Cover via Amazon

This is what we talked about on The Invisible Mentor Blog this week: The Restorer by Amanda Stevens, Charles Darwin and Interview with Tracy Matthewman.

Mondays at the Salon

Recently I attended a workshop titled Going Beyond Google offered by SCIP (Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals) led by Sean Campbell of Cascade Insights. We have become so dependent on Google that we seldom look elsewhere to find information. This webinar was a great reminder to me about the hidden web, and I picked up some great tips that I’d like to share.

Going Beyond Google for Research

Booked on Tuesdays

As I was reading Amanda Stevens’ The Restorer, I kept on asking myself, “Why am I reading this, it’s going to give me bloody nightmares,” and in fact I had nightmares after I finished reading it. I completed the book and am looking forward to the second instalment which is coming out in November. Though this book is a work of fiction, it taught me lessons and made me think. We have rules that we live by, whether they are rules imposed on us, or rules we made for ourselves. But what happens, when the rules become outdated? Or only some of them work? What do you do then?

Review: Escape Reading Has its Place – Review of The Restorer by Amanda Stevens

Wisdom Wednesdays

For Charles Robert Darwin, an English naturalist, clergyman and professor of biology, John Stevens Henslow gave him his big break when he was recommended for the position of an unpaid naturalist aboard the HMS Beagle expedition to chart coastlines in South America and other areas of the Pacific. That one big break helped to chart Darwin’s life.

Charles Robert Darwin, Naturalist Who Presented the Origin of Species Theory 

Perspective Thursdays and Workshop Fridays

This week we featured Tracy Matthewman, Internet Marketer and Social Media Trainer. Mentors have played a critical role in Matthewman’s life, one suggested that she work less hours, which she did and decreased the amount of stress she faced in her life. Here are Part One and Part Two of Tracy Matthewman’s interview.

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Related posts:

1. The Invisible Mentor Week in Review
2. The Invisible Mentor Week in Review
3. The Invisible Mentor Week in Review
4. The Invisible Mentor Week in Review
5. The Invisible Mentor Week in Review

Image via Wikipedia

Take a moment and think about who gave you your big break? For Charles Robert Darwin, an English naturalist, clergyman and professor of biology, John Stevens Henslow gave him his big break when he was recommended for the position of an unpaid naturalist aboard the HMS Beagle expedition to chart coastlines in South America and other areas of the Pacific. That one big break given to Darwin helped to chart his life.

Name: Charles Robert Darwin

Birth Date: February 1809 – April 1882

Job Functions: English Naturalist

Fields: Natural History, Geology, Evolution

Known For: The Origin of Species

Charles Robert Darwin was born in the early 19^th century in Shrewsbury, England, the fifth child of Robert and Susannah Darwin. Both his father, and grandfather, Erasmus Darwin were prominent physicians. His mother, who was the daughter of the famous porcelain maker Josiah Wedgwood, died when Darwin was only eight.

Darwin showed an early interest in natural sciences, especially geology. When he was nine, Darwin attended Shrewsbury School but was not a very good student. In 1825, his father recommended that he study medicine at the University of Edinburg, but Darwin’s earlier failure to achieve academic distinction followed him there. “At Edinburgh, Darwin collected animals in tidal pools, trawled for oysters with Newhaven fishermen to obtain specimens, and made two small discoveries which he incorporated in papers read before the Plinian Society. He put forth no “strenuous effort” to learn medicine.”

His father then suggested that he study theology at the Christ’s College at the University of Cambridge in 1828. While at the University of Cambridge, instead of devoting time to clerical studies, Darwin often whiled the time away pursuing his passion for natural sciences. He “developed into an ardent entomologist, particularly devoted to collecting beetles; he had the satisfaction of seeing one of his rare specimens published in James Francis Stephens’ Illustration of British Insects.” Throughout young adulthood, Darwin enjoyed hunting, shooting, and specimen collection.

