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Matahati Consulting is center of human resource development, founded in 21 December 1999. At the beginning, Matahati is a community that care to human problem and education in Indonesia. Semenjak January 2001, Matahati placed it-self was as [the] strategic partner for HR Manager in Indonesia pass by Matahati Learning Centre (MLC). Pass by MLC, had been more than 6 year experienced develop character and performance that produce comitment and integrity in psychology dimension that wrapped in Matahati Approach "MEMBUKA JENDELA HATI", finally participants will be able to finds aplomb each and comitment of in the world of reality. At February 2002, Matahati Consulting intensively helps company and institution in course of employee recruitment. Potential Review and Assessment, in accordance with its mission to become source or fulfill potential candidate in organization. Matahati Consulting also personates Event Organizer for development Harmonizing Working Climate by perform Employee Gathering Activities. Family gathering and Outbound Company with more interactive package and innovative. This condition can improve value and organization comitment, either from management and worker, finally expected can improve work productivity and organization earnings.

Mission
- Give solution and service best going concern for business partner.
- Develop activity ethos bases unity and it-self comitment.
- Become main source for organized potential candidate accomplishment.

Vision
- Become strategic partner in developing resources management.
- Develop activity ethos and fulfill potential candidate with philosophy Matahati.

Matahati Customer List

• PT. Astra Honda Motor
  
• PT. Pandu Dayatama Patria
  
• PT. Musashi Auto Parts Indonesia
• PT. Yutaka Manufacturing Indonesia
  
• PT. Politeknik Manufactur Astra
  
• PT. Multistrada Arah Sarana
  
• PT. Pencil Lead Indonesia - Faber Castle
• PT. Bakrie Pipe Industrie
• Femina Group
• PT. Megalopolis Manunggal Industrial Development
• FKKSM - MM2100 Cibitung
• Kantor Pelayanan Pajak Pasar Minggu
• Kinasih Conference, Outbound, Resort
• Akademi Sekretaris Management Indonesia - Jakarta
• Universitas Persada Indonesia ( YAI )
• SMKN 2 Solo
• Garuda Food
• Batasa Tazkia
• BPD Kaltim
• Pemerintah Daerah Maluku
• Prodia
• Mega Life
• PT. Indonesia Epson Industry
• Summit Auto Group
• PT. Adhinusa Lestari Jaya
• PT. Matahari Putra Prima
• Industrial Clinic Services
• FKM UI
• PT. Armeta Indah Otsuka
• PT. Agrindo Mega
• PD. Sinar Mas
• Twin Plaza Hotel
• PT. Bratasena Indra Prasta Perkasa
• Metro TV
• PT. Trigana Khatulistiwa
• Swisscontact
• PT. Pembangkitan Jawa Bali
• Cifor
• Sumitomo Indonesia
• RSB Amanda
• PT. Rekatama
• Faber Castle Group

Matahati Consulting Recruitment Spesialist - People Development - Assessment Centre - Outbound Activity - Employee Gathering Organizer

Lead to Feature

Oregon may lead future of wave energy

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Significant advances in university research and other studies in the past two years are pointing toward Oregon as the possible epicenter of wave energy development in the United States.

This may lead to a major initiative to expand a technology that is now in its engineering infancy, and tap the constant heave of the oceans for a new era of clean, affordable and renewable electrical power.

Electrical engineers at Oregon State University have pioneered the development of technologies to take advantage of wave power in ways that are reliable, maintainable and able to survive a hostile ocean environment. The OSU College of Engineering also has a host of other facilities that would make it an ideal site for more advanced research.

Last fall, the Electric Power Research Institute finished a study which concluded that a site off Reedsport, Ore., would be the optimal location in the entire nation to develop a wave energy test and demonstration facility.

And on Wednesday, EPRI and the Oregon Department of Energy will meet in Portland, Ore., to bring together potential partners in this field to explore the future of wave energy development in the U.S.

