"The true joy of life lies in . . . being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish clod of ailments and grievances." — George Bernard Shaw

To live is so startling, it leaves but little room for other occupations......(EMILY DICKINSON)

At the end of the movie It’s a Wonderful Life, George Bailey realizes his life isn’t so bad after all because he has many friends in Bedford Falls who are ready and willing to help him. And, as George Bailey was reminded, “No man is a failure who has friends.”

Introduction

Engineers create systems based on existing sciences and theories. The science and theories examined in this book belong to the best minds in our universities. The science belongs to Professor Ellen J. Langer, Professor Gardner, Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Professor Deci, Professor Goleman, Dr. Paul Kaufman, Dr. Nyanaponika Thera, Roshi Philip Kapleau, Joseph Goldstein, Dr. Michael Ray, Dr. John M. Gottman, Dr. Bob Murray, Professor Grinde, Dr. Bhante H. Gunaratana, Professor Hippel, and Professor Reiss. I am only hoping to create a system to engineer motivation for creativity and entrepreneurship based on their existing sciences.

To bring an analogy in regards to my work, imagine a computer as a system. An engineer has designed your computer as a complex system. This system is actually creation of many sciences developed by many ingenious minds. Way, way, back a genius mind invented the math behind the existing computers (Charles Babbage), another genius mind invented the vacuum tube (Clifford Berry), someone improved on vacuum tube and invented the transistor (William Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter Brattain), another genius mind invented the semiconductor (Robert Noyce), mouse (Douglas Engelbart), and so on. And, finally Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak put it all together. In this book I like to do something similar to what Mr. Jobs and Mr. Wozniak accomplished.

Our motivation engineered system consists of eastern mindfulness and spirituality (Goldstein, Kapleau, Thera, Gunaratana) and western mindfulness (Dr. Langer) to cut through and step out of negativity and mental obstacles, finding new intrinsic motivations through autonomy, relatedness and observation skills (Dr. Deci), involving in passionate activities to experience a concept called Flow (Dr. Csikszentmihalyi), finding creativity in the subject of passion (Gardner), becoming an innovative USER of the passion (Dr. Hippel) and finally trying entrepreneurial experimentations with the subject of passion (Dr. Robert A. Baron). All these steps are analyzed and explained in detail. In the first chapter we discuss the relevancy of these sciences and in the second chapter we examine a practice based on these sciences that will take the reader on the path below:

(Apathy, negativity, and boredom)----->Intrinsic Motivation----->Passion----->Goal Setting + Determination + Team Work + Creativity----->Innovation----->Entrepreneurship

The path above is extremely joyful. As the reader gets into creativity, he/she will feel strong form of rapture and a concept called Flow (introduced by Professor Csikszentmihalyi). The experience of Flow or Rapture intensifies with innovation and entrepreneurship. I strongly believe without creativity (originality), the experience of Rapture and Flow is not possible. It is the feeling of having been able to create something new and original that brings the Rapture and Flow.

(Apathy, negativity, and boredom)----->Intrinsic Motivation----->Passion----->Goal Setting + Determination + Team work + Creativity (Feel of Rapture or Flow)----->Innovation (Stronger Feel of Rapture or Flow)----->Entrepreneurship (Super Feel of Rapture or Flow)

We call the path above a physical path. What does actually take place inside the mind? The path below is the mind map.

Purification -----> Concentration ------> Imagination (Visualization) + Insights-------> Goal Setting + Hard Work + Determination + Team Work + Creativity -------> Unification

Please Continue to Section 2

Thomas Paine

On July 17, 1980, Ronald Reagan stood before the Republican National Convention and the American people to accept his party's nomination for president of the United States. Most of what he said that evening was to be expected from a Republican. He spoke of the nation's past and its "shared values." He attacked the incumbent Carter administration and promised to lower taxes, limit government, and expand national defense. And invoking God, he invited Americans to join him in a "crusade to make America great again." But Reagan had much more than restoration in mind. He intended to transform American political life and discourse. He had constructed a new Republican alliance-a New Right-of corporate elites, Christian evangelicals, conservative and neoconservative intellectuals, and a host of right-wing interest groups in hopes of undoing the liberal politics and programs of the past forty years, reversing the cultural changes and developments of the 1960s, and establishing a new national governing consensus. His ambitions were well known, but that night Reagan startled many by calling forth the revolutionary Thomas Paine and quoting Paine's words of 1776, from the pamphlet Common Sense: "We have it in our power to begin the world over again."!

