How to Find Inspirations Again When You Feel Your Brain Is Running Out of Ideas? (By Tony D . Chen)

Many of my friends know that I am a musician, while also producing and hosting TV/radio programs. I have been involved in scoring for TV/movies too. This is indeed a work type that lots of people are curious about, but actually the job is very mentally challenging, sometimes you even feel that you are running out of inspirations. How can we find inspirations quickly if we have nothing in our heads facing program broadcasting or composition submission just the following day? Where are inspirations from? How can we have a steady stream of inspirations, while inspirations often suddenly come in a fragmented way? Is there a way for us to systematically plan these inspirations as a preparation for future music composing as well as program producing? Such logic plan should help to generate ideas when our inspirations are dried up. I believe the story behind is something very interesting to explore, right?

I'd like to share with you some of my personal experiences. I think the key is to explore and find the emotional resonating points between works of art and our own lives. The most straightforward example is that all these great touching music pieces resonate our lives and moods at that time.

Music itself is a work of art, which has its unique value - skill or technique, melody, harmony forming a field of art. High skill level is developed through a person's high quality or character. He has his own feelings of satisfaction via mastering musical skills - enjoying the freedom of being able to playing with various music theories/laws in whatever ways he wants. It's a feeling out of this world. The brain is clean and simple, but embracing various laws of music in his heart. It's like a musician showing his mastery of music through different and breathtaking combinations of musical ideas, just like a magician of music. The higher his mental realm is, the higher his magic is. That's another kind of resonance between the divine side of man and music. This type of resonance is beyond emotion.

However, this content can be hardly understood by everyday people. The majority of people are normally more used to accept simple melodic ideas that bringing them delicate feelings or moods, which is more direct and intuitive. When a piece of music resonates with people, we can surely also be able to appreciate the significance of the existence of musical skills, which help to accurately express the feelings that resonate. This is the time of you already melting into the music, linking your own life to the music. That's how music moves you.

Say if I tell you that the chord used in this music bar is "Am". It means nothing for a person with no music background. However, if I let you hear the music effect first, then I tell you this is "Am" when you are feeling moved by the music effect, you would naturally understand what the music color and emotion of "Am" are. "Am" then has its meaning.

So in my view, the connection between music and people is a combination of two worlds - the independent world of musical skills and the world of human emotions. Of course, there are a lot smaller worlds inside the two worlds too.

Inside the world of musical skills, there are elements such as chord root, overtone, harmony, as well as music notation, etc. Each element is also a world. That's a lot of worlds, right?

It's the same for the world of human emotion as well! There are love, hate, passion, hatred, happiness, sadness, low self-esteem, ego, etc. Each emotion element/mood is a kind of world, inside which there is a reason that caused the mood to happen. Then the reason is also a story, which contains other people's reasons and moods. There is mood inside the reason of the reason, and there is reason inside the mood of the mood... Therefore, the job of looking for inspirations is to explore what the mood is, what the reason causing the mood is, what the mood causing that reason is, what the mood responsible for that reason's reason is... And so on.

Reason - Mood Changes - Action - Reason

As you can see above, mood changes trigger further actions, becoming the causes of the next mood changes, which triggers further actions again... Basically when you start your brain storming, you can start from any one of the three.

Therefore, if we are following this logic, it seems that the material selections for music, radio and TV are inexhaustible at all, right? Actually even drama scripts are easier to write following this logic too, right? Then the job is just to select the positive selections rather than negative ones... This is the important part.

In short, I am here to freely talk about my feelings of doing music and shows... Let me know what you think about finding inspirations too!

https://ezinearticles.com/?How-to-Find-Inspirations-Again-When-You-Feel-Your-Brain-Is-Running-Out-of-Ideas?&id=8649970

Live Like A Hero

Ever notice the first words invariably spoken when we recognize a hero publicly? "I never felt like a hero, I'm no hero," these words are the mantra of heroes. Regardless of the nature of their actions being hailed as heroic, they saw nothing unusual in their response. What is the difference in these people and those who stare in admiration at their acts? They have always lived like a hero; one day they were called on to act like a hero.

Heroes spend a lifetime following a creed of honor and respect for others. What traits are normally found in them?

1) They act responsibly in every situation.

2) They live compassionately, tending to look beyond weakness in others as they seek to find and focus on their strengths.

3) Reliability is their creed. They take pride in establishing relationships where they expect others to know they will be there for them. And they are.

4) They stand strong in the face of adversity.

5) They take the time to know themselves, to recognize and improve on their weaknesses while maintaining their strengths.

6) They avoid idle chatter, preferring to shoot straight and seek solutions rather than criticizing others efforts that may be failing.