Darwin’s cousin, William Darwin Fox an entomologist, guided him, and introduced him to clergyman and biologist, John Stevens Henslow who became his tutor in mathematics and theology, and mentor in his personal studies in botany, geology, and zoology. Henslow advised Darwin to join an expedition and delay his appointment to the Church of England. This turned out to be solid advice for Darwin.

A few months after graduation, on December 27, 1831, when Darwin was 22, he embarked on an unpaid position, as part of an expedition team aboard the British survey ship HMS Beagle, headed for the coasts of South America, the Galapagos Islands, New Zealand and Tasmania. Originally, the expedition team was chartered for three years, but Darwin remained a part of the ship’s crew for five years. He was tasked with undertaking the geological, zoological, and botanical side of the official naval survey.

During the voyage from December 27, 1831 to October 2, 1836, Darwin spent 535 days at sea and roughly 1200 on land. On the expedition, he had the first volume of the English geologist’s, Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology, which directed his observations of the geological structure of Cape Verde Islands. But some of Darwin’s observations in South America did not fit with Lyell’s theories.

Darwin kept his field observations in notebooks with the specimens listed serially and their place and time of collection documented. His notes included details on flora, fauna, geological formation and ecology. In South America, Darwin paid attention to changes in the land brought about by earthquakes and volcanoes. On the 10 Galapagos islands Darwin observed and noted that the islands shared many species of flora and fauna in common, but each island also displayed distinct variations within the same group of organisms. Over the upcoming years and when he returned to England, Darwin pondered on the reasons for the variations.

Upon his return to England in 1836, Darwin organized his notes. He also became good friends with Lyell whose work, Principles of Geology helped to direct him; and Darwin later became good friends with botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker, and biologist Thomas Henry Huxley. Both Lyell and Hooker were extremely helpful and supportive to Darwin, and Huxley became known as “Darwin’s Bulldog” for his advocacy of Darwin’s theory of evolution. Lyell welcomed Darwin’s new research on coral reefs and encouraged him to publish other studies from his voyages.

Darwin was elected a fellow of the Geological Society in 1836, elected to the Athenaeum, the exclusive club for men distinguished in literature, art, or science in 1838, and became a member of the Royal Society in 1839. That same year, he published his Journal of Researches into the Geology and Natural History of the Various Countries Visited by H.M.S. Beagle.

Darwin had delayed publishing any of his research for a few years as he looked for explanations for evolution to account for the variations in species he had noted on the expedition. In 1838, Darwin found what he was looking for in Thomas Malthus’s 1798 work, An Essay on the Principle of Population. In the essay, Malthus was concerned with overpopulation resulting in famine, and the possible competition for food which could ensue. Darwin surmised that in the struggle for existence, “favourable variations would tend to be preserved and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result would be the formation of new species. Here then I had at last a theory by which to work.”

He confided his theory to Lyell and Hooker who urged him to publish his views, but as a very detailed-oriented person, Darwin wanted to further work through his theory, and at the time he was only half-way through his book. In the summer of 1858, Darwin received an essay from Alfred Russell Wallace containing ideas that were very similar to his. Wallace, an English naturist writing from the East Indian Archipelago was asking Darwin to appraise his work. It turns out that Wallace had also read Malthus’ essay.

Once again, Darwin turned to his close friends Lyell and Hooker and submitted his dilemma. He wrote, “Your words have come true with a vengeance – that I should be forestalled.” His friends proposed that Darwin and Wallace collaborate and do a joint announcement. They publicly declared their hypothesis by submitting the paper, On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection to the Linnean Society.

On November 24, 1859, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life over 500 pages in length appeared. The entire first edition of 1,250 copies was sold out on the day of publication. There was public outcry, but Darwin already had friends like Thomas Henry Huxley, also known as “Darwin’s Bulldog” who fiercely defended his ideas of evolution. The Origin of Species “stimulated a general participation by intellectuals of varied casts and backgrounds, some of whom were poorly qualified to join the battle. Philosophers, theologians, biologists, geologists, anthropologists, sociologists, even politicians and men of letters, joined in the melee, with victors and vanquished almost indistinguishable.”