American politicians have always drawn upon the words and deeds of the Founders to bolster their own positions. Nevertheless, in quoting Paine, Reagan broke emphatically with long-standing conservative practice. Paine was not like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, or John Adams.

Conservatives certainly were not supposed to openly speak favorably of Paine, and for two hundred years they had not. Conservatives had despised Paine and scorned his memory. And one can understand why. Endowing American experience with democratic impulses and aspirations, Paine had turned Americans into radicals-and we have remained radicals at heart ever since.

Contributing fundamentally to the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and the struggles of British workers in the Industrial Revolution, Thomas Paine was one of the most remarkable political writers of the modern world and the greatest radical of a radical age. Yet this son of an English artisan did not become a radical until his arrival in America in late 1774 at the age of thirty-seven. Even then he had never expected such things to happen. But struck by America's startling contradictions, magnificent possibilities, and wonderful energies, and moved by the spirit and determination of its people to resist British authority, he dedicated himself to the American cause, and through his pamphlet Common Sense and the American Crisis papers, he emboldened Americans to turn their colonial rebellion into a revolutionary war, defined the new nation in a democratically expansive and progressive fashion, and articulated an American identity charged with exceptional purpose and promise. Five feet ten inches tall, with a full head of dark hair and striking blue eyes, Paine was inquisitive, gregarious, and compssionate, yet strong-willed, combative, and ever ready to argue about and fight for the good and the right.

At war's end Paine was a popular hero, known by all as "Common Sense." Joel Barlow, American diplomat and poet, who had served as a chaplain to the Continental Army, wrote: "without the pen of Paine, the sword of Washington would have been wielded in vain." And yet Paine was not finished. To him, America possessed extraordinary political, economic, and cultural potential. But he did not see that potential as belonging to Americans alone.

Reared an Englishman, adopted by America, and honored as a Frenchman, Paine often called himself a "citizen of the world." But the United States always remained paramount in his thoughts and evident in his labors, and his later writings continued to shape the young nation's events and developments. And yet as great as his contributions were, they were not always appreciated, and his affections were not always reciprocated. Paine's democratic arguments, style, and appeal-as well as his social background, confidence, and single-mindedness-antagonized many among the powerful, propertied, prestigious, and pious and made him enemies even within the ranks of his fellow patriots. (Harvey J. Kaye, Thomas Paine and the Promise of the America)

Newswise — Employees who have more control over their daily activities and can do challenging work that they enjoy are likely to be in better health, new research suggests.

“The most important finding is that creative activity helps people stay healthy,” said lead author John Mirowsky, a sociology professor with the Population Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin. “Creative activity is non-routine, enjoyable and provides opportunity for learning and for solving problems. People who do that kind of work, whether paid or not, feel healthier and have fewer physical problems.”

Moreover, although people who work give up some independence, the study found that having a job does lead to better health.

“One thing that surprised us was that the daily activities of employed persons are more creative than those of non-employed persons of the same sex, age and level of education,” Mirowsky said.

The study, which appears in the December issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, comprised 2,592 adults who responded to a 1995 national telephone survey; researchers followed up respondents in 1998. The survey addressed general health, physical functioning, how people spent their time on a daily basis and whether their work, even if unpaid, gave them a chance to learn new things or do things they enjoy.

“The health advantage of being somewhat above average in creative work [in the 60th percentile] versus being somewhat below average [in the 40th percentile] is equal to being 6.7 years younger,” Mirowsky said. It is also equal to having two more years of education or 15 times greater household income, he added.

Although the authors did not examine specific job positions that could confer this health advantage, professions considered not to involve a “creative” environment were those such as assembly lines.

Rather, jobs that are high-status, with managerial authority, or that require complex work with data generally provide more access to creative work, Mirowsky said. However, he added, “People with a wide variety of jobs manage to find ways to make them creative.”