7) They have an innate ability to understand that life is a series of head-on collisions; they wear a mental helmet of faith, hope and integrity. They live expecting the best possible outcome.

8) They rarely have a plan B. They understand that you get what you prepare for; they always prepare for what they may be called to act upon.

9) Injustice in any form ignites a passionate response in them; for them it is intolerable.

10) They are intuitive, seeming to know when and how to act and react to situations.

These are good old-fashioned traits that many parents continue to build and embrace in raising their family to be productive members of society. Look closely behind the hero and you will likely find parents or some adult or affiliation that embraced character building.

Heroes are not born; they are raised to embrace standards that encompass empathy, compassion, respect for self and others, to act responsibly and to embrace faith in their life. If you weren't raised that way you can still embrace the traits that create the best possible response to every situation. Even if you are never recognized publicly, you can be sure you will face the time when you are called on to be a hero allowing you to touch another person in a life altering situation. You may never know that you were their hero, but they will. It begins with choosing to live like a hero; if you do, you will always be prepared to act like one.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Live-Like-A-Hero&id=9585117

Why Ambiverts Are More Successful and Influential Than Extroverts

The lesser known personality type "ambivert" is a good balance between introversion and extroversion.

Are you an introvert or an extrovert?

You probably already have some idea. Personality-type testing is common in school and the workplace. Understanding personality types helps us identify strengths, pinpoint weaknesses, and cooperate better with others.

The two personality types are polar opposites of one another, yet for the longest time, you were just one or the other, to some degree.

There's a far more common personality type, though--one that falls in the middle of the introverted-extroverted spectrum. See, in order to be either an introvert or an extrovert, you have to be heavier in one type of trait than the other.

Ambivert, the Lost Personality Type

More outspoken, socially adept people who venture forth with confidence are easy to peg as extroverts. Those who isolate themselves, are more formal, talk less, and prefer to stay out of the limelight clearly leaned toward introversion.

Could it really be that simple, though? Not according to Carl Jung, who identified a third personality type on the introverted-extroverted spectrum--but it's one that we hardly hear anything about. In the classic Psychological Types, Jung wrote:

"There is, finally, a third group … the most numerous and includes the less differentiated normal man … He constitutes the extensive middle group."

This middle group consists of the ambiverts.

Extroverts Make Better Salespeople … Or So We Thought

Ambiverts are not only more common that you might think but also more successful and influential.

In his 2013 research paper Rethinking the Extraverted Sales Ideal: The Ambivert Advantage, The Wharton School's Adam M. Grant examined the correlation between extroversion and sales aptitude. It's long been assumed that being extroverted makes one a better salesperson. Grant found that the relationship between extroversion and sales performance is actually quite weak.

So who does it better? The ambiverts.

"Ambiverts achieve greater sales productivity than extraverts or introverts do," he wrote. "Because they naturally engage in a flexible pattern of talking and listening, ambiverts are likely to express sufficient assertiveness and enthusiasm to persuade and close a sale but are more inclined to listen to customers' interests and less vulnerable to appearing too excited or overconfident."

The Ambivert Advantage

What is it that makes ambiverts more successful in sales, with traits that surely translate into success and influence in other areas as well?

In one word: balance. Ambiverts have introvert and extrovert traits, but in balance. See if you recognize any of these ambivert traits:

1. Ambiverts are more flexible. They don't really prefer one way of functioning over the other. Mateo Sol described ambiverts as "… the neutral, middle-ground hippies … equally comfortable in situations where the introvert feels most at home and the extrovert is having a good time."
2. They're more emotionally stable. Extroverts are not easily influenced by outside factors, while introverts are hypersensitive. Ambiverts offer a good balance between the two and are referred to as the stability "normal" by famed psychologist Hans Eysenck, who coined the term "ambivert" in 1947.
3. Ambiverts are intuitive. This is a quality that serves them well in life and in business. As journalist Daniel K. Pink wrote, ambiverts "know when to speak up and when to shut up, when to inspect and when to respond, when to push and when to hold back."
4. They're more influential. In Grant's sales experiment, ambiverts earned average hourly revenues of $155--24% higher than extroverts. People at either extreme end of the introvert-extrovert scale had the worst sales, while those smack in the middle had the highest, at $208 per hour.

There you go. The next time someone asks you your personality type, you won't have to stumble through some explanation of how you're extroverted in some situations but have introverted moments--and don't identify completely with one or the other.

Just tell them you're an ambivert. Chances are that's exactly what you are--an ambivert, as most of us are. 

http://www.inc.com/larry-kim/ambiverts-are-more-successful-amp-influential-than-extroverts-here-s-why.html