At that meeting, OSU officials will present their vision for a U.S. Ocean Energy Research and Demonstration Center based in Oregon, which they believe could move this promising technology from a laboratory concept to a major contributor to the nation's energy needs. The center would evaluate existing wave energy systems and help create, test and implement new ones.

"The world's oceans are an extremely promising source of clean energy," said Annette von Jouanne, an OSU professor of electrical engineering. "The technology is still in experimental stages, but we've made enough progress in the past couple years that it's time to start planning a working research and demonstration facility. And the new EPRI study indicates that a site off the central Oregon coast is probably the best place in the country to do that."

The Reedsport site, experts say, has a combination of good wave action, an appropriate undersea terrain, and the presence of existing marine access and terrestrial electric transmission lines that would facilitate the creation of a test center.

OSU, in addition, has the highest-power energy systems laboratory of any university in the nation, a proximity to the Reedsport site, one of the leading research programs on ocean energy in the country, and the unique capabilities of the university's O. H. Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory, including a 340-foot-long wave flume and the world's largest tsunami wave basin.

Compared to other forms of renewable energy production such as wind turbines, the development of ocean and wave energy has barely begun. But there are some operating systems in Europe, and the theoretical potential of this clean, inexhaustible form of energy is enormous – experts estimate that 0.2 percent of the ocean's untapped energy could power the entire world.

"The development of wave energy right now is probably 15-20 years behind wind energy, which is just now starting to achieve some optimal production technologies," said Alan Wallace, the co-principal investigator at OSU on these projects, and a professor of electrical engineering.

"And just like wind energy, these systems will be more expensive at first, and then the cost will come down and become very competitive," Wallace said. "But this is really groundbreaking research that can be of enormous value to society, and it's amazing all of the people who want to get involved."

The list of potential collaborators is long, von Jouanne said, but already includes the Oregon Department of Energy, EPRI, the Bonneville Power Administration, Bonneville Environmental Foundation, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, National Science Foundation, the Oregon Sea Grant Program, U.S. Department of Energy, Lincoln County Public Utility District, and U.S. Navy. Not to mention students from all over the world who are contacting the OSU engineers, hoping to join in research on the energy technology of the future.

"The Oregon Department of Energy is interested in the potential for wave energy in Oregon, which may prove to be a viable resource for clean, renewable energy," said Justin Klure, senior policy analyst with the Oregon Department of Energy. "At the upcoming meeting, we'll discuss the current state of wave energy technology, and coordinate with those individuals who may play a role in bringing a demonstration project to Oregon.

"There is much to discuss, including the costs of a demonstration project, the permitting and siting issues, the need for collaborative research, and other challenges."

There are multiple ways to tap the energy of the ocean, including its tides, thermal features and salinity. But wave energy appears to be the most promising and closest to commercial production. In recent studies, OSU has already created three prototypes of devices that could be used to harness wave energy – a permanent magnet linear generator, a permanent magnet rack and pinion gearbox, and a contactless direct drive generator buoy.

Some systems are very complex, and more vulnerable than others to the vagaries of severe ocean conditions. One of the most promising "direct drive" systems being studied at OSU is essentially a buoy that just moves up and down with large ocean swells, anchored about one or two miles offshore in more than 100 feet of water.

"What you want are nice, gradual, repetitive ocean swells," Wallace said. "Inside the buoy, this causes electrical coils to move through a magnetic field, inducing a voltage and creating electricity."

With this type of system, it would be possible to crank the buoy beneath the ocean surface to survive severe storm conditions or tsunamis, von Jouanne said.

The OSU engineers say that a buoy about 12 feet wide and 12 feet tall, rolling up and down in the ocean swells could produce 250 kilowatts per unit – a modest-sized network of about 200 such buoys could power the business district of downtown Portland. And the winter, the period of highest wave energy electrical production, also coincides with peak electricity demands in the Pacific Northwest.