Interestingly enough, Darwin was not the first to propose that species could change over time. For instance, Robert Hooke postulated that fossils could be the remains of vanished ancient species; Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck held that species could evolve through the inheritance of acquired characteristics; and Darwin’s own grandfather Erasmus Darwin had suggested that species might be developing over time by passing changes on through reproduction.

After being a mediocre student all his life, Darwin found success when he focused on his strengths and passions. He kept notebooks, always documented his work, and had a network of people with whom he shared his ideas. And it’s also important to document your work because at any point in time people in different places share the same ideas.

Other Publications

Journal of Researches into the Geology and Natural History of the Various Countries Visited by H.M.S. Beagle (1839)

The Voyage of the Beagle (1840)

The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs (1842)

A Monograph of the Cirripedia (1851, 1854)

The Descent of Man (London 1871)

The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872)

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Works Cited/Referenced

Encyclopedia of Population

Encyclopedia of World Biography

Macmillan Encyclopedia of Death and Dying

Encyclopedia of Science, Technology and Ethics

International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences

New Catholic Encyclopedia

World of Earth Science

Gale Encyclopedia of Psychology

Science and Its Times

UXL Encyclopedia of World Biography

Encyclopedia of European Social History

How to Read a Book, pp393-395

Quantum Leaps: 100 Scientists Who Changed the World, Jon Balchin

Books that Changed the World, Andrew Taylor

Related posts:

1. What You Can Learn from Charles Darwin
2. Review of On Natural Selection by Charles Darwin
3. Wisdom of Life: Charles Babbage, Father of the Computer
4. Wisdom of Life: James Naismith, Father of Basketball
5. Profiles in Wisdom: Charles Lindbergh, First Aviator to Make Non-Stop Transatlantic Flight from New York to Paris

During an interview once, the interviewee told me that she has often been mentored by the many books that she has read. While browsing a book about authors as mentors in a bookstore, one of the contributors called books, paper mentors.  The contributor also indicated that the author of Harriet the Spy mentored and influenced her as a writer.

Image via Wikipedia

Can a book be a mentor? Or is it the author who assumes the role of mentor? What about the characters in fiction, can they act as mentors? To answer these questions, requires that we look at the roles that mentors play in our lives. In the most basic sense, a mentor helps a protégé to achieve something that’s really important to her.

The Role of Mentors

• Advisor
• Role Model
• Sounding Board
• Guide
• Teacher/Skills Developer
• Resource Provider
• Champion/Advocate
• Cheerleader
• Confidant
• Critic
• Friend
• Facilitator

Mentors play many of the roles above, but no one mentor can play all of the roles in our lives. Let’s say for argument sake that books can be mentors, what characteristics would the books have for them to be great mentors? For a book to assume the role of a mentor, it has to have many of the elements below:

• Provokes thought
• Provides a deeper level of understanding and heightened awareness
• Ignites passion
• Awakens deep-seated emotions
• Provides practical wisdom
• Chronicles events for strategic guidance
• Provides formulas and intellectual frameworks to use
• Be about a change maker
• Solves everyday problems
• Shifts the reader’s mindset

Reflecting on the elements of a book that make it a mentor, when was the last time you read a really good book that mentored you? If there are books that have mentored you, just like my interviewee, think about the following questions.

• What was it about that book that made it memorable?
• How did you feel after you finished reading the book…sated… hungering for more…unnerved…?
• Did you take copious notes while you were reading this book?
• How many people did you refer this book to?
• Did it evoke any strong emotional response from you?
• Have you used any ideas from the book?
• What genre of book was it?
• Would you say that the book had a profound impact on your life?

If there are books that have mentored you, look at others that deal with the same topic, and do what Mortimer Adler recommends in How to Read a Book, and that is to read syntopically to master the topic, and I would add to also get divergent views. How do the books compare to each other? If the book is about a new area, think about what the author is saying, does it make sense? How does it stack up against what you already know? Also, identify:

• The problem the author presented and how it was solved
• The relevance of the information to your work and life
• Five takeaways
• Five great ideas you can glean from the information presented
• Any rule breaking
• Ideas/solutions that relate to work and life
• Solutions to everyday problems
• Ways to use ideas/insights/takeaways to increase the value of your product/service to your customers both internal and external to the organization

A book can never take the place of a traditional mentor, but it can assume some of the roles of a mentor, especially when you are trying to learn something, to gather information or to further your understanding of something.

