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Showing posts from July, 2022

Socially Curious (how curiosity converts)

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  I am naturally inquisitive, it’s the storyteller in me. I love to learn, but it wasn't until recently I discovered WHY I have that innate desire (which is stronger in me than most people). I guess that's maybe why when we were struggling with my daughters first name we landed on Alice. Lewis Carroll's timeless classic about a girl that falls down a rabbit hole and meets all kinds of unexpected creatures from disappearing cats to a smoking caterpillar has inspired countless generations. Besides the doctor said she looked like an Alice and the name stuck! One of Alices catchphrases is - curiouser and curiouser! The human brain is hardwired for curiosity and that’s why stories fit our logical world view so well. We have an innate almost hardcoded desire to solve mysteries and stories are the metaphorical tool for the job. In his paper 'The Psychology of Curiosity', Loewenstein breaks down four ways of involuntarily inducing curiosity in humans:  (1) The 'posing o

Under the social media microscope

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Us Brits love to complain about the heat at the moment don’t we. But a side effect of all this stunning weather we are having at the moment is that we get to spend more time in the garden. I was sat out with my son the other day and I was watching him playing with a puzzle which fascinated me. It was kind of a free-form puzzle where you could put characters and vehicles in different positions on an illustration with magnets, I was trying to guide and encourage him to place them in places that I felt sensible. Whereas he wanted to put them where he wanted to, so I stopped and let him do it fascinated by the decisions he was making. Wayne Dyer once said, "Change The Way You Look At Things And The Things You Look At Change." This is true of social. See most of you (and most business owners as well) simply see the output of social as a construct of sales and marketing and whilst this is one of the key benefits of social media platforms (enabling us to have more conversations that

The Way of the Creative 🥷 Part 2

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  I have always been a bit chaotic, it's the artist in me. But just recently I spotlessly and meticulously cleared my studio room. Dusting, rearranging furniture and gear. I ain’t gonna lie, it felt gooooood! I am convinced there is a direct link between that and my internal hardwiring. Tidy office, tidy mind! It’s allowed me to be more logical which has inversely also allowed my creativity to fill that space more freely. The order in a way invites the chaos in.  I always love the analogy with film Noir (a cinematic movement characterised by stark lighting, cynical heroes, frequent use of flashbacks, intricate plots, and an underlying existentialist philosophy.) The lightning style (for which it was most famous for) came about from the budgetary limitations of having very few lights on set and was heavily influenced by German expressionism! So a limitation became it’s strength and a hallmark of the movement. In his TedEd  animation short , Brandon Rodriguez explains that "any