"One of the other extremely promising possibilities with wave energy is the ability to scale these systems either up or down in size, whatever you need to fit the electrical demand," von Jouanne said. "Small systems could even be used with individual boats at anchor to generate their own electricity."

"We haven't even begun to figure out all of the potential uses of wave energy," she said. "But wherever this takes us, we believe that Oregon can and should be the national leader."

Success Story Soichiro Honda

Success Story Soichiro Honda

Soichiro Honda created a motor vehicle industry when it should have been impossible. The time for that was the turn of the century, when Ford, Peugeot, and Daimler were created. Shipbuilding magnate Henry J. Kaiser tried to break into the auto business in 1947, and lasted only a decade. The territory was taken, transportation was a mature industry, and its giants wanted no new competitors. By mid-century, one man could no longer create such a manufacturing empire.

Yet Honda did. It's easy to say that postwar Japan needed transportation, and Honda seized the moment. Yet so did many others, and where are they today? Japan had its own established giants, but Honda somehow made himself their equal.

This man, despite being a results-oriented pragmatist who suffered no fools gladly, was driven at the core by a dream. He was born at the junction of old and new, as Japan swept from agriculture to manufacturing. Strong contrasts filled his early life, as this blacksmith's son gazed with wonder at the future's new machines--engines, pumps and airplanes. Young Soichiro ran after the first car he saw, savoring its exotic breath. He dreamed of transcending the dusty road with machines that moved, that multiplied human abilities. And machinery made sense to him. Book-learning did not. He couldn't wait for school diplomas to unlock his future--he plunged into practical work with cars and engines.

Honda knew his own countrymen well enough to lead them, and he sought in others talents he himself did not have. He was no isolated engineering nerd, dreaming in private. Honda demanded practical results, and he found a way of working that brought those results. He learned to regard failures as necessary steps toward understanding. He instilled in others the drive to learn without fear of failure. Such was the road to success.

A motor vehicle empire is not created simply by acts of will or diligence. Honda discovered, with his attempts to make piston rings in 1937, that the physical world doesn't yield its secrets to effort alone. Its complexity requires study. Honda went back to school to add the insights of metallurgy to guide his hundreds of experiments. Work and study brought success, so that when he produced his first postwar motor-bicycles, he knew the value of continuous reinvestment in technology.

It was not enough to have a good idea, a strong will and a willingness to put in the hours. If you made a product no better and no worse than your competitor's, the customer had no reason to prefer yours. But reinvestment in technology offered something different--a way to grow ideas into useful new things that people would want. Japan's impressive heavy industries had emerged during Honda's youth, but he knew it would take something more to succeed in the turbulent 1950s.

Honda learned to reach goals by breaking with tradition and accepted views that stood between himself and his goals. His novel way of seeing the world owed much to his playful sense of humor. Learning early and through hard apprenticeship that unconventional ideas could work, he applied this directness to everything in his life. He showed famous disrespect for status, believing that work dignifies the workman, and that therefore work clothes and cap were equally appropriate for financial meetings or shop visits. He expected to be judged by his actions, not by the cut of his suit, and applied the same standard to his associates. Knowing himself, he knew that people of any education or background could have useful ideas.

Soichiro Honda's unconventional ways became the company's personality because he did not pursue the socially correct compromise path of consensus decision-making. He was everywhere in the flesh, checking the progress of R&D projects, visiting production shops, helping workers assemble an engine, injecting his own views, asking questions. Honda's way was to overturn the conventional to seek ideas so simple that traditional thinkers had overlooked them. In Soichiro Honda's view, engineering was not just applied science; it was imagination made real and useful. What do you need? We'll make it.

To make these things, Honda also changed marketing methods, and manufacturing. High quality comes from a creative combination of design for use and design for manufacturing, all aimed to hit a specific market need. A product that can be made in easy steps can be made well, and a product that does its job reliably pleases its users.

