Category: Earlier posts

Radical Reorienting #1: Optimal Hydration for Body and Brain

[podcast src=”https://html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/episode/id/14537885/height/90/theme/custom/thumbnail/yes/direction/forward/render-playlist/no/custom-color/87a93a/” width=”100%” height=”90″ scrolling=”no” class=”podcast-class” frameborder=”0″ placement=”top” use_download_link=”use_download_link” download_link_text=”Download Episode!” primary_content_url=”” theme=”custom” custom_color=”87a93a” libsyn_item_id=”14537885″ /] FacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Fashion, Enterprise, and New Futures

Can new thinking and new choices in fashion change the world?

Recently I was invited to speak at a business event:  Storytelling and Emotion,  hosted by the Centre for Fashion Enterprise (CFE).  CFE is the enterprise development arm of the London College of Fashion. I visited with them a week before the event to get a feel for the business of fashion. These guys, who are actually an awesome entrepreneurial service led and run by 10 gals, are doing some way-out pioneering business incubation stuff. Over the last 11 years they’ve helped launch the careers of designers such as Basso & Brooke, Peter Pilotto and Holly Fulton amongst others.

The line-up of speakers was world class.  I knew that between them they would do more than justice to the topic at hand. So what had I to give? What value would I deliver? I decided to do what I do best: take neuroscience research out of the lab and highfalutin journals and apply it to everyday life and business, to evoke change that leads to better futures all round.

My presentation was about accessing neuroplasticity to craft new-futures for fashion enterprise. After an awe-inspiring evening of presentations, panel discussion and questions from a leading-edge audience, I feel inspired to share an excerpt from my journal notes regarding the event:

1st July 2017:

FashTech and the whole of the Fashion Industry is not so unlike the emerging domain and discipline of Neuroscience and Neuroplasticity. Both have enormous responsibility in co-crafting better and new sustainable worlds of geography, business, capitals development, management , and evolution. Especially the interaction and engagement between human and technology capitals. To access, engage and exercise neuroplasticity in new-futures thinking for fashion and sustainability in the same breath, we must look to:

  • Developing not just multidisciplinary think tanks and leadership, but ensure a good balance  of multiple intelligences * within multidisciplinary teams to ensure holistic thinking and leadership. A mixed-minds approach, so to speak.
  • Building an infrastructure for Future Fashion or a Foresight Lab and community around it – including governments, Fortune 500 companies, philanthropists, futurologists, etc.. Herein lies the power of unconventional co-crafting of new futures by mind-set and innovation.
  • Partnering across sectors (the “strength in numbers” concept has immense value here) in order to cultivate connection and connectivity with those who are to come after us. To raise understanding that we are as yet a young species and to stop living as if evolution of the human species ended with us.
  • Developing community so we are not daunted by the problems we face (in fashion or neuroscience).
  • Cultivating a sense of our value in the larger system called Life and Futures.
  • Never under-estimating what one person or a small group of co-conspirators can do!

Each of the above points probably constitute a book on its own, or at least a chapter in one. I get that this is big-ideas thinking. But each idea now needs to go through several processes of futures thinking – by breaking them apart to arrive at their component parts. This is followed by further processes of adding, deleting, questioning, debating, challenging – in other words, using our gorgeous, malleable, plastic brains.

This is how we make a better world. One thought at a time.

∗ Theory of multiple intelligences by Howard Gardner 

FacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Know Your Emotional Playground?

The workshop on 29th September was a wonderful way to bring the third quarter of 2012 to a close. It was a juncture of appreciation for the experiences of the last nine months, and for the new aspirations and goals that have arisen from it.

It became apparent that one of the major killers of achievement and progress is the how question. There is nothing wrong about a question that begins with the word how when you are feeling confident, excited, eager, vibrant and optimistic. But ask the question when you are not in that emotional playground, and suddenly the dream, the project, the goal or the desire, feels less inspiring and more overwhelming.

Learning to develop a personal emotional field that is favourable to moving confidently in the direction of you dreams is what I call, the power of emotional leverage. An “accomplishment-friendly” emotional field gives you access to thoughts that become thought-ways to success.

As these thought-ways begin to open and unfold ever-new emotional leverage, that second vision-killer – caring about the opinion of others – begins to lessen and fade with a gentle, persistent, focused, and constructive emotional-field development. Before you know it, your self-talk and self-appreciation grows and gathers momentum. Now you are well on your way to attracting, raising, mobilising, and leveraging the resources and practicalities for meeting your commitments and achieving your goals.

You’d be well counselled however, to accept that your every manifested desire will inspire you to new, more refined, and often, bigger and better creations. It’s one of the ecstasies of living a vibrant life.

Join us on 24th November at our Seminar-Workshop which is all about cultivating your personal emotional-friendly launch pad, and developing thought-ways to ensure the successful delivery and manifestation of your 2013 dreams and goals.

Until next time!

Melanie

FacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Jim Carrey Does It!

This is not really a blog, just a a Must-Share Journal Entry!

Whilst prepping for our upcoming workshop on Saturday 29th Sept (which I am absolutely excited about!),  I was looking for material that was contemporary, contextual and relatable, so that some of the more abstract concepts of CONSCIOUS CREATING can be demonstated.

I came aross these fantastic YouTube clips, which I thought I simply have to share with you.  See what Jim Carrey has to say about conscious creating and about how he overcame his regular bouts of depression.

Enjoy!
Jim Carrey on Conscious Creating
Jim Carrey on Overcoming Depression

Until next time … ciao!

Melanie

 

FacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

KISS Your Meditation

There are many translations for the acronym KISS.  In this instance, I’m using it to mean:  KEEP IT SIMPLE AND STRAIGHTFORWARD!

Yep!  Keep your daily meditation simple and straightforward.  Don’t complicate it with too many rituals.  On the other hand, if specific preparatory and completion rituals help you feel good, or create a mood or mindset that is beneficial, go for it!  There are no rules.  Guidelines?  Yes.  Theories?  Plenty.  Specific practices and schools of thought?  Abounding.  They are all interesting, and some are more helpful than others  because of the variety and diversity in theory and practice that they each espouse.

It all boils down however, to just finding a way to quiet your mind and choosing to focus deliberately and willingly – that means without resistance – on a chosen stimulus.  That stimulus can be an object, your breathing, a sound, a phrase, or anything else.  The words of Leonardo da Vinci, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”, serve well here.

Of course, you will have days when you just can’t seem to quiet your mind.  Be easy with it.  There will also be days when the subject or the object of your focus proves irritating and provocative, rather than soothing and quieting.  Be easy with it.  You will also arrive at moments that feel like bliss – just an intense and satisfying silence that is indescribable!  Be easy with it.

A simple ritual that I follow is to mentally prepare myself by imagining that I’ve collected all my thoughts and left them just outside the door, knowing that I can always pick them up after my meditation.  It helps!  Cultivate a gentle-but-strong resolve to stay with it because the emotional, intellectual, and physiological changes that ensue from a daily practice are inevitable and complex.  Your work is to KISS.

Until next time

Melanie

 

FacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail