Select Page

SuperMind Saturday – Education.

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.

  1. 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?
  2. 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?
  3. 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?
  4. 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?
  5. 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.

Reframe Your Words For Great Life Gains.

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.

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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!).

SuperMind Saturday – Crime and Jail.

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.

  1. 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?
  2. 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?
  3. 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?
  4. 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?
  5. 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.

Make Your Mind Up to Achieve the Unachievable.

To boldly go where no man has gone before.

The words of Captain Kirk at the start of every episode of the original Star Trek.

His and his crew’s boldly would be to undertake a five year mission into the deepest uncharted areas of space to discover new worlds. A trek that had not been achieved before. While that is just a TV series, achieving the previously unachievable truly is mind over matter. Or anti-matter if you are on the Starship Enterprise.

Mount Everest stands 8,849 metres high. The highest mountain in the world. To date 7269 climbers have summited at the top of the world on the mountain. But, it wasn’t always this way. Prior to the first time it was conquered there had been some 14 expeditions that had attempted to reach the top but all failed. It was considered too difficult, too dangerous, and unachievable.

Then along came Edmund Hilary. He was having none of it. On May 1953 he achieved the unachievable and became the first person to successfully climb the highest peak above sea level on Earth.

People were amazed. He was asked many times not just how he did it but most of all, why. His immortal reply, ‘Because it was there’. The comment was in honour of British climber George Mallory who tried to mount Everest in 1924 but was never seen again. He had been asked the same question back then and gave the same and original response.

Why aim to achieve the unachievable in anything? Because it’s a personal belief that a) it is possible and b) that they are the person to do it.

Shoot for the Moon.

There is another famous belief quote from Norman Vincent Peale which goes, ‘Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you will land among the stars’, In short, have huge thinking and belief in it and yourself.

That was something flowing through a young student at Purdue University in Indiana, USA in the last 1940’s. A teacher had begun asking students gathered in class what they aimed to have as their career when they completed their studies. The usual replies (for the time) centred around becoming a bank manager, setting up a restaurant, opening a haulage business and other accepted ‘good living’ roles for the future such as lawyer or real estate agent.

Finally the question arrived at the young student. His reply…..

‘I’m going to land on the Moon’.

The class broke out into heaps of laughter. The other students ridiculed the young man and the teacher rounded it all off with the words….

‘Neil Armstrong, you have to learn that if you want to have any sensible future at all, you will need to come back down to Earth pretty quickly’.

Imagine hearing that. To most people this public humiliation would have ended their goal then and there. But not Neil Armstrong. In his mind that unachievable feat was very achievable. Just because 1940’s contemporary minds and technological know-how had felt it beyond human capabilities, Armstrong strongly believed it was only a matter of time in the years that followed that the answers would be found. And he was going to be right there involved so he could lead the way.

That school laughter turned to worldwide cheers and admiration when he touched down and walked on the Moon surface twenty years later. All that his mind felt true HAD come true. The unachievable to everyone, had been achieved as he said it would. As the old adage goes, ‘If you can believe it, you can achieve it’.

So, maybe it’s time you climbed your own metaphorical mountain in life. Or reached for your own moon.

Because that IS what achieve-meant!

PS; The story about Neil Armstrong was actually told to me AT Purdue University on one of my two visits.

SuperMind Saturday – Violence

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 – Violence.

Humankind isn’t always kind. In fact, we have a history of violence, murder, war, and more as far back as time goes. It was once a reason to survive. Then it became a way to grab power. It developed into an instrument of despots seeking domination. And today we sit at home and watch it on TV every night as entertainment. Yes, we are fascinated by violence. So, let’s take a SuperMind Saturday look at the subject.

  1. The world is a violent place. It seems we still need violence even though we live in a far more civilised and developed world than ever before. Why, then, do we continue to need and use violence so much?
  2. Lyrics by music legend Bob Dylan – ‘Democracy don’t rule the world. You better get that in your head. This world is ruled by violence’. These lyrics from the song Union Sundown were written in 1983 but are as real and true as ever. How can we stop violence in all forms (especially everyday people against each other) ruling the world?
  3. Violence is the default and quick response in the modern world before any other action. You see this day in day out everywhere on the planet. Why is violence our first go-to reaction in our lives?
  4. Thought – violence has become an unquestioned element in our lives in 21st Century life. It rarely shocks us as it used to. From news to entertainment and even on the sporting field, there it is. It’s become part of who we are. This is not a good thing.
  5. Since the start of this century violence in all forms has increased across the world. In my opinion this is because of social media which has made it easier to see and to spread. What has caused the huge growth in violence and can we stop this?

That’s a wrap for this week SuperMind Thinker friends. Keep up the super thinking on all of the subjects I’ve covered on SuperMind Saturday. And don’t forget to carry on elevating your own thoughts and beliefs every day. We need the SuperThinkers of the world. Like…….badly!!

See you next time for more super thinking.