The step-through Honda Cub® was the first international success for the Honda® Motor Company, and it was a model for all the successes that were to follow. Recognize a need, create a unique way to satisfy it, incorporate unusual performance, quality and reliability, then build from an expanding reputation into yet other areas. This pattern defined the Honda Way. A need was recognized, and after trial and error, the trouble-free, easy-to-operate 50cc Cub was created.

Marketing targeted the general public with good, clean two-wheeled fun, and introduced millions to motorcycling. When the market was saturated, Honda had the vision to see that a similarly trouble-free kind of sports motorcycle could become equally popular, building on the proven reputation of the Cub. As that success expanded into many countries, Honda expanded its line, always offering customers a step up to more sophisticated models. Soon thereafter came auto production, and the rest of the story is familiar recent history.

The most difficult problems--those shunned by competitors--have been tackled by Honda engineers who know this is the best way to be prepared for the future. From the beginning, Honda sought the challenge of racing, and when his motorcycles won their first Grand Prix road racing title in 1961, the new company's engineering power was demonstrated to the world. Since then, racing has remained a valued element in Honda's development process. From Honda's continuing research and development, a long succession of technological triumphs has resulted--the low-emissions engines, variable valve timing, the latest lean-burn combustion system and minimalist alloy chassis are only a few. Because of work of this kind, Honda products are not commodities. They are unique.

This success was no accident. Soichiro Honda invented himself by hard trial and error, to succeed in difficult, fluid times. His company became an extension of himself, displaying his qualities, employing his methods. Honda's unconventional personality was an essential adaptation to an era of unpredictable, accelerating change, enabling the company, like the man, to make room for itself among less agile giants, to take and hold its place in history as a pioneer.

Born to Win

Executive Coaching-Success Training-Consultancy

Successful organizations know that quality results are achieved through their best people. Training & Developing leaders who can take your company to the top is an absolute MUST in today's competitive market.

The greatest challenge however is to align your professional Training & Development needs with your business objectives.

Leaders in business acknowledge that poor communication, lack of teamwork, low motivation and lack of clarity about primary objectives are some of the leading factors affecting productivity and profitability today. The only way to eliminate these ailments is by understanding their cause, taking the time to address the root causes head on and stop trying to fix the symptoms alone.

Training & Development in India has now come of age and highly professional methodologies with competent delivery and evaluation are available to take your organization to the next level.

Born To Win, meets your training & development interventions, to address the skill requirements of your personnel. Based at Chennai, India, we are available nationally.

The Value of Customer Satisfaction

What is the connection between customer satisfaction and the bottom line?

Ever wondered how much customer satisfaction is worth? We all know and accept that it is a strategic goal for all organisations involved in the delivery of customer service. Yet in all my experience as a professional in this arena, I have never come across a customer services director who could articulate the financial value of customer satisfaction to their business. Conversely, I have never met a Customer Service Director who wasn’t measured on it. How bizarre. Big business is happy to measure it but doesn’t know what it’s worth.

One of the reasons for the difficulty in making the connection, is the intangibility of customer churn. That is to say, how dissatisfied does a customer have to be before they leave and sign with the competition? What might be an intolerable experience for one customer may well exceed all expectations of another. Then there’s competition. What if there isn’t any? Before deregulation how concerned were the large utility companies with customer satisfaction or British Telecom come to that. Interesting therefore that the telecoms sector is where war is being waged on customer satisfaction. Could it be that high customer satisfaction attracts new customers and helps retain existing ones? Sounds like that could be worth something.

There is no question that customer satisfaction is difficult to measure, but why is measurement so essential?

As a student I opened my first bank as an adult with a major high street bank. They attracted me with their offer of a £10 deposit to the account. I stayed with them through the four years of University, through the gradually increasing overdraft, the unintentional forays beyond the overdraft limit, the lost ATM cards, the replacement cheque books, the minimal deposits, the regular and very small withdrawals. Except for the penalty charges for the overdraft excursions the bank made very little money out of me, and in fact incurred untold cost in maintaining me as a student customer.

