Could you read maps with your feet?
That’s not quite how we read maps, eh?
Some of us need directions, and need to close our eyes.
Some of us need to see a picture. And print the picture.
Some of us need explicit left-right directions.
But what if you weren’t any of those people mentioned above?
What if you read maps with your feet?
Gillian Lynne is a dancer.
Back in the 1930’s she was doing miserably at school.
The pictures didn’t help. The words didn’t help.
Obviously, nothing the teachers did or said got Gillian’s attention.
And she spiralled into, what we’d today call, a ‘challenged child.’
She was unfocused.
Fidgety.
Refused to learn.
So her mother took her to a doctor
Luckily the doctor wasn’t a teacher.
He turned on the radio, sneaked out of the room, and then asked Gillian’s mother to look at what Gillian was doing.
So what was she doing?
She was dancing.
Gillian didn’t think with her head. She thought with her feet.
All those words, and pictures, and blah-blah that was being taught at school was completely wasted on Gillian.
Because her method of learning, wasn’t words, or picture, or lecture-related.
It was all about dance.
Now here’s the sad story: Gillian went on to be famous
She went on to join the Royal Ballet.
She worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company, at West End, and was cast in roles on British Television.
She was the choreographer on the world-famous Andrew Lloyd Weber musical: Cats.
And then The Phantom of the Opera.
She was the director and choreographer of the Muppet Show.
She started her own dance school.
She did this and did that.
So why do I call it sad?
What if Gillian weren’t famous?
What if Gillian didn’t do what she did to become famous, but simply settled down for the rest of her life in the suburbs?
What then?
There are six billion talented people on the planet, all being fed with the school-system of teaching.
And for all practical reasons, at least five billion are getting the wrong instructions.
Which of course brings up the question
Do we really have dumb kids?
Do we really have dumb adults?
Do we really think that there are un-creative people out there?
Do we really think that Gillian couldn’t read maps by dancing on the map with her feet?
The method of teaching is wrong.
Yes, wrong.
We’re all fed with this same funnel of words. Mostly words.
The biggest chunk of your education is a matter of reading a book.
But what if someone could teach you through cartoons?
Or what if someone could teach you through music?
Or what if someone could teach you through dance?
The method of teaching is wrong.
Has always been. Well, it’s been right for some and wrong for many.
And it’s because we’ve never recognised the most important factor of all.
The factor that some of us, can indeed read maps best with our feet.
So how do you think best?
Post your answer in the comments below
Is it true that I write six articles a week?
No it’s not.
Many days I’ll write six articles a day.
And that’s not bragging.
And it’s most certainly not talent.
So what’s the story: How did I get so darned prolific?
I was forced by others to write at least twice a month (well, persuaded). One of the early persuaders was Allen Weiss, from marketingprofs.com.
Today, Marketingprofs.com has hundreds of writers, but back then, it was Allen and probably ten or twenty of us (I don’t know). What I do know was that he was keen on me writing at least twice a month. And he’d publish the articles. And I’d get subscribers. So it was good for all of us.
Then I think I was still writing, and they wanted articles more often
So I started writing once a week and I’d publish the articles on Psychotactics.com and Marketingprofs.com.
Oh, did I struggle?
But it was easier writing once a week, than once a month.
Then in 2002, I started up 5000bc.com
But I was still writing less than I am now. However, in the year 2004, I revamped 5000bc.com. At the time, I was a member of another membership site. That owner of the site was writing about 4 articles a week, so I thought, ok, I’ll write about 4-5 articles a week for 5000bc.
And so I moved up to about 6 articles a week.
Now all this writing may sound horrific to you.
How do you get the time to write 6 articles a week?
But the converse is true. The more you write, the more you ‘discover’ the secrets of writing (because you have to be super-efficient).
The more you ‘discover’, the faster you get at the darned thing.
And that’s not all. If you write once a week, you have to warm up. Writing almost six articles, means that you’re writing almost every day, if not at least 2-3 days in a week.
That of course, is only part of the writing.
At Psychotactics.com we have courses. And workshops (Most of our courses have about 200 pages of notes each). And I had to write for that.
And forums on the courses. More writing.
Started up a blog and asked who wanted to read it. A few put up their hands. More writing. Started up a second, and third blog. More writing.
If it’s beginning to sound insane to you, it’s not.
I probably spend less time writing than most writers.
Through NO MAGIC PILL and sheer writing, day after day, I’ve become good enough to write 2-4 articles in about 2-3 hours. Most people never go past the first paragraph in that amount of time.
And how do I know that?
