This is a continuation of a series of posts about learning to draw using Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain concept. The last update was the draft version of this profile.

This is the final version of my first live profile. Of all the work I have done in the class so far, this is the drawing I’m most proud of. Within 20 minutes I had a likeness of Bill down on paper and after probably 1 and a half to 2 hours total, I arrived at this drawing.

When I first started drawing Bill my left brain wanted to stop me and kept saying this is too complicated and you don’t know where to begin. But then I was able to quiet the brain down, go to the basic unit of measure concept and mark the position of the back of the eye, the chin and the back of the ear. After that the right brain took over and and Bill started to appear. I’m now a very big supporter of the Drawing On the Right Side of the Brain concept.

All my drawing posts can be viewed here.

On to the Self-Portrait. Yahoo!!!!

The day after I posted this article Lives In the Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear! I got an nice email from a friend that supports the point I was making in the article. When you touch people lives that you come in contact with, in positive ways, it will make a difference. 99+% of the time you’ll never know what has touched the people you come in contact with and how. This is where faith comes in. You just need to believe that you are making a positive impact on others.

But once in a while you may just be lucky enough to hear from the people you have touched as I have. Thank you Martha for this great note and permission to use it in this article:

Hi Eric,
I just wanted to write and thank you. I don’t know if you’ve heard my news that after maternity leave I decided not to come back to UMW as director. Instead, I’ve come back part-time to work on special projects for DTLT.

Coming to this decision has taken a long time, and one of the things that influenced me a lot was our conversations at EDUCAUSE last year. Hearing you talk about the life changes you made, I came away from that conference thinking, “I’m not living the life I’m supposed to be living.” I remember repeating that over and over to myself on the plane ride home. It took a year for me to finally get my act together and make some serious changes, but I can’t tell you what they have meant to me and my family. I’m happier now than I have ever been in my life, and I’m grateful for people like you who have modeled for me the idea that in life we have *choices* about how we live. I think it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that life is just happening to us instead of us making life happen for ourselves.

So, I hope that goes a little way towards elevating you today — you deserve it. In my new found happiness, I’m trying to find more opportunities to tell people what they mean to me and to “pay it forward.” So your recent tweets have resonated with me. For too long, I’ve not believed that I can affect people, and I’m learning that by reaching out I can make a difference. Maybe this will make a small difference in your life today.

Take care of yourself!
Martha

So now go and elevate others. Smile and touch people in positive ways. Be kind and assume positive intent.

A friend of mine (twitter @kcreamer) recently told me about a great blog site litemind.com that is “Exploring ways to use our mind efficiently.” I’m finding this site to be a very fun and productive read since I have an interest in Whole Brain Thinking and the impact that brain dominance plays in our own abilities to be creative, achieve success in life and work, and be happy. I’ve only just begun to explore the site but in that process have discovered that twitter user @lucianop is the site owner and primary author.

These recent posts at litemind.com can help us begin to understand how greatness can be achieved. You might want to go read these and come back for my commentary:

Einstein’s Secret to Amazing Problem Solving (and 10 Specific Ways You Can Use It)

This article deals with the importance of critical thinking and problem definition in solving big problems.

How to be Great: Rising Above the Talent Myth

This article deals with the myth that we are born great. It lays out some practical steps for what is termed “Deliberate Practice” for achieving greatness. One thing is certain, when striving for greatness; it takes lots of practice and work.

Deliberate Practice, Self Actualization and Meta Cognition

The process of achieving Deliberate Practice can help you achieve Self Actualization. The ability to look at your own performance, in a non-emotional, non-judgmental manner is so very important on the road to Self Actualization. And Self-Actualization is required for sustained greatness.

Meta-Cognition, the thinking about your thinking, is key to the ability to look at ones-self and examine the good and the bad, and then deciding what to change and how. Progress toward greatness cannot occur without this introspection and correction. Yet many of us get hung up emotionally about our failing and faults and then come to believe that we can never eliminate or overcome our failings. Our failing become self-limiting beliefs.