The Journal of Health and Social Behavior is the quarterly journal of the American Sociological Association. Contact Sujata Sinha, Media Relations Officer at (202) 247-9871 or ssinha@asanet.org

Mirowsky J, Ross CE. Creative work and health. J Health Soc Behav 48(4), 2007.

Why do some people solve problems more creatively than others? Are people who think creatively somehow different from those who tend to think in a more methodical fashion?

These questions are part of a long-standing debate, with some researchers arguing that what we call “creative thought” and “noncreative thought” are not basically different. If this is the case, then people who are thought of as creative do not really think in a fundamentally different way from those who are thought of as noncreative. On the other side of this debate, some researchers have argued that creative thought is fundamentally different from other forms of thought. If this is true, then those who tend to think creatively really are somehow different.

A new study led by John Kounios, professor of psychology at Drexel University and Mark Jung-Beeman of Northwestern University addresses these questions by comparing the brain activity of creative and noncreative problem solvers. The study published in the journal Neuropsychologia, reveals a distinct pattern of brain activity, even at rest, in people who tend to solve problems with a sudden creative insight -- an “Aha! Moment” – compared to people who tend to solve problems more methodically.

At the beginning of the study, participants relaxed quietly for seven minutes while their electroencephalograms (EEGs) were recorded to show their brain activity. The participants were not given any task to perform and told they could think about whatever they wanted. Later, they were asked to solve a series of anagrams – scrambled letters that can be rearranged to form words [MPXAELE = EXAMPLE]. These can be solved by deliberately and methodically trying out different letter combinations, or they can be solved with a sudden insight or “Aha!” in which the solution pops into awareness. After each successful solution, participants indicated in which way the solution had come to them.

The participants were then divided into two groups – those who reported solving the problems mostly by sudden insight, and those who reported solving the problems more methodically – and resting-state brain activity for these groups was compared. As predicted, the two groups displayed strikingly different patterns of brain activity during the resting period at the beginning of the experiment – before they knew they would have to solve problems or even knew what the study was about.

One difference was that the creative solvers exhibited greater activity in several regions of the right hemisphere. Previous research has suggested that the right hemisphere of the brain plays a special role in solving problems with creative insight, likely due to right-hemisphere involvement in the processing of loose or “remote” associations between the elements of a problem, which is understood to be an important component of creative thought. The current study shows that greater right-hemisphere activity occurs even during a “resting” state in those with a tendency to solve problems by creative insight. This finding suggests that even the spontaneous thought of creative individuals, such as in their daydreams, contains more remote associations.

Second, creative and methodical solvers exhibited different activity in areas of the brain that process visual information. The pattern of “alpha” and “beta” brainwaves in creative solvers was consistent with diffuse rather than focused visual attention. This may allow creative individuals to broadly sample the environment for experiences that can trigger remote associations to produce an Aha! Moment. For example, a glimpse of an advertisement on a billboard or a word spoken in an overheard conversation could spark an association that leads to a solution. In contrast, the more focused attention of methodical solvers reduces their distractibility, allowing them to effectively solve problems for which the solution strategy is already known, as would be the case for balancing a checkbook or baking a cake using a known recipe.

Thus, the new study shows that basic differences in brain activity between creative and methodical problem solvers exist and are evident even when these individuals are not working on a problem. According to Kounios, “Problem solving, whether creative or methodical, doesn’t begin from scratch when a person starts to work on a problem. His or her pre-existing brain-state biases a person to use a creative or a methodical strategy.”

In addition to contributing to current knowledge about the neural basis of creativity, this study suggests the possible development of new brain imaging techniques for assessing potential for creative thought, and for assessing the effectiveness of methods for training individuals to think creatively.

Kounios, J., Fleck, J.I., Green, D.L., Payne, L., Stevenson, J.L., Bowden, M., & Jung- Beeman, M. (2008). The origins of insight in resting-state brain activity. Neuropsychologia, 46, 281-291.

See also:

Jung-Beeman, M., Bowden, E.M., Haberman, J., Frymiare, J.L., Arambel-Liu, S., Greenblatt, R., Reber, P.J., & Kounios, J. (2004). Neural activity when people solve verbal problems with insight. PLoS Biology, 2, 500-510.