When I first started, it used to take me 2 days to write an article. And often, that article never made it to the finish line. I’d trash it, and start over again. Most people think I’m exceptionally good at writing. I am. But it’s not because of the breakfast I’m eating.
It’s because of persistence, and practice. And those little secrets I learned along the way.
What’s funny about it?
Nothing.
It’s a guy on a boat. And an island in the distance.
Now don’t think of a funny line.
Instead think of something disconnected.
What’s the last thing you’d expect to see in a scene like this?
Put it down in the comments.
If you think of a great caption, that’s fine.
If you don’t, let’s just put down something that’s disconnected to this scene.
Making ‘funny’ work for you, is simply a matter of three core steps
Step 1: ‘Recognising disconnection.’
Step 2: Then putting the ‘disconnection’ down on paper.
Step 3: Then finding a connection that makes it funny.
Ok, over to you. Let’s have a disconnection in the comments.
Let me get you started.
Link ‘guy on a boat’ and ‘food’.
Close your eyes (This is important)
What picture do you see?
Yup, make sure you close your eyes when you think of ‘guy on a boat’ and ‘food.’
What picture do you see?
Post your comments. Whatever they are. (Doesn’t have to be funny).
Have you ever seen fairy lights on a Christmas tree?
Each bulb is connected to each other.
Yet if one bulb fuses…
The next one seems to fail.
And then the chain seems to break.
So if you started out with five hundred lights on your Christmas tree, the failure of one bulb could take away the glow of about fifty bulbs.
In your brain you have about a hundred billion ‘bulbs’ called neurons (give or take a few zillion)
These neurons are pretty darned useless by themselves.
But turn on a memory, or a skill, and these neurons light up.
Now what’s really important is the understanding of how ‘talent’ and neurons are connected
Let’s say you can draw really well.
When someone gives you a pen and a sheet of paper, and asks you to draw something, a set of those lights fire up. And when you look at the firing up, it seems that all the lights fire up at one go.
But in reality there’s a gap.
The neurons fire up in different sequences for each thought or skill
So if you’re drawing a cat, it’s firing one set of lights.
If you’re drawing a dog, it’s quite another set.
If you’re drawing a girl in a bikini. Heck yeah, it’s a whole different set. 🙂
But the firing up of the neurons depends on the database in your brain
Which is why ten thousand cartoonists can look at the same political drama unfolding, and can draw ten thousand political cartoons that are totally different from each other. The cartoons still reference the same drama.
But the cartoons differ in terms of gag timing, in style, in size etc. And that’s because of the pathway that each cartoonist’s brain is following.
So what’s really happening in their brain?
Think of the fairy lights on the Christmas tree.
And imagine they were not all yellow lights.
Imagine instead that the lights had the ability to mix (like you mix colours on paper)
So as you turn on the switch, a set of red lights ignite and race to turn on.
At the very same time, the yellow lights ignite their sequence.
And at one point, the red and yellow lights meet at a junction.
And you get an orange.
This is the genesis of an idea
Bulbs of different colours mixing at one specific point.
It’s how the neurons in our brain work.
Now instead of just red and yellow lights, think of millions of shades of lights (millions of neurons).
And they’re all racing, and meeting at different junctions.
And mixing
Mixing and creating different shades.
Red mixing with blue.
Blue mixing with yellow.
Yellow mixing with green.
Suddenly there are millions of shades. Shades that all culminate to create a neuron dance.
And the neuron dance ends up with you saying “Eureka!”
Which is why ten thousand cartoonists can look at the same drama
And each draw one, two, even ten funny gags.
It’s because of how their bulbs light up.
But the question remains.
We can indeed fire up millions of neurons in our brain. We can reference vast memory banks.
But why can’t we come up with gags?
Why can’t we be funny too like that cartoonist or comedian?
Maybe it’s just that we’re not talented enough.
Maybe it’s just that cartoonists think in a different way.
And it’s true. They do think in a different way
In fact, somewhere along the line, their brains worked out a neuron dance with one added combination: the combination of how to make something funny.
So what’s happening here?
Remember that fused bulb?
The bulb that prevents about fifty lights from coming on? That fused bulb prevents the lights from igniting in your brain. When we replace that bulb, suddenly all the lights are aglow.
All the fifty bulbs come alive.
What we have to do then, is to find that darned fuse bulb. And make sure we replace it pronto.
And when that bulb is replaced, then we have a new dance.
A neuron dance that enables us to think ‘funny.’
Pretty cool, huh?
So how do we start to think ‘funny?’
Let’s find out, in the next post, shall we?