Examples Where Books (and other publications) as Mentors Helped

Charles Darwin and British biologist Alfred Russel Wallace independently arrived at similar theories of Natural Selection in the mid-1800s after reading Essay on the Principle of Population by British pastor Thomas Malthus.

After many years of research and observing birds in flight, German engineer Otto Lilienthal, also known as the King of Gliders published his findings in the widely read book Birdflight as the Basis of Aviation. Lilienthal’s research article Practical Experiments for the Development of Human Flight, writings and notes proved invaluable to Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright also known as the Wright brothers. The Wright brothers believed that they could improve Lilienthal’s designs and resolve the problems plaguing aircraft theories. The Wright Brothers are credited for inventing the airplane.

As a child, while confined to bed because of illness, Robert Hutchings Goddard read H G Wells’ The War of the Worlds and became captivated with rockets and outer space. Goddard was a pioneer in liquid-fuelled rocketry and made significant contributions to the field.

While reading an article on a flight, Jeff Bezos founder of Amazon learned that the Internet was growing 2,300 per cent each year and wondered how he could use the information. He then looked at the top 20 catalogues to identify which would translate best to an online business and as a result Amazon was formed.

Now that you have read all this information, can books, authors and characters mentor you? I will leave that for you to digest and decide for yourself. How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Book links are affiliate links!

Image Credit: Wikipedia

Related posts:

1. Mondays at the Salon: The Mentor as Invisible
2. Mondays at the Salon: How to Summarize a Book for Professional Development
3. Mondays at the Salon: How to Master a Topic of Interest
4. Mondays at the Salon: Are You Winning the Mind War?
5. Mondays at the Salon: How to De-stress – Walk the Labyrinth

In what novel ways have you used information that you came across? What’s one concept that you discovered that has served you well? For me, it’s the creativity model presented in the Art of Thought by Graham Wallas. While conducting research on biomimicry, I came across information about a three-phase, 14-step process designed by Peter Floyd and Stephen R. Grossman that presents animal adaptations as models for problem solving. What got me excited was I had already decided that I was going to look at the idea of Evolution on this blog, which is one of the 50 ideas presented in 50 Big Ideas You Really Need to Know About by Ben Dupré, and here were two guys who are using Darwin’s three-step process for evolutionary change: extinction, mutation and selection. Floyd and Grossman have taken the three-steps and broken them down into a problem solving model. I thought that was simply brilliant, but I know that you can create a model that’s equally brilliant.

As presented by Ben Dupré, the idea of Evolution is a short read and only four pages in length. He talks about the origin of species, natural selection and the fifth ape.

“In the Origin, Charles Darwin succinctly summarizes natural selection as follows: ‘As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it very however slightly in any manner profitable, to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected . From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.’”

From the information presented in Dupré’s idea of evolution, I have extracted three great ideas that are very useful in a personal context:

1. In nature, resources such as food and mates are limited, so there will always be competition for access to them
2. Some people will be better equipped than others to prevail life’s struggles, and it is these individuals  that will live longer and produce more offspring
3. By minute and gradual changes over innumerable generations, animals and plants become better adapted to their surroundings; some species or kinds disappear, to be replaced  by others that have proved more successful for existence.

Possible Interpretation of These Ideas

• In flattened organizational structures, there are limited opportunities for promotions, therefore those expecting to excel must differentiate themselves and become more valuable to their clients, both internal and external
• The more skilled you become at problem solving, the better equipped you become at overcoming everyday challenges
• The more change resilient you are, and the more more receptive you are to ambiguity, the more longevity you’ll enjoy in the workplace
• Small and incremental changes lead to big changes in your life
• The more adaptable you are to change, the more success you’ll enjoy

As a professional, how can you use the idea of evolution to succeed in work and life? What changes can you make in your life to give you an edge?

