This weekend is a weekend filled with creative thinking and creative sparking experiences for me. How about your's?

I attended our monthly Georgia Speakers Association in Atlanta deliberately choosing to meet new guests and new members, asking long-time member friends what they are doing that is creative lately, listening for creative ideas and sparks from the various speakers from our "Spotlight Speaker" of the month (a speaker friend who also speaks on creative thinking, Greg Smith) to the panelists about the future trends in the speaking profession, to chance talks with people at breaks and at lunch, to the afternoon session on creative interactive games and exercises for meetings and training programs by Ed Scannell (Games Trainers Play, author). Add to that choosing a restaurant spontaneously for dinner and driving to places without using a map. Then add to all this on Sunday, today, taking two Australians, visiting in the U.S., who I just met this week through a mutual American friend, on a driving and walking tour around the northern section of Georgia through the mountains that they have never seen and I have not seen for a few years.

Years ago someone, actually many people, helped me to discover the obvious philosophy that I now live by: "To be creative, first choose to be and then simply be, as often as possible."

So your Challenge this week, if you choose to accept it, (old reference to the television show, Mission Impossible, that showed many examples of creative thinking each week, many years ago) is to choose to be deliberately creative each day for 30 to 60 minutes at the minimum.

Using the 5-letter spelling of the world C-R-E-A-T-E, C/R/E/A/T lets practice being creative. Each day set aside 30 to 60 minutes to flip through magazines, books, newspapers, or to watch/listen to television or radio commercials looking for various forms of creativeness based on the specific approaches listed each day, that might have been used in the invention or innovation of the product or service.

MONDAY--C Look for examples that demonstrate
CHANGING of uses or functions
COLORING
CONTRASTING
CELEBRATING

TUESDAY--R Look for examples that demonstrate
RADICALLY alter an aspect or function
REVERSE
REFLECT...look at the image from another perspective REASSEMBLE...the pieces or aspects in a new form

WEDNESDAY--E Look for examples that demonstrate
ELIMINATE some aspect
ELECTRIFY...or make EXCITING
EVOKE an additional sense
ENUNCIATE an otherwise unnoticeable characteristic

THURSDAY--A Look for examples that demonstrate
AUDIBLE...add a sound
ATTACH
ANTIQUE....make it seem older
ATTRACTIVE...make it

FRIDAY--T Look for examples that demonstrate
TROMBONE...add sound to it
TRIPLICATE...multiple some aspect
TRADITION...break from
THUNDERBOLT...add excitement, drama, surprise

Have fun this week taking some time each day examining things around you looking for how they are more creative than they were before.

Best wishes to you for a highly creative, fun and beneficial week.

© 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2005, 2006 Robert Alan Black, Ph.D. CSP