Strengths Alignment

To harness your greatness you need alignment of strengths, goals and values and the identification and elimination of self-limiting beliefs. Otherwise, the effectiveness of deliberate practice is limited.

People have innate strengths, as highlighted in the Gallop Organizations StrenghsFinder book and assessment (also known as Strengths Finder) and the VIA strengths discussed by Dr. Martin Seligman When your work or play is aligned with your strengths (your core abilities), your ability to achieve mastery rises exponentially. In addition, people that operate in alignment usually can achieve “flow” or right brain thinking easily. And as one of the leading positive psychologists Dr. Seligman has learned, being in the flow leads to sustained happiness or achieving the so called “Good Life”. Deliberate Practice becomes much easier when you love your work and this love emanates from the alignment of strengths and the resulting flow.

You can read more about strengths at Why You Need To Assess Your Strengths Now.

Self-Limiting Beliefs

Additionally we are conditioned to believe that we are limited beings. Most of us travel through life with many self-limiting beliefs. Teachers, peers, parents, friends and others condition us from very early on to believe that we can’t do this and we can’t do that. These beliefs then form self imposed barriers to our own achievements. Truly great people identify their self-limiting beliefs (or don’t have them to start with) and work to tear them down and replace them with greatness beliefs. Tiger Woods belief that he would be greater that Jack Nicklaus is a great example of replacing self-limiting beliefs with beliefs of greatness. Consider as well the 4 minute mile. Until Roger Bannister broke this barrier in 1954 no one thought it possible (other than Roger). Then a month and a half later his record was broken. And since then, the sub-4 minute mile has become routine.

People wanting to achieve greatness have to start off with a belief system that the impossible is possible, and that they will be the one to make it happen.

In future articles, I will outline simple steps for identifying and eliminating self-limiting beliefs and replacing them with greatness beliefs.

What do Robotics, The Closet and Conflict Resolution have to do with Self Actualization? Good Question you ask! Bear with me as I weave this real story of self actualization that touched my heart and that of many others.

Self Actualization

According to Wikipedia, people that are self-actualized are characterized by these traits:

• They embrace reality and facts rather than denying truth.
• They are spontaneous.
• They are interested in solving problems.
• They are accepting of themselves and others and lack prejudice.

While there are many people in the world that are self actualized, I would dare say, there are many more that are not. But who can challenge the benefit of self actualization? Knowing who you are, and being able to grow your own abilities in a non-judgmental way can help you achieve whatever greatness you want out of life. Be that the greatness of self-fulfillment, joy and happiness, financial abundance or that of achieving specific and distinct other goals in life. Anyone want to climb a mountain or sail around the world?

Parents and teachers of middle school and high school kids know all too well that getting them to understand that they need to embrace, in a positive and constructive manner, their own realities and seek ways to improve, is one of the greater challenges of being a parent. And teaching them to be non-judgmental is very tough, especially as parents carry their own judgments with them through life.

Robotics

I have been participating with US First Robotics competitions for three years as a Coach and Tournament Judge. Yesterday (November 15, 2008) I had the privilege to Judge 12 First Lego League (FLL) teams in the Robot Engineering category at the Maggie Walker Richmond Tournament for Virginia First.

The Closet and Conflict Resolution

We were interviewing one of the teams at the tournament during engineering judging and heard this story of The Closet. To put it in their own words:

We are all strong headed and only want to use our own ideas. We don’t want to listen to the other team member’s ideas!

Yet while we were interviewing them we did not see any evidence of this Strong Headed-ness. In fact, they supported each other and respected each other in a forum that easily can get out of control. So we probed a little and they told us the way they dealt with these conflicts it to get the parties involved, get them in a large closet with a mediator and work through their disagreements. They leave the closet agreeing on a direction and even more remarkable, the other team members don’t participate in the conflict resolution at all. Yes, they agree to agree! How remarkable for these young people. This process leads to respect, allows for brainstorming and non-judgmental spontaneity and allows for disagreement since they have a mature and respectful process for conflict resolution.