Why evolution is one of the 50 ideas you really need to know about

Today you have to change or become extinct, so you have to mutate to be selected, in what ways can you change? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right side) by email or RSS Feed. I created a Mini Learning Toolkit and you can grab a copy by clicking here.

Photo and Video Credit: Apture

Related posts:

1. Review of On Natural Selection by Charles Darwin
2. What You Can Learn From Marie Curie, Winner of Two Nobel Prizes

The Internet has been abuzz over the past few weeks with Napoleon Hill‘s Invisible Counselors, but is this technique different from Invisible Mentors? Are people going to turn The Invisible Counselor Technique into a fad like “The Secret” movie where viewers thought they could visualize a goal and have it manifest without taking action, instead of taking the time to do things the correct way. Is there really an easy way out?

This post is my reaction to the concept of Invisible Counselors. Please refer to Vishen Lakhiani’s original post “Napoleon Hill’s Weird “Invisible Counselor Technique” and Why it Inspired (and Scared) So Many People.” It’s a great post and the video is a great complement to the written information in the post. See the video below. What critical component did Napoleon Hill omit in his technique?

If you cannot view the video click here. I got a copy of Think and Grow Rich because I wanted to go to the source to present the facts to you, and I wanted to better understand Invisible Counselors. Many people have said that Think and Grown Rich was one of the books that had a profound impact on their life. I wasn’t one of those people, and I didn’t enjoy the book when I first read it. However, I thought that Earl Nightingale did a nice summary of the book. I am at the point where I am ready to re-read Think and Grow Rich and see if my reaction is different seven years later.

The Invisible Counselor is discussed at length in Chapter 14, “The Sixth Sense: the Door to the Temple of Wisdom.” I must preface my comments by saying that I do believe in the power of the subconscious mind and the sixth sense. Here is what the book says about Invisible Counselors.

“While I was passing through the age of “hero worship” I found myself trying to imitate those whom I most admired… I followed the habit of reshaping my own character by trying to imitate the nine men whose lives and life works had been most impressive to me. These nine men were Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Paine, Thomas Edison, Charles Darwin, Abraham Lincoln, Luther Burbank, Napoleon Bonaparte, Henry Ford and Andrew Carnegie. Every night, over a long period of years, I held an imaginary council meeting with this group whom I called my “Invisible Counselors.” [I added in the last name of Hill's nine Invisible Counselors]

The procedure was this. Just before going to sleep at night, I would shut my eyes and see, in my imagination, this group of men seated with me around my council table. Here I had not only an opportunity to sit among those whom I considered to be great, but I actually dominated the group by serving as the Chairman.

I had a very definite purpose in indulging my imagination through these nightly meetings. My purpose was to rebuild my own character so it would represent a composite of the characters of my imaginary counselors….

These meetings became so realistic that I started to be fearful of their consequences, and discontinued them for several months. The experiences were so uncanny. I was afraid if I continued them I would lose sight of the fact that the meetings were purely experiences of my imagination….

I began to add new members to my cabinet. Now it consists of more than 50, among them Christ, St. Paul, Galileo, Copernicus, Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Homer, Voltaire, Bruno, Spinoza, Drummond, Kant, Schopenhauer, Newton, Confucius, Elbert Hubbard, Brann, Ingersol, Wilson and William James….”

In the technique, Hill called on each of his nine Invisible Counselor and was very specific about what he required from them. For example,

“Mr Darwin, I wish to acquire from you the marvelous patience and ability to study cause and effect without bias or prejudice so exemplified by you in the field of natural science.

Mr Carnegie, I am already indebted to you for my choice of a life work, which has brought me great happiness and peace of mind. I wish to acquire a thorough understanding of the principles of organized effort, which you used so effectively in the building of a great industrial enterprise.

