Incomparable Genius -- Treating an Irreplaceable Being

Our previous topic, Genius Out of the Box -- Creating the Empowered Patient, has provided us with some remarkable perspectives. Now we're ready to take a significant step forward.

As a precursor to this topic, I'd like to reflect on three different conferences I've attended over the last several months all of which were focused on creating a new paradigm in medicine. It's been very encouraging to hear the genuniely heart felt desire of physicians, medical directors, nurses, and administrators to reshape the healthcare model and to dramatically improve how healthcare is delivered. All of the approaches I've heard have focused on providing patient-centered care in a healing, inspiring environment (and have included much of what Michelle and WC spoke of in our previous topic).

Now, in this discussion, as we get down to some of the bare fundamentals, I think our biggest opportunity will be to think beyond our current restrictions. I'm aware that because we have all grown up with these restrictions, we are in some ways like the horse who stays in his corral because a single wire at knee height once shocked him when he touched it. Those boundary conditions are then etched in his mind as real and permanent.

I believe that one of the prime boundary conditions that we have become hard-wired to accept is the notion that healthcare is expensive, that providers, insurance companies, etc. are going to generate excessive profits and that we must simply accept this. I would like to propose, for the sake of this discussion, at least, that we assume for the time being that money is not an issue (we'll pretend that some new source of revenue has been uncovered that will cover all costs or whatever mechanism enables you to set aside the financial discussion for now).

What I'd like to see us do therefore, is focus on how we would go about interacting with a human being, who has come to us in a wellness center, who we recognize as a totally unique expression of the force that animates the universe. And let's also presume that we realize that this being and the very life force within them is of incalculable value. How would we go about treating such a being?

I look forward to your thoughts, questions, and ponderings.

P.S. We also have an active topic in motion entitled, Global Genius -- Creative Solutions for a Crazy World. Feel free to join us for that discussion as well.

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Genius Out of the Box -- Creating the Empowered Patient

We've had a tremendous discussion going on in the topic:

Genius in Action -- Creating a Model for a Community Wellness Center

One of the areas that's come up as fundamental to any wellness model is a designation that's been called, "The Empowered Patient." Others have discussed self-determination and a patient-first focus. This topic is so critical, it seems, to our ability to really contemplate a new model, that I would like to invite us to use this topic area to explore more deeply what this really means in terms of a wellness model.

What is an empowered patient? How might a system be created to truly accomodate and serve this notion? How is an empowered patient different from our current notion as patients or those who serve patients?

Please chime in... I have the feeling we're really getting down to the some of the real bare fundamentals now. Let's see what we can discover together!

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Also remember there's another active topic regarding utilizing our genius to solve social issues. You'll find this topic directly below or by clicking this link:

Global Genius -- Creative Solutions for a Crazy World

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Exotic Genius -- Your Wildest, Most Daring or Memorable Creative Experience

The wellness center topic is directly below this one and is entitled Genius in Action -- Creating a Model for a Community Wellness Center. It is picking up great traction, so feel free to jump in there, too.

This topic was inspired by an email from KBF, who tracked me down via my bio to suggest that he'd love to play in the arena of, "What are the absolutely wildest, most exotic, crazy, out-there creative experiences you've had? What did you gain from these experiences? How were you changed?"

I thought this was a wonderful idea and a chance to advance the creative string on to the next level. Please feel free to dive in and take us on your own creative journey.

Thanks!
Christopher

P.S. And thanks to KBF for this very engaging idea.

P.P.S. As always remember that to see the comments in a separate window, click on the "Comments" link. To see the comments in the body of the topic, click "Links to this Post"

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Genius in Action -- Creating a Model for a Community Wellness Center

After a lot of discussion, collaboration, expression of thoughts and ideas, we're now poised to take our ideas regarding a new healthcare paradigm and put them into a definitive form. The purpose of this experiment is to create a vision that is well-enough defined that someone could, if they so desired, actually put it to use or at least utilize it to provide a significant inspiration for what they would like to create in their own town or community.

I know that putting things to form can be a little tricky and so I'm going to layout a methodology here that I realize is a) not perfect; yet b) is based on an attempt, at least, to be sensitive to the various styles and approaches to which the group who's come this far on this endeavor, seem to respond well. If the approach I'm using isn't ideal for you, I hope you'll pardon its less-than-ideal nature, and share your thoughts, ideas, and visions with us anyway.

The form I'd like to use is the following:

For each entry you make, please choose an area of the vision upon which to focus (i.e. focus on an area like one of the following: the exterior appearance of the center, the underlying philosophy, the various fields of service that would be available, the interior space, how the center handles its financial needs, patient education, community outreach, etc.).

There are numerous areas from which to choose and many not named here. There are also a variety of ways of naming categories that might provide a new linguistic angle that will have us see or think of the area differently or in a totally new way. I want to strong encourage us to feel free to be very creative in this regard.

Since I would like to combine our work into a single document at one point that I'll re-publish on this site as a collective work, I'd like to ask for a small favor. At the beginning of your comment, simply begin by labeling the area your particular post will address as follows:

INTERIOR SPACE:

I see an interior space that is... (or whatever language you'd choose).

The primary point is that the focus area will be in caps and that the commentary will be 2 spaced lines below. This will allow for all of us to easily read through comments and find the material we're looking for and it will allow me to capture the content later and be able to work with it much more easily in order to prepare a collective piece to re-publish here.

