INTEGRITY OF CHARACTER + CREATIVE THINKING = SUSTAINED SUCCESS IN LIFE.

"Oh! Ayesha is very creative, she thinks of such beautiful ideas in no time."
"Ask Sam about this problem, He can give you some really wonderful ideas to solve this problem."
We all want to be like Ayesha and Sam, and we want our children to be as quick thinking and resourceful. Are Ayeshas and Sams have this special gift from God or the muse is always sitting on their shoulder,whispering such insights into their ears.
Maybe they are gifted, or maybe they learn much more from their environment than others do.It's my estimate that most of us barely see 20% of what's around us. We see what we want to see, or we see what we already know, to put it in cliche' terms - we do not see the complete picture. The other day in ninth grade I showed children a picture of a minor celebrity with few other common people doing relief work in Tsunami affected village of Tamil Nadu. It was an old picture, and was shown to them for 30 seconds.When asked what did you see in the picture, most of the children happily shouted the name of the celebrity, some mentioned there were a few other people around too, and only two children could remember a few other details.Bulk of the class could not recollect any detail about the background or the other people.

This is how we see most things around us, we see only part of the picture, and the moment we see something familiar, our mind just shuts, off and we stop seeing the rest.Probably Ayesha and Sam are seeing complete pictures around them and are learning much more from the same world around us. After all what we see and experience around us is the raw material for our thinking and ideas.

Seeing the complete picture can be played as a game with children in school or at home. If the children learn to observe better, they will be learners for life. All successful businessmen, and leaders in any field have this singular quality in common, their power of observation gives them insights and uncommon common sense which makes them winners for life.