Follow the Rules Chapter 3

1. Follow the Rules Chapter 3 By Brooke Allen, Kyra Fulton, and Corina McBride

2. Exercise 1 • Painted Eggs • Fireworks • Champagne • Candy Canes • Shamrocks • Jack-O-lanterns What do you notice in this list?

3. Patterns!!!!! • The brain subconsciously recognizes patterns, sequences, cycles, shapes, processes, similarities, and probabilities. • Basicall,ythe mind looks at a group of items and immediately recognizes a pattern. • Patterns give us the power to understand the world, and as a consequence, they RULE our thinking-and become our rules.

4. Challenging the Rules“Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction”Pablo Picasso • Creative thinking involves playing with what we know! • In the winter of 333 B.C, the Macedonian General, Alexander, and his army arrive in the Asian city of Gordian to take up winter quarters. While there, Alexander hears about the legend surrounding the town’s famous knot, the Gordian knot. A prophecy states that whoever is able to untie this strangely complicated knot, will become king of Asia. This story intrigues Alexander, and he asks to be taken to the knot so that he can attempt to untie it. He studies the knot for a bit, but after fruitless attempts to find the rope’s end, he is stymied. “How can I unfasten the knot?” he asks himself. He then gets an idea! • What might his idea be?

6. Rules • Think about it: almost every advance in history comes from breaking the rules. • Breaking the rules turns unexpected experiences into creative inventions.

7. Follow the RulesIf you don’t ask “why this?” often enough, somebody will ask, “why you?” • Why do people treat matters and situations as a closed box with a set of rules they have to follow? • Why not open the box and solve the problem with your own set of unique rules? • Before the1920s the breast stroke was preformed by pulling both arms together underwater, resurfacing and starting over. The stroke was usually interpreted as an under water recovery, but when some one did it out of the water it was faster, creating the butterfly. • Bing!!! By breaking the nation’s idea of a rule, a new stroke was created allowing swimmers to swim faster!!!!

8. What rules can we break? • The creative thinker is constantly changing the rules • When you have so many rules mixed in with your thinking, after a while the rules turn into blind assumptions • It is difficult to be creative if you’re following blind assumptions! • So start now, by creating your own “open box rules,” and use them to be innovative!

9. Actually Following the Rules Not killing anyone, paying your bills, going to bed on time, going to school, not getting into fights, respecting your elders, no bombing the White House, not doing drugs, not lying, listening to your parents, driving safely, staying out of the hospital, being quiet while in the library, not hurting anyone, eating your veggies, …….. • To maintain order you still have to follow some rules such as :

10. Recap • So actually the whole not following the rules conceptonly applies to thingssuch as how you think and how you view things! • Basically this is about perspective, how you view things, and expanding your horizons by destroying what you already know about rules. What I mean by destroying what you already know, is to break the mental lock that keeps telling you to think about things only as you know them.

11. .The Aslan Phenomenon • 1. We make rules based on reasons that make a lot of sense. • 2. We follow these rules. • 3.Time passes, and things change • 4. The original reasons for the creation of these rules may no longer exist, but because the rules are still in place, we continue to follow them • Q W E R T Y U I O P example

12. Quiz show!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! • 1. What is wrong with patterns? • 2. How did Alexander untie the Gordian knot? • 3.What does every advance in history come from? • 4. Who is constantly changing the rules? • 5. What rules do we not want you to break? • 6.What is perspective? • 7. Why were the top row of letters on typewriters changed? • 8. What was your favorite part?