All that effort, clearly with the goal of keeping me in my earning years and reaping back their investment. In fact I felt consciously loyal to them at that point and even recognised that it was my turn to pay them back. So why was their customer service so poor once I became a full-time employee? I stayed with them for several years using them for mortgage services, investments and insurances but eventually churned to one of the first telephone banks. I’ve been with them a few years now and every time I phone them they are aware of my recent communications with them, requests that I have made and they don’t try to sell an unwanted insurance policy at the end of every call.

The dissatisfaction that developed as I transitioned from a student lifestyle to a working lifestyle was sufficient after a few years to outweigh the goodwill they had built in looking after me as a student. So where did it all go wrong? They failed to treat me any differently as a worker to how they had dealt with me as a student. Letters informing me of a £2.50 step over the overdraft limit that cost me £15 in charges plus a £25 overdraft re-arrangement fee soon had me heading for the door.

Two important lessons that can be learnt from this are that you must treat your customers personally, and customer dissatisfaction will hit your bottom line.

If someone had asked me as a student how satisfied I was with my bank as a percentage, I would have replied 80%. Before I churned that would have dropped to 30%. It is possible that I would have churned had there been more competition in the market at the time. It took the launch of a brand new concept to push me over the edge. So in my case, in a semi-competitive market the threshold for churn was 30%. Assuming that at any given time a business has a percentage of customers at 30% satisfaction in danger of churning, and that a customer satisfaction score of 50% is sufficient to retain them, then an increase in customer satisfaction of 20% will retain all those customers at risk. How many are there and what are they worth?

I estimate that my own net-present lifetime value (throughout 35 years of employment) to a mobile phone company is £50,000 given that my average bill is £150 per month. I have already spent £18,000 on calls and even if that drops fifteen years before I retire, I’ll conservatively rack up another £32,000. Assuming that my telecoms provider has one million customers like me, and at any given time 10% are below the 30% satisfaction threshold, the lifetime value of a 20% increase in customer satisfaction across the board is £5billion, or £250million per percentage. Plug your own numbers in if you dare.

Makes you think and makes you realise the true value of customer satisfaction.

Stress and Depression

Stress and Deprssion

There appears to be a complex relationship among stressful situations, our mind and body's reaction to stress, and the onset of clinical depression. It is clear that some people develop depression after a stressful event in their lives. Events such as the death of a loved one, the loss of a job, or the end of a relationship are often negative and traumatic and cause great stress for many people. Stress can also occur as the result of a more positive event such as getting married, moving to a new city, or starting a new job. It is not uncommon for either positive or negative events to become a crisis that precedes the development of clinical depression.

Whether a stressful event itself can actually cause a person to become depressed is not fully known. There are times when we all must struggle with very painful situations in our lives. More times than not these changes do not result in a person becoming clinically depressed. In fact, sometimes people become depressed even when there is little or no stress in their lives and everything seems to be going very well. And, no single stressful event will cause depression to develop in every person. The same type of stressor may lead to depression in one person, but not another.

If a stressful experience causes a person to become depressed, it may happen indirectly. In other words, if a young woman with a family history of major depression suffers the death of a loved one, she may become clinically depressed. In this situation it is not necessarily the traumatic loss itself that caused the development of depression, but the combination of a genetic predisposition with the stressful event that made her vulnerable to becoming depressed.

For those who struggle with more chronic depression, the effects of stress may be more complicated. A stressful event such as a job loss or the death of a loved one is more likely to come before a first or second depressive episode. After that, further depressive episodes may develop spontaneously. It is not certain why stress may lead to depression in this way. However, researchers have theorized an explanation called the "kindling effect," or "kindling-sensitization hypothesis." This theory surmises that initial depressive episodes spark changes in the brain's chemistry and limbic system that make it more prone to developing future episodes of depression. This may be compared to the use of kindling wood to spark the flames of a campfire. Since early episodes of depression make a person more sensitive to developing depression, even small stressors can lead to later depressive episodes.

