Resources, links: Moving toward inner peace

Page contents

1. Misc.; to categorize later
2. Free audio: Motivational, spiritual, inspirational, etc.
3. Critical thought
4. Great spiritual books I’ve read

Misc.; to categorize later

• The Four Agreements: Toltec Wisdom by Don Miguel Ruiz M.D. (Brief summary; PDF)

Positive content

1. Prescriptions for Life: How to Attain Your Goals, Great and Small, and Create a Life You Love

Free audio

Here are some online resources for positive, success- and happiness-oriented audio programs that are completely free – Motivational, spiritual, inspirational, etc. Some also include video.

Lists of good resources (Link collections, lists of free audio resources)

1. Free Motivational MP3s: The Best Free Internet Business Success Positive Thinking Websites
2. Educational MP3s (Ready to download) – from Nightingale-Conant

Individual links (Direct links to the resource)

1. Jim Rohn: A Life and Legacy (2 hrs.) – Video and audio

Critical thinking: The Six (6) Hats

These ideas originally came from the book Six Thinking Hats, by Edward de Bono.

Book description (Amazon):
Six Thinking Hats can help you think better-with its practical and uniquely positive approach to making decisions and exploring new ideas. It is an approach that thousands of business managers, educators, and government leaders around the world have already adopted with great success. “The main difficulty of thinking is confusion,” writes Edward de Bono, long recognized as the foremost international authority on conceptual thinking and on the teaching of thinking as a skill. “We try to do too much at once. Emotions, information, logic, hope, and creativity all crowd in on us. It is like juggling with too many balls.”

The solution? De Bono unscrambles the thinking process with his “six thinking hats”:

1. White hat: Neutral and objective, concerned with facts and figures… With this thinking hat you focus on the data available. Look at the information you have, and see what you can learn from it. Look for gaps in your knowledge, and either try to fill them or take account of them. This is where you analyze past trends, and try to extrapolate from historical data.
2. Red hat: ‘Wearing’ the red hat, you look at problems using intuition, gut reaction, and emotion. Also try to think how other people will react emotionally. Try to understand the responses of people who do not fully know your reasoning. The red hat represents the common emotional viewpoint for successful advertising – and also in preaching and converting, spreading religious fundamentalism, etc…
3. Black hat: The “devil’s advocate” hat; careful and cautious…Using black hat thinking, look at all the bad points of the decision. Look at it cautiously and defensively. Try to see why it might not work. This is important because it highlights the weak points in a plan. It allows you to eliminate them, alter them, or prepare contingency plans to counter them. Black Hat thinking helps to make your plans ‘tougher’ and more resilient. It can also help you to spot fatal flaws and risks before you embark on a course of action. Black Hat thinking is one of the real benefits of this technique, as many successful people get so used to thinking positively that often they cannot see problems in advance. This leaves them under-prepared for difficulties…
4. Yellow hat: Positive; sunny and positive… The yellow hat helps you to think positively. It is the optimistic viewpoint that helps you to see all the benefits of the decision and the value in it. Yellow Hat thinking helps you to keep going when everything looks gloomy and difficult…
5. Green hat: New ideas; associated with fertile growth, creativity, and new ideas… The Green Hat stands for creativity. This is where you can develop creative solutions to a problem. It is a freewheeling way of thinking, in which there is little criticism of ideas. A whole range of creativity tools can help you here…
6. Blue hat: The Blue Hat stands for process control. This is the hat worn by people chairing meetings. When running into difficulties because ideas are running dry, they may direct activity into Green Hat thinking. When contingency plans are needed, they will ask for Black Hat thinking, etc…The organizing hat; cool, the color of the sky, above everything else…

Through case studies and real-life examples, Dr. de Bono reveals the often surprising ways in which deliberate role playing can make you a better thinker. He offers a powerfully simple tool that you-and your business, whether it’s a start-up or a major corporation-can use to create a climate of clearer thinking, improved communication, and greater creativity. His book is an instructive and inspiring text for anyone who makes decisions, in business or in life.

• From the book, Six Thinking Hats – Amazon
• Six Thinking Hats: Looking at a decision from all points of view – MindTools