My method of addressing the members of  the imaginary cabinet would vary according to the traits of character which I was most interested in acquiring at the time. I studied the records of their lives with painstaking care. After some months of this nightly procedure, I was astounded by the discovery that these imaginary figures became, apparently, real.”

Please click here to read Chapter 14 on page 134 of the electronic version. What Napoleon Hill refers to as Invisible Counselors are what I call Invisible Mentors. From the cited text from Think and Grow Rich, the nine Invisible Counselors are people who Hill admired, and he imitated them, which suggests that he studied them, which is exactly what I advocate for your Invisible Mentors. I suggest that you become so steeped in your Invisible Mentors that you could ask and answer “What would Invisible Mentor 1 do in this situation?” You can also find invisible mentors on The Mentors page.

Below is an Invisible Mentor slide that I created over seven months ago. After I finished viewing it today for inclusion in this blog post, I realized that I have to update it because my views have expanded, because my knowledge has grown, which is a good thing. How has your knowledge changed in the past six months?

Many people viewing the video “The Most Controversial Personal Growth Technique Ever,” may think that they can use the technique to mentally call on successful people to answer their questions, or generate great ideas without any initial work. Hill spent decades studying successful people so his subconscious mind had a place to start. From my previous posts on generating creative ideas and creative problem solving, the process is preparation, incubation, illumination and verification/implementation.

So what did Napoleon Hill Omit? Hill did not omit anything from what I have read from Think and Grow Rich, the video neglected to mention that when Hill started using the Invisible Counselor Technique he used nine people whose lives and life works had been most impressive to him. To me, that means he had studied these people. This is a major omission from the video. Also, he practiced the technique each night over a long period of years. This also suggests that Hill practiced the technique until he mastered it. Statistics floating around suggest that it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill.

This is an important lesson to always go to the source if you are able to, otherwise you’ll never know what critical piece of information you are missing. What are your thoughts on Invisible Counselors? Which five of Hill’s Invisible Counselors would you choose as Invisible Mentors? Now that you are familiar with Invisible Mentors from reading this blog, would you chair an Invisible Mentor Council Meeting? And if yes, what would you hope to achieve?

Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the left side) by email or RSS Feed.

For an electronic copy of Think and Grow Rich, please click here.

Further Reading

The Sixth Sense: The Door to the Temple of Wisdom – The Thirteenth Step toward Riches

Napoleon Hill Did This, And You Should Too

Napoleon Hill’s Weird “Invisible Counselor Technique” and Why it Inspired (and Scared) So Many People

Related posts:

1. Napoleon Hill, a Great Blogger?
2. Who Are Your 5 Invisible Mentors and Why?
3. How to Use Invisible Mentors
4. How to Choose Invisible Mentors
5. The Hunt for Invisible Mentors

Review of On Natural Selection by Charles Darwin

I have been researching great thinkers and how they have shaped the world. I have also been trying to prove that the act of reading helps to generate or even stimulate great ideas. Great thinkers do not operate within a vacuum, they rely on the works of others, and often expand the original thought and take the world further. Charles Darwin and British biologist Alfred Russel Wallace independently arrived at similar theories of Natural Selection in the mid-1800s after reading Essay on the Principle of Population by British pastor Thomas Malthus.

I wrote this book review four years ago for my newsletter, Ambeck Edge and thought I would share it with you since it makes a great Invisible Mentor.

Darwin defines natural selection as the “preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of injurious variation.” So what does this all mean? Darwin further adds, “Variations neither useful nor injurious would not be affected by natural selection, and would be left a fluctuating element, as perhaps we see in the species called polymorphic… Natural selection can act only by taking advantage of slight variations; she can never take a leap, but must advance by the shortest steps.”

This book wasn’t the easiest to read, and I found it quite “dry”. But, in my quest to find out where really good ideas come from, I made the sacrifice and slogged through it. I have selected fives ideas from On Natural Selection. For the five ideas below, how can you use them in different contexts to resolve/understand modern day problems?