Some people may become depressed as a result of having to struggle with chronic stress. These constant difficulties may come in the form of having to juggle multiple roles at home and work, making major changes in lifestyle, being in an abusive environment, etc. They may also come with important and normal transitions in life such as late adolescence and early adulthood when many people separate from their families to establish their own independence. Middle age may require adjustment to changes in fertility and virility, children leaving the home, concern about job advancement, and a re-evaluation of accomplishments in life. Retirement is another time of major change as some people struggle with a reduction of position and finances. If a person is under continuous stress, a single difficult event may be more likely to induce a depressive episode. For instance, if a middle-aged woman is in an unhappy marriage, she may be more likely to become depressed after her youngest child leaves home for college. The event of her child leaving home may not by itself have been enough to lead to depression, but the constant stress of an unhappy marriage combined with this event may be enough to trigger clinical depression.

In studying how stressful events may lead to depression, researchers have developed a theory called, "learned helplessness." This theory states that when people experience chronic or repeated stressful events, they learn to feel helpless. This feeling of helplessness is strengthened when a person believes he or she has no control over the stressful situation. Although the research to support this theory was initially done with animals, the effects of learned helplessness may be seen in depressed humans. People who are depressed very often have negative beliefs about their ability to manage aspects of their lives based on perceived failures in the past. For example, imagine an adolescent girl living in a home with verbally abusive parents who tell her that she is stupid and cannot do anything right. Over time the young girl may believe her parents and come to doubt her abilities and self-worth. She may begin to feel helpless and believe that most things are beyond her control. This feeling of helplessness may make her vulnerable to developing clinical depression at some point in her life.

10 Mental Blocks to Creative Thinking?

Do You Recognize These 10 Mental Blocks to Creative Thinking?

Whether you’re trying to solve a tough problem, start a business, get attention for that business or write an interesting article, creative thinking is crucial. The process boils down to changing your perspective and seeing things differently than you currently do.

People like to call this “thinking outside of the box,” which is the wrong way to look at it. Just like Neo needed to understand that “there is no spoon” in the film The Matrix, you need to realize “there is no box” to step outside of.

You create your own imaginary boxes simply by living life and accepting certain things as “real” when they are just as illusory as the beliefs of a paranoid delusional. The difference is, enough people agree that certain man-made concepts are “real,” so you’re viewed as “normal.” This is good for society overall, but it’s that sort of unquestioning consensus that inhibits your natural creative abilities.

So, rather than looking for ways to inspire creativity, you should just realize the truth. You’re already capable of creative thinking at all times, but you have to strip away the imaginary mental blocks (or boxes) that you’ve picked up along the way to wherever you are today.

I like to keep this list of 10 common ways we suppress our natural creative abilities nearby when I get stuck. It helps me realize that the barriers to a good idea are truly all in my head.

1. Trying to Find the “Right” Answer

One of the worst aspects of formal education is the focus on the correct answer to a particular question or problem. While this approach helps us function in society, it hurts creative thinking because real-life issues are ambiguous. There’s often more than one “correct” answer, and the second one you come up with might be better than the first.

Many of the following mental blocks can be turned around to reveal ways to find more than one answer to any given problem. Try reframing the issue in several different ways in order to prompt different answers, and embrace answering inherently ambiguous questions in several different ways.

2. Logical Thinking

Not only is real life ambiguous, it’s often illogical to the point of madness. While critical thinking skills based on logic are one of our main strengths in evaluating the feasibility of a creative idea, it’s often the enemy of truly innovative thoughts in the first place.

One of the best ways to escape the constraints of your own logical mind is to think metaphorically. One of the reasons why metaphors work so well in communications is that we accept them as true without thinking about it. When you realize that “truth” is often symbolic, you’ll often find that you are actually free to come up with alternatives.