Kounios, J., Frymiare, J.L., Bowden, E.M., Fleck, J.I., Subramaniam, K., Parrish, T.B., & Jung-Beeman, M.J. (2006). The prepared mind: Neural activity prior to problem presentation predicts subsequent solution by sudden insight. Psychological Science, 17, 882-890.

Reputation and money: New insights into how the brain processes social, economic reward

Researchers have mapped the brain regions that process social standing and money rewards, yielding new insights that they said will aid understanding of the basis of social behaviors.

They published their findings in two papers in the April 24, 2008, issue of the journal Neuron, published by Cell Press.

In one paper, Norihiro Sadato and colleagues found that making money and making a reputation engage much of the same reward circuitry in the brain—a finding that they say yields insight into what drives complex social behaviors.

In the other paper, Caroline Zink and colleagues mapped brain regions that are active when a person is processing information on social status. The researchers said their findings could yield insight into why social status can so profoundly affect behavior and health.

Also, the papers’ findings could offer an understanding of why drug treatments for such neurological disorders as Parkinson’s disease can trigger abnormal money-related behaviors such as compulsive gambling, commented Rebecca Saxe and Johannes Haushofer in a preview of the two papers in the same issue of Neuron.

In the first paper, Sadato and colleagues compared the activation of specific areas of volunteers’ brains as they took part in two experiments in which they received either money or social rewards. During the experiments, the researchers scanned the subjects’ brains using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), in which harmless magnetic fields and radio waves are used to measure blood flow in brain regions, which reflects activity.

In the monetary reward experiments, the subjects were told they were playing a gambling game, in which they chose one of three cards to receive a payoff. However, the researchers manipulated the game so that they could determine the brain activity triggered by high rewards.

In the social reward experiment, the subjects were told that strangers would be evaluating them based on information from a personality questionnaire and a video they made introducing themselves. The subjects were shown a picture of themselves, along with the word or phrase indicating how the strangers had evaluated them. However, the strangers did not really exist, and the researchers showed the subjects predetermined evaluations that allowed the researchers to manipulate the level of social reward experienced by the subjects.

Sadato and colleagues found that both the monetary and social rewards activated a reward-related area of the brain called the striatum.

“By directly contrasting the brain activities of the same subjects in relation to the delivery of social and monetary rewards, our results clearly show that social approval shares the same neural basis as monetary rewards, thus providing strong support for the idea of a ‘common neural currency’ of reward,” concluded the researchers.

They wrote that their findings “indicate that the social reward of a good reputation should be incorporated into the neural model of human decision making in a similar manner to monetary rewards.” Thus, they wrote, experiments on decision making that use money-related games need to take into account that the subjects are exchanging more than money; they are also dealing in approval and reputation.

“Our findings indicate that the social reward of a good reputation in the eyes of others is processed in an anatomically and functionally similar manner to monetary rewards, and these results represent an essential step toward a complete neural understanding of human social behaviors,” concluded Sadato and colleagues.

In the second Neuron paper, Zink and colleagues explored the neural regions activated when people process information on their social status. Such insights, they said, are significant because social hierarchies are important factors in social behavior, and “in humans, social status strongly predicts well-being, morbidity, and even survival.”

In their experiments, the researchers set up artificial social hierarchies by asking volunteers to play simple interactive games for a money reward. Each of the volunteers was told that they were playing the games along with two other players, one of whom was a superior player and one an inferior player. However, in reality, the other players did not exist, and the game outcomes were manipulated so that the researchers could control the social status of the player. To give the illusion that the other players existed, the subjects saw the other players’ images on the screen during play. Importantly, the games were noncompetitive, so that the researchers could measure only social status and its change.

During the games, the subjects’ brains were scanned using fMRI, so the researchers could map the brain regions active during different conditions of social hierarchy.

In the first experiment, the researchers kept the social hierarchy stable. The subjects were asked to respond as quickly as possible when a blue circle on a computer screen changed to green. Throughout the game, the players’ status did not change relative to the other “players.”