One last detail. Rather than disagreeing on someone else's contribution... just add your own vision about the same area. What we're going to do is look for an additive process... or a collective process. Someone may write a vision you think is totally wrong. That's okay. Just describe your vision of the same category in your commentary. Later, we'll take a look at the various versions of each area and see what we feel accomplishes the overall vision the best.

Remember, we're looking to accomplish a couple of goals with this process:

1. Create a well-defined, exciting, invigorating, fresh, practical, and solution-based, vision for a wellness center; and

2. We're looking to have fun in the process (we don't have to create the perfect vision... just something that provides a good springboard).

I'm very enthused to see where we can take this together. We've assembled some good minds with good intent. Feel free to invite others to this process and contribute to as many different areas of focus as you'd like as many times as you feel would be useful.

Let's create something amazing together!

Thank you,
Christopher

P.S. As always remember that to see the comments in a separate window, click on the "Comments" link. To see the comments in the body of the topic, click "Links to this Post"

Views of those commenting have not been checked for accuracy and do not necessarily reflect the views of this blog publisher or his associates.

Artificial Genius -- The Power of AI

I'm creating this topic to allow for the fallout and processing of our encounter with CCC to be explored to the extent people want to. I've received a half-dozen emails asking me about it and wanting to talk about what happened and yet not wanting to distract from the flow of the discussion on creativity.

So in this topic please feel free to explore Artificial Intelligence (AI), your thoughts on the encounter we had in our other topic, and any other thoughts or questions you want to explore in regard to this topic area.

P.S. As always remember that to see the comments in a separate window, click on the "Comments" link. To see the comments in the body of the topic, click "Links to this Post"

Views of those commenting have not been checked for accuracy and do not necessarily reflect the views of this blog publisher or his associates.

Creative Space

This topic is an extension from our previous one, entitled "Genius Gone Wild... The Messy, Unpredicatble, Beautiful World of Creativity". We also have an active topic, several down from this one on "Idyllic, Inspiring Wellness Centers (and Other Genius-Inspired Healthcare Solutions) " Feel free to join either.

In this topic, I'd like to continue with a discussion that began to emerge previously. What conditions (space, people, mindset, and so on) allow you to be at your creative best. KBF, one of our previous contributors shared that they've studied this for some time. I'd like to apporach this much less formally -- this time in a wide open discussion format. I'm not looking for us to provide scientific evidence. Instead I'd like to explore the wide open spaces of what works for you or what you've heard works for others.

Perhaps we can all learn from each others methods, quirkiness, etc. Heaven knows, I've learned more and been invited to think more over the last while (thanks to everyone's participation) than in a long time.

Thank you!

P.S. As always remember that to see the comments in a separate window, click on the "Comments" link. To see the comments in the body of the topic, click "Links to this Post"

Views of those commenting have not been checked for accuracy and do not necessarily reflect the views of this blog publisher or his associates.

Genius Gone Wild... The Messy, Unpredictatble, Beautiful World of Creativity

This topic is a continuation from our previous discussion on creativity (found two topics below this one -- Tapping into Our Genius with Unbounded Creativity). The exploration of wellness/healthcare is also still very much alive and is found directly below this topic (Idyllic, Inspiring Wellness Centers (and Other Genius-Inspired Healthcare Solutions).

For this round, it seems that the group that's assembled is interested in exploring the less predicatable, rough around the edges, messy, yet sublime side of creativity. There are some great comments in the previous topic that you may want to read to get in the flow of this topic. But then bounce right back to here to keep the flow going.

Let's dive in!

Views of those commenting have not been checked for accuracy and do not necessarily reflect the views of this blog publisher or his associates.

Tapping into Our Genius with Unbounded Creativity

This is one of two topics that emerged from Step Two of our previous exercise on collaboration (the second on topic, which is on healthcare, can be found direclty below this topic). During that discussion, Anonymous offered some thoughts that resonated with most, if not all of the group. The comments were in regard to how we unconsciously limit our options regarding solutions by falling prey to the habit of choosing from artificially derived polarities:

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"My main concern is that we are all blindfolded, and ready to march to the beat of a drum which has yet to materialize. At this point I think we'll all march to ANY beat just to avoid the unpleasantness of our own discomfort, and that concerns me.

"My experience has been that when creativity is "led" and "guided" in ANY direction, the vacuum created by the polarization itself is enough to effectively kill any REAL and new way of thinking. And I believe we are finding ourselves in that kind of a situation as we are soliciting (or, as the case may be, solicited to supply) the already known opinions on an ill defined and ambiguous issue. "

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Anonymous had, in fact, unveiled part of the purpose of the exercise -- to allow participants in the exercise to have a direct experience of the futility that results from attempting to create solutions from polarized positions (which inherently limit our options -- see Step Three of the exercise below).

The response, however, to these comments showed a real curiosity and desire to explore what became referred to as "unguided creativity." I've referred to it in the topic heading as unbounded creativity, but whatever we choose to call it, the real opportunity I'd like to invite us to take with this topic is to explore the freedom of creativity... to describe what that's like for you... what do you create or innovate, and to explore how to more fully and more readily access the creative state (or perhaps be aware that it's always present). So jump in... create... explore... wonder out loud... share your perspectives and your perplexities. And thanks to Anonymous and everyone who responded with such enthusiasm and thus led to this topic.

P.S. As always remember that to see the comments in a separate window, click on the "Comments" link. To see the comments in the body of the topic, click "Links to this Post"

Views of those commenting have not been checked for accuracy and do not necessarily reflect the views of this blog publisher or his associates.