Five Good Ideas

1. When a plant or animal is placed in a new country amongst new competitors, though the climate may be exactly the same as its former home, yet the conditions of its life will generally be changed in an essential manner. If we wished to increase its average numbers in its new home, we should have to modify it in a different way to what we should have done in its native country; for we should have to give it some advantage over a different set of competitors or enemies.
2. Individuals having any advantage, however slight, over others, would have the best chance of surviving and of procreating their kind
3. When a species, owing to highly favourable circumstances, increases inordinately in numbers in a small tract, epidemics often ensue
4. The more diversified the descendants from any one species become in structure, constitution, and habits, by so much will they be better enabled to seize on many and widely diversified places in the polity of nature, and so be enabled to increase in numbers
5. Natural selection is working behind the scenes all the time throughout the world whenever the opportunity arises. It works to improve each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life. You cannot see these slow changes taking place, until after a long period of time has elapsed, we see that the forms of life are now different from what they formerly were

We could take idea number two and look at it in the context of education. It’s a reasonable assumption to make that people who are more educated have a better chance of succeeding than those who have less education. Or, for that same idea, we could say, someone who has an idea and knows how to take action, will be more successful than someone who has ideas but do nothing about them. Success in this context is not restricted to financial success. Why don’t you take one of the above five ideas and see what new ideas you can generate?

I recommend On Natural Selection because I am sure that you will come up with your own five ideas. This is not a book that you would read for entertainment, but it will certainly stretch you.

Excerpt Ambeck Edge May 2005

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• The origin of Origin (guardian.co.uk)

Photo Credits: Cover from Amazon

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Looking Upwards

“For everyone of us that succeeds, it’s because there’s somebody there to show you the way out” Oprah Winfrey

There are many ways that people show others the way, both directly and indirectly. And, many people have allowed others to stand on their shoulders, sometimes even without knowing, simply by teaching others what they know or by documenting their observations, thoughts, insights and discoveries for others to read.

A quick way for us to stand on the shoulders of giants is to examine what’s been done before by reading about and listening to the experiences and lives of those we value and respect. You never know what bright idea you could come across, or what problem could be solved now because the time is right and the technology now exists.

A review of several books on creativity, inventions, discoveries and great thinkers and scientists who have changed the world, books such as Discover Your Genius : How to Think Like History’s Ten Most Revolutionary Minds, Aha! 10 Ways to Free Your Creative Spirit and Find Your Great Ideas, The art of thought, The Art of Thinking, The 100 Greatest Inventions Of All Time, 100 Discoveries: The Greatest Breakthroughs in History, suggest that great thinkers have certain traits in common.

Leonardo da Vinci, Francis Bacon, Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Gutenberg, Copernicus, Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Marie Curie and Alexander Fleming, a few of the great thinkers who made discoveries, and/or created products that influenced/changed the world, had the unique knack to do many of the following:

• Reflect
• Open to experiment
• Keep record of research
• Steely determination: impossible was not an answer
• Open minded
• Childlike sense of play
• Curious
• Voracious reader
• Read/study broadly
• Observe, detect and collect facts
• Think independently
• Take breaks to reenergize
• Total absorption in subject
• Have imagination
• Have vision
• Didn’t reinvent the wheel – built on present and past knowledge
• Look at the limitations of old inventions and devise a solution
• Modify present technologies for other uses
• Make connections between two different things
• Combine theoretical knowledge with practical skills
• Pay attention to detail
• Give vital ideas the opportunity to take root and grow

How many of these traits do you have? And how many could you acquire with concerted effort? If you re-read yesterday’s blog post you will notice that some of the above traits are similar to some of the activities mentioned by survey respondents.

All of us are capable of generating our own great ideas. Read widely, reflect on life, travel to places that you’ve never been before, eat foods from different cultures, interact with nature, think about problems that need solving and work on ways to solve those problems. Immerse yourself in many activities and create new experiences for yourself. We can learn from the experiences of others, and we can use the words of others as Invisible Mentors to help us make progress in life. We can stand on the shoulders of giants!

What are your thoughts? How can you build on this concept?

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Photo Credits: Avil Beckford

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1. Great Ideas – Standing on the Shoulders of Giants