In the second experiment, the researchers made the social hierarchy unstable, manipulating the outcome so that the player might do better or worse than the other “players.” In that game, the player was asked to respond as quickly as possible to indicate which of two boxes on the computer screen contained the most black dots. Periodically during the game, the player would be told whether his/her status was rising or falling compared to the other “players.”

In the third experiment, the researchers told the players they were playing against a computer, allowing the researchers to pinpoint the brain regions specifically activated by social behavior.

The researchers found they could distinguish brain regions that were more active when the subjects thought they were viewing a superior person compared with an inferior person, implicating these brain regions in the neural encoding of hierarchical rank.

Also, the researchers could distinguish brain areas that were particularly active when social hierarchy was changing. These areas included those involved in social emotional processing and social cognition.

“We conclude that activity in these regions represents an emotional arousal response to the superior player that only arises when the hierarchy is dynamic, i.e., when relative performance, although irrelevant for the game outcome, can have social hierarchical consequences,” wrote the researchers.

Zink and colleagues wrote that “our findings demonstrate that brain responses to superiority and inferiority are dissociable, even in the absence of explicit competition, both when encountering an individual of a particular status and when faced with an outcome that can affect one’s current position in the hierarchy. We hope that this research leads to identification of neural mechanisms mediating the enormous impact of social status on decision-making, health, and survival in humans.”

“One immediate implication of these results is for patients with dysfunction of these brain regions,” wrote Saxe and Haushofer in their preview. “The striatum is among the targets of some neurological disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease (PD). Overtreatment of PD with dopamine agonists is known to induce abnormal economic decision-making, including compulsive gambling. If the same brain structures are responsible for the reward-value of love and reputation, pharmacological manipulation of the striatum may also have social consequences.”

Article 1:

The researchers include Keise Izuma, National Institute for Physiological Sciences (NIPS), Aichi, Japan, The Graduate University for Advanced Studies, Kanagawa, Japan; Daisuke N. Saito, National Institute for Physiological Sciences (NIPS), Aichi, Japan, Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST)/Research Institute of Science and Technology for Society (RISTEX), Tokyo, Japan; and Norihiro Sadato, National Institute for Physiological Sciences (NIPS), Aichi, Japan, The Graduate University for Advanced Studies, Kanagawa, Japan, Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST)/Research Institute of Science and Technology for Society (RISTEX), Tokyo, Japan, Biomedical Imaging Research Center (BIRC), University of Fukui, Fukui, Japan.

Article 2:

The researchers include Caroline F. Zink, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, Bethesda, MD; Yunxia Tong, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, Bethesda, MD; Qiang Chen, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, Bethesda, MD; Danielle S. Bassett, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, Bethesda, MD; Jason L. Stein, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, Bethesda, MD; and Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, Bethesda, MD, Central Institute of Mental Health, Mannheim, Germany.

Praise = money?

A new neural evidence suggests that the brain's reward system works similarly for both praise and money

Why are we nice to others? One answer provided by social psychologists is because it pays off. A social psychological theory stated that we do something nice to others for a good reputation or social approval just like we work for salary.

Consistent with this idea, a research team led by Norihiro Sadato, a professor, at the Japanese National Institute for Physiological Sciences, NIPS (SEIRIKEN), and Keise Izuma, a graduate student of the Graduate University for Advanced Studies, in Okazaki, Japan, now have neural evidence that perceiving one's good reputation formed by others activates the striatum, the brain's reward system, in a similar manner to monetary reward. The team reports their findings on April 24 in NEURON (Cell Press).

The research group conducted functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments on 19 people with monetary and social rewards. The acquisition of one's good reputation robustly activated reward-related brain areas, notably the striatum, and these overlapped with the areas activated by monetary rewards. These results strongly suggest that social reward is processed in the striatum like monetary reward.

Considering a pivotal role played by a good reputation in social interactions, this study provides an important first step toward neural explanation for our everyday social behaviors.

This website: What is Motivation; Optimism, Happiness, Self-Esteem, Creativity, Competency, Intrinsic Motivation, Meditation, Inspiration, Coaching, Life Coach, Motivational, Mindfulness .

"What a man knows about himself inside that makes him afraid" Clint Eastwood in High Plains Drifter Movie; Screen Play by Ernest Tidyman.