What’s New in Stressmanagement
Stress kills Creativity.
Stress works like an eraser.
Leadership – Creativity – Innovation
THINKING STRATEGY 1: STRESSMANAGEMENT
“STRESS WORKS LIKE AN ERASER FOR CREATIVITY.”
(Marina Zuber, Teacher)
Three Insights:
1. Stress is a killer for creativity
- Well managed stress means that you are able to reach a state of serenity and relaxation to find and realize ideas. There is no stress hurdle anymore, you are able to be creative and to produce innovations.
- Creativity and innovation form a holistic system. The system is composed out of six components: 1. At least ten years of education and lifelong learning 2. Innovative behavior: Asking, observing, experimenting, networking, associating 3. The Art of Persuasion 4. The five Thinking Strategies 5. Fifteen Thinking Tactics 6. Two possible modi for the brain.
- Such components can be used separately or mixed. The six compontents play together in the process of crativity and innovation.
2. Body Signals
- In case you cannot manage stress your body will send out signals which show that your health and performance is at risk.
3. Stress Parachute
- The bundle of methods and tricks to manage stress I call STRESS PARACHUTE. That bundle of methods and tricks you wrap up in the evening and unfold in the morning. With that technique you will become a good crisis manager too, since you will be able to put together the right mix of stress (especially eustress = good stress) and serenity to perform relaxed and composed.
INSIGHTS!
Insights are AHAs!
Insights are MESSAGES!
Insights are PROBLEMS and SOLUTIONS!
Insights are not what WORDS MEAN, but rather WHO said it, and WHEN!
Insights are AHAs in Creativity, Innovation, Secret Sauces!
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Leadership– Creativity – Innovation
Think-Strategies and Think-Tactics for Innovators
“Creativity is Intelligence and having Fun” – Albert Einstein
A. Five Think-Strategies
1. Stress Management (Strategy #1: Know the signs of stress and the anti stress parachute)
• The Frame: Stress Management to protect creativity
• The Symptoms: How do I feel stress?
>>> Exhaustion – No cool head for ideas
>>> Helplessness – Not knowing what to do
>>> Distraction – Too many time killers
>>> Fuzzy Focus – No clear goal
>>> Fear – Amygdalae control your emotional war room
• The Stress Parachute: To beat stress
2. Multitude (Strategy #2: To get more ideas)
3. Detour (Strategy #3: To be unpredictable and witty)
4. Reshaping (Strategy #4: To create new ideas from old)
5. Integration (Strategy #5: To think out of the box and mesh with persistence)
B. Fifteen Think-Tactics
1. Five Think-Tactics to Tune yourself into Positivity
1.1. Wake up and look forward to the new day
1.2. Enjoy the daily surprises
1.3. Create surprises for gift giving
1.4. Find out what you want to do and realize it
1.5. Use your time mindful as Seneca
2. Five Think-Tactics to get Ideas
2.1. Enjoy your signature strength
2.2. Enjoy increasing complexity
2.3. Shape and get inspired by a creative work place
2.4. Trigger and follow brain waves
2.5. Note ideas as they come
3. Five Think-Tactics to realize Ideas
3.1. Entrepreneur and Intrapreneur
3.2. Stop running and think for a while
3.3. Be open for novelties and closed to think
3.4. Think 360˚ from all sides
3.5. Get messages across that stick
C. Appendix
1. Little Book of Hormones (Stress, Performance, Happiness)
2. Index and Abbreviations
4. Questionnaire: When, Where, How do you get ideas?
5. The last words of Steve Jobs
The story behind the book
1. WHY I wrote this book? Curiosity fosters creativity.
The natural tool for creativity and innovation is the brain, a three-pound organ containing one-hundred billion neurons that can only be well connected if we train them.
Creativity and innovation make up the ‘Art of Thinking’. The good news is anybody can learn this art – make it a habit. You can live from creativity, if you treat your brain as your number one asset—no matter whether you are a CEO, rock star, surgeon or nurse.
2. HOW I wrote this book? Step by step and relaxed.
Working on leadership and change management led me to see creativity as the key ingredient to lead change in organizations. Leadership is coping with change using creativity to develop skills such as communication, persuasion, vision design, and empathy. More than a thousand interviews in the western world and Asia resulted in examples of when and where people get ideas, if idea development has a structure, and whether relaxation or stress is better for generating ideas.