In the end, they collectively came to understand their team and individual realities, strengths and limitations and found a way to solve problems that was positive, mature and non-judgmental. Clearly they are on the road to self-actualization.

We can all learn from these young people. Discover your differences, embrace them and resolve them.

USFIRST Robotics

If you have children that need a creative, engineering like outlet for expression, or even just want them to gain experience with teamwork, research, presentations and have fun doing it. Consider having them join a USFIRST Robotics team. For FLL (ages 9 – 14) teams start to form in the early spring usually. Ask around and you may find a existing team, or consider starting one of your own. You can always post a comment here and I will find you your local or state FIRST representative to contact for more information. Support USFIRST. It does make a difference!

Now go hug your child and embrace them for they are our future!

Image Used with Creative Commons Attribution Permission - Flickr jade-rabbit’s Photostream

Time to slow down for a minute and consider how we affect others and what we can do to elevate each other. As we move though the hustle and bustle of our daily lives we come in contact with tens and sometimes hundreds of lives. Every contact, no matter how small is an opportunity to elevate friends, families, co-workers and strangers.

There are countless stories of people touching others in simple yet positive ways that later we come to understand impacted someone in a positive and sometimes life saving way. Think about the teenager that is considering suicide, the father that is considering divorce, the harried mother that doesn’t know what to do. Even a little touch, a moment of concern or happiness from someone can make a difference in their lives. If we stop the pain, even for a brief moment, the positive difference will grow and we will prevent others from taking drastic action.

And in this times of economic uncertainty, Don’t we all want someone to brighten up our day. So get out there and make a difference in someone else’s life, no matter how small the difference, it will have a positive impact. And with a little luck, the person that you elevate will elevate others and your impact will grow.

If you make a difference in 5 people’s live today and they impact 5 and they impact 5 people, your reach becomes 25 people. In a month you can impact 750 people. In a year, 9,000 people. And don’t stop at 5 people. Most of us come in contact with way more than 5 people in a day. Spread the Joy. Pay It Forward!

Simple Ways To Elevate Others Without Effort

• Smile at everyone you come in contact with
• Let that car merge into your lane safely
• Complement someone on their dress, smile, the help they gave you
• Declare what a great day it is to someone
• Say hi to everyone in the elevator, the hall, the store
• Thank everyone that serves you; waiters, the postman, everyone
• Hug your family
• High five someone at work
• Tell your kids that you love them
• Tell your spouse you love them
• Believe in and encourage the dreams of others
• Stop and let them cross the street, smile at them
• Say thank you to your kid’s teachers, send them a note, and take them a flower

Ten Small Commitments To Elevate Others

1. Visit a school (any school) and read to the class
2. Volunteer for elementary school chat and chew (book reviews)
3. Donate a book to a school
4. When you see someone in distress, take then aside as find out what is wrong, offer emotional support
5. Sit beside someone that is alone; on the bus, at the cafeteria, at assembly, show concern
6. Visit a nursing home and ask one of the patrons about their life, you may learn something in return
7. Write a letter to someone you care about thanking them deeply for the difference they have made in your life
8. Join Bookmooch http://www.bookmooch.com/ and put your used books to use. Find a Bookmooch charity http://www.bookmooch.com/charity and donate some points to them!

Now go out and make a difference in someone’s life and feel the joy and warmth that is returned. Encourage big dreams, encourage others! We may never know what impact we have had, but have faith, we can affect others in positive ways. We can make a difference. It doesn’t even take any money nor much time. Just start now!

Work Hard!, Play Hard!, Touch Someone’s Life!, Life Is Grand!

Follow Up

The day after I posted this article I got an email from a friend about how she was touched by positive words that helped her achieve greater happiness. You may want to read: Epilogue to - “Lives In the Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear!”