6/1/11

Think Outside the Box

 
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
                                                    -Aristotle-

I love pondering on the words of many great thinkers. They're passionate about life, intrigued by every concept, not locked into a general belief system. They possess what I like to call x-ray vision, the ability to focus on something in front of them and not see merely an object, but a world of possibilities.

I've tried forever to emulate them, to learn as they learned, to see a world in a grain of sand the way Willie Blake suggested. It is such people that the world calls dreamers. It is the optimists that the realists scoff at and spurn. They don't understand that dreamers are visionaries, individuals who plant the seed of collosal change.

I know I said I was going to blog about my WIP, but I'm saving that for tomorrow. Instead, I'd like to talk about a wonderful thing called Emergenetics.

It is a study of how we all think brought about by Geil Browning, PH.D. and Wendell Williams, Ph.D.
A couple of years back, the company I work in spent a great deal of money putting us through this study so that we could all understand how different we all are and work better with each other. As a lover of self-
help, I was fascinated by the results. Here's what I discovered.

The brain is divided into four sides:

1. Analytical...labeled by the color blue. (My brain is 11% this, which means I'm not blue.)

-Clear Thinkers
-Logical Problem Solvers
-Enjoys Math
-Rational
-Learns by Mental Analysis

The blue people are really book smart. They love dissecting, graphs, pie charts. Actuarial gurus fit into this. This is also why a sudoku will put me in a coma.

2. Structural....labeled by the color green. (My brain is 14% this, which means I'm not green.)

-Practical Thinker
-Likes Guidelines
-Cautious of New Ideas
-Predictable
-Learns by Doing

Green people are anal. I don't mean that as a bad thing. Some of my best friends are green, so is my hubby. They will dig their feet in the presence of change. Take the best notes, have a daily routine they follow without alterations. Everyone around me is this color. They're great people, and I love rattling their cages.

3. Conceptual....labeled by the color yellow. (My brain is 42% this, so this is me without a doubt. I tell them all it means I'm able to conceive, in theory.)

-Imaginative
-Intuitive About Ideas
-Visionary
-Enjoys the Unusual
-Learns by Experimenting

Yellow people will get up in the middle of the night with a new idea that's going to change the world. Then, they'll present it to the green people, give them a gentle shove, and move on to the next idea. A yellow will sit through a weird movie just to see the outcome, or go out on an unusual date. They will crash their system, burn food, write a book, build something without any set guidelines, all in the name of learning by experimenting. When they master the process, they're more than happy to pass it on.

4. Social....labeled by the color red. (My brain is 33% this, and I latch on to every bit of the percent. Without this, I'd lose myself in writing and would never socialize.)

-Intuitive About People
-Socially Aware
-Sympathetic
-Empathic
-Learns from Others

The reds are the chatty folks. I am guilty as charged. These are the individual that will hug you without batting an eyelash, the ones that you will move to tears. They'll be your best friend, make you laugh, and learn from your experiences. They are most willing to care. There are a few reds here. They have lovely hearts.

For more information please visit http://www.emergenetics.com/.

We are all different, uniquely structured like the many snowflakes. A great artist made us that way, and in the finished product, he didn't see flaw, ugliness, or discrepancy. He saw perfection.

Alone, we're remarkable. Together, we can alter the course of the very universe. Think outside the box.