It all started with a three-page checklist. This checklist helped me engage employees and students to get them familiar with creativity in personal and organizational development.
3. WHAT I wrote? A guide for innovative leaders.
The result is the evolution of this book in four different languages.
The book shows the process of creativity and innovation in three basic parts:
- First, we must be aware of ‘hurdles’ that kill creativity. These traps I explain as the ‘five hurdles to creativity’. Stress management is the strategy to control the hurdles.
- Second, we must know how to tune ourselves into the day in order to trigger ideas that are diverse and original.
- Third, after finding ideas we must select and develop useful ideas into better products, better services and better processes which customers desire and can afford. Innovation becomes the final reward for creativity.
Join the creative and innovative journey to success!
Dr. Alexander Paufler
The Stressmanager
INTRO
The Leader and Manager who does have the skills to be a ‘Stress-Manager’ knows his or her optimum blend of stress to relaxation. It is good, if you have stress management skills in your organization represented by employees on top, middle and staff level, because:
A Stress-Manager knows
- how to balance the extremes of stress versus relaxation for himself and others.
- how to protect the idea-finding-process and the realization-to-innovation-proces
- thus he/she knows how to enhance creativity and innovation.
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BOOK
by Monika A. Pohl: Gelassenheit – Serenity, GABAL 2014.
On a flight from San Francisco to Munich I enjoyed the book as Audio a lot. The book was turned into a plot with several speakers who presented the contents vividly, but i would have liked to have the text in front of me to better follow and remember by taking notes. I just could scribble notes onto the menue.
However, now i have the book and honestly have to say:
The book is very handy, A5 and explains short and snappy about serenity, what i regard the basis for creativity and innovation. That’s why i bring this as an INSIGHT for Stress Management. Fast readers can read it in 30 minutes but i enjoyed listening to the Audio twice to let the contents sicker. So i took the liberty to take more than 30 minutes time. The book is for the pocket to immediately grab it and start reading after take off. Monika works with the metaphor: Temple of Serenity. The temple does have 4 columns:
- Mindfulness = Achtsamkeit
- Spirituality =Spiritualitaet
- Happiness = Glueck
- Humour – Humor
For most of us, serenity/Gelassenheit is difficult to get. The 24/7 availability, TMI through eGadget-terror (smart phones, tablets PCs, notebooks, social networks and and and…) do cost quite a part of serenity to step back and read through the four chapters mindfully. I do it – do it too – it pays out.
Monika’s coaching questions are very good exercises. She invites you to find out your weak spot to focus on and learn how to start improving. The serenity profile in the very beginning asks questions to check out your fitness in the four areas of serenity (p. 12 – 14). For our overall well-being we need to reduce anxiety and fear the two main reasons to get mentally and physically ill (p. 17). Recent studies by the health industry show that psychological illnesses are on #3 place, right after heart deseases #1 and orthopedic issues #2. Sadly, children and teenagers increased their intake of anti-depressiva within the last decade by 30%. And after graduation – school stress is replaced by career stress.
“Stop running and think for a while” is my advice to employees in the office. Mindfulness exercises for good day to day usage are outlined (breathing to look inside, pushing the reset button to get rid of negative thoughts and restart self exploration, Jnana Mudra Meditation to remember a serene moment, how to manage negative thoughts & emotions and how to say a ‘positive NO’, p. 20 – 28).
more to come….
The Ideafinder
They know how to trigger many ideas. When it comes to ideas more is better than less. In that respect the ideafinder is the ideal rainmaker.
The Differentiator
They trigger unusual ideas by thinking around corners, so far out of the box that they don‘t even see the box anymore, and are shaking it upside down for new and original ideas. When in a hurry, they take a detour and think unusual.
The Improver
They develop new ideas out of an old idea by tossing, tinkering, twisting, tweaking and metamorphosing it 360 degrees (= innovative Kaizen).
The Integrator
They link opposing ideas, find synergies, merge vague, old, new and opposing ideas until innovation is created. They connect the dots (ideas, facts, concepts, old and new).