3. Following Rules

One way to view creative thinking is to look at it as a destructive force. You’re tearing away the often arbitrary rules that others have set for you, and asking either “why” or “why not” whenever confronted with the way “everyone” does things.

This is easier said than done, since people will often defend the rules they follow even in the face of evidence that the rule doesn’t work. People love to celebrate rebels like Richard Branson, but few seem brave enough to emulate him. Quit worshipping rule breakers and start breaking some rules.

4. Being Practical

Like logic, practicality is hugely important when it comes to execution, but often stifles innovative ideas before they can properly blossom. Don’t allow the editor into the same room with your inner artist.

Try not to evaluate the actual feasibility of an approach until you’ve allowed it to exist on it’s own for a bit. Spend time asking “what if” as often as possible, and simply allow your imagination to go where it wants. You might just find yourself discovering a crazy idea that’s so insanely practical that no one’s thought of it before.

5. Play is Not Work

Allowing your mind to be at play is perhaps the most effective way to stimulate creative thinking, and yet many people disassociate play from work. These days, the people who can come up with great ideas and solutions are the most economically rewarded, while worker bees are often employed for the benefit of the creative thinkers.

You’ve heard the expression “work hard and play hard.” All you have to realize is that they’re the same thing to a creative thinker.

6. That’s Not My Job

In an era of hyper-specialization, it’s those who happily explore completely unrelated areas of life and knowledge who best see that everything is related. This goes back to what ad man Carl Ally said about creative persons—they want to be know-it-alls.

Sure, you’ve got to know the specialized stuff in your field, but if you view yourself as an explorer rather than a highly-specialized cog in the machine, you’ll run circles around the technical master in the success department.

7. Being a “Serious” Person

Most of what keeps us civilized boils down to conformity, consistency, shared values, and yes, thinking about things the same way everyone else does. There’s nothing wrong with that necessarily, but if you can mentally accept that it’s actually nothing more than groupthink that helps a society function, you can then give yourself permission to turn everything that’s accepted upside down and shake out the illusions.

Leaders from Egyptian pharaohs to Chinese emperors and European royalty have consulted with fools, or court jesters, when faced with tough problems. The persona of the fool allowed the truth to be told, without the usual ramifications that might come with speaking blasphemy or challenging ingrained social conventions. Give yourself permission to be a fool and see things for what they really are.

8. Avoiding Ambiguity

We rationally realize that most every situation is ambiguous to some degree. And although dividing complex situations into black and white boxes can lead to disaster, we still do it. It’s an innate characteristic of human psychology to desire certainty, but it’s the creative thinker who rejects the false comfort of clarity when it’s not really appropriate.

Ambiguity is your friend if you’re looking to innovate. The fact that most people are uncomfortable exploring uncertainty gives you an advantage, as long as you can embrace ambiguity rather than run from it.

9. Being Wrong is Bad

We hate being wrong, and yet mistakes often teach us the most. Thomas Edison was wrong 1,800 times before getting the light bulb right. Edison’s greatest strength was that he was not afraid to be wrong.

The best thing we do is learn from our mistakes, but we have to free ourselves to make mistakes in the first place. Just try out your ideas and see what happens, take what you learn, and try something else. Ask yourself, what’s the worst that can happen if I’m wrong? You’ll often find the benefits of being wrong greatly outweigh the ramifications.

10. I’m Not Creative

Denying your own creativity is like denying you’re a human being. We’re all limitlessly creative, but only to the extent that we realize that we create our own limits with the way we think. If you tell yourself you’re not creative, it becomes true. Stop that.

In that sense, awakening your own creativity is similar to the path reported by those who seek spiritual enlightenment. You’re already enlightened, just like you’re already creative, but you have to strip away all of your delusions before you can see it. Acknowledge that you’re inherently creative, and then start tearing down the other barriers you’ve allowed to be created in your mind.