t checked are true at all. This leads to misinformation gathering pace and soon the truth is buried under an avalanche of made up lies and propaganda. How would you change this so news could not be shared by individuals and only official media outlets and broadcasters?
- Quote from American writer, Peter McWilliams – ‘The news media are, for the most part, the bringers of bad news’. How would you force/compel/ensure that the media share as much good news as they do poor news?
- Many people actually watch news all day. In essence, it has become an addiction. How can we measure the harmful effects of news on people so that their lives and society itself doesn’t suffer?
That’s Supermind Saturday for this week. Keep asking yourself these through the week to open up more of your mind to evolve its untapped power. Consider more, reflect more, think more, activate your connection to your personal mind more. Let them super sink in and Super Think!
See you next time for more super thinking.
If you were a millionaire and you lost it all, I wonder how you would feel?
Most likely you’d be devastated, in pieces, thinking your life is over, broken…..and the usual expected emotional and mental responses.
Yet, in fact, most millionaires who did lose their wealth, went straight back out and got it again…..and often got more than before. Where the everyday person would be in a hole struggling to make ends me, our rich friends would be re-engaged at filling up their bank account once more.
How on Earth can they do that when the majority of people would crumble if they lost the few thousand pounds they had saved up?
It comes down to the old adage that typifies a SuperMInd approach. If, for arguments sake, every adult over the age of 18 in the world was given a million pounds, dollars, euros etc, within a few years all the money would be back in the hands of the wealthy who had it before. Not because the average man or woman on the street went on a spending spree and blew the lot. NOPE! Nor would it be because the rich have a big network of other rich pals and moguls who look after each other and their elite contacts who will assist them with a leg up up funding some investments for them in the meantime. Er, NO!
They would win it all back due to one internal human trait.
You Better Believe It.
That trait is plain and simple CONFIDENCE.
Their own personal inner belief system reminds them that if they have earned it once, they can most certainly claim it again. Everyday folk would decide that they were meant to have the millions as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and now its gone it will never come back. Not so millionaire minds who have already built up their self confidence. To them it’s proof that if it can be achieved once, it can be achieved repeatedly.
You could call it the Millionaire Mindset. I prefer super self confidence in a) money being everywhere so it’s not in short supply and b) they possess the mental certainty in themselves to bring it back into their lives.
Those two are their anchors through all times. From day 1 start again moment, past volatile financial peaks and troughs, and in through to big bank bucks back where they belong with them. Yes, they plan and work, and keep at it and sometimes have to take risks most would never entertain. But it’s all underpinned by their confidence that they have what it takes to welcome the wealth right back to them.
So when you see a story of man/woman who made good and then lost every single penny but came back to be financially wealthier than ever, now you know. They knew, they never stopped. Confidence was, and remains, their true currency.
And it all comes down to a few special words.
You Gotta Believe!
Five thoughts, ideas, insights, or quotes to power up your mind to think differently and creatively about life and the future. Put all previous thinking away and open up a brand new world of the supermind.
This week – power.
Your super 5 about questions or points around power for your mind to play with. Let go, be free….stretch your mind.
For millenia humankind have waged war, played political games, and pursued ideological strategies all in the name and quest for power. And even at the smallest level people seek power in their office, or sports club, community, and their own lives. So let’s look at, and think about, this magnetic control that often human beings so badly want.
- This week I’m starting with a quote and a personal question for you. ‘The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any’, so said American author, Alice Walker. My question to you then is, ‘What power do you most keep giving away because you don’t believe you actually have it (and you clearly do)?
- Maybe you have been to the cinema recently and watched some Superheroes up on the big screen. Gifted souls with special enhanced powers beyond other humans that they employ to bring about a better world. So, I’m getting tough on your here as I’m going to the flip side of the first question above, ‘What is your real, living superpower that you use every single day out in the world that you don’t realise is that incredible’? And once you accept that you have it, how can you develop it further for your good and the good of others?
- Observation – those that seek power do so to be able to control others, to serve their ego, to be omnipotent and unanswerable to the least amount of others, and to have full choice but less consequence. Power seekers are very unhappy at who they are and there lies the fundamental truth at deciding who we should give power to.
- The greatest power today on Planet Earth lies with a small number of world leaders and business moguls. This elite group of the few decide for the many. They decide most for everyone. It seems they have been amassing fast accelerating amount of total power decade after decade. How can we stop the march of power into the hands of only a handful of people?
- Up to this point I’ve spoken about power as a ruling force, But, there is another power. Power as energy to heat and run our homes and transport, businesses, and countries. We have moved away from fossil fuels to achieve this but now rely heavily on a few nations to supply our power. And that reliance has proved costly and under threat when those nations are involved in disputes with us. Big question coming – how can we use NEW power in our country (the one you live in) so we have full control and access of it that will provide energy to everyone there i.e. how we can have our own power over our power?
That’s Supermind Saturday for this week. Keep asking yourself these through the week to open up more of your mind to evolve its untapped power (deliberate pun this time!). Consider more, reflect more, think more, activate your connection to your personal mind more. Let them super sink in and Super Think!
See you next time for more super thinking.
