The Child Within real-time practical contemplation bringing life changing results.

 Child Within  real-time meditations you will be amazed at the results.

If explaining a problem is usually enough to solve it by itself, why would you need someone listening to you?

You don’t. Next time you’re stuck with a problem you have no solution too, why don’t you try explaining your problem to your child within?

I know, your parents have warned you about people who talk to imaginary friends — but the fact is that it works. Telling your problem to your child within is as effective as telling your problem to a human (if not more so). The principles that make this technique effective always work.

If it serves to reduce your resistance and feeling of weirdness towards the idea of explaining problems to a child within, be aware that the concept is rather popular in the spiritual development world.
“Are you saying I should replace real people and start talking to a child within?”

Well, not replacing — but what about developing the habit of always consulting your child within first? I don’t mean to slight us adults, but the child within has in fact advantages:
The Child Within never interrupt our flow of thinking, and often is your primary thought process.
You don’t need to be worried if you are bothering the child within with our external problems.The child within has already been trying to be recognised.
The Child Within doesn’t gossip about our private problems with other children within.
Our trusted child within is never busy and is always waiting for our inquiries.All you need to do is unlock the door.

Give your child within a try. Once you get past the initial odd sensation of talking to yourself, you’ll certainly enjoy the feeling of convenience and independence it brings; not to mention you’ll also save a lot of your time as well as other people’s.


Silent Contact

You should always practice child within work out loud — but there are situations when you can’t make noises or simply can’t afford the social awkwardness of it (“excuse me while I talk to my child”). Fear not: do your child within in writing instead — sure, you won’t have the benefits of verbalisation, but the practice still works fine.

One way to do it that works particularly well is to write an e-mail message explaining your problem. Pretend you’re going to send it to your child within. Describe the problem in detail, the solutions you tried so far and why they didn’t work. List your assumptions and make sure you include all relevant information. Be both thorough and objective remember you are dealing with a perfect being.

When you are finished writing the message, you’ll probably have had many ideas to try out. If not, find our specialised MAILBOX: Childwithin private mail room and just send it as it is: with your perfectly-crafted message, I’m sure the child within will help you. 

 Connecting to our own perfect child within is important as it contains the roots to our own intuitive voice.

Ready to start child within work? As you imagined, there’s not much to it, except getting yourself in contact.Choosing to connect with the child within, with the one you really like: this will soon mature into a long-term highly beneficial relationship.


As for me, my dedicated problem-solving relationship,is sitting next to my monitor and dutifully serving me, is my photo of me as a child. He has the entertaining quirk of turning his head to always look straight in my eyes — undoubtedly an appealing effect, especially for a ten stage enthusiasts like myself.

Einstein: when you start paying more attention to how you define your problems.

Einstein is quoted as having said that if he had one hour to save the world he would spend fifty-five minutes defining the problem and only five minutes finding the solution.

This quote does illustrate an important point: before jumping right into solving a problem, we should step back and invest time and effort to improve our understanding of it. Here are 10 strategies you can use to see problems from many different perspectives and master what is the most important step in problem solving: clearly defining the problem in the first place!

The Problem Is To Know What the Problem Is

The definition of the problem will be the focal point of all your problem-solving efforts. As such, it makes sense to devote as much attention and dedication to problem definition as possible. What usually happens is that as soon as we have a problem to work on we’re so eager to get to solutions that we neglect spending any time refining it.

What most of us don’t realise — and what supposedly Einstein might have been alluding to — is that the quality of the solutions we come up with will be in direct proportion to the quality of the description of the problem we’re trying to solve. Not only will your solutions be more abundant and of higher quality, but they’ll be achieved much, much more easily. Most importantly, you’ll have the confidence to be tackling a worthwhile problem.

Problem Definition Tools and Strategies

The good news is that getting different perspectives and angles in order to clearly define a problem is a skill that can be learned and developed. As such, there are many strategies you can use to perfect it. Here are the 10 most effective ones I know.

1. Rephrase the Problem

When a Toyota executive asked employees to brainstorm “ways to increase their productivity”, all he got back were blank stares. When he rephrased his request as “ways to make their jobs easier”, he could barely keep up with the amount of suggestions.

Words carry strong implicit meaning and, as such, play a major role in how we perceive a problem. In the example above, ‘be productive’ might seem like a sacrifice you’re doing for the company, while ‘make your job easier’ may be more like something you’re doing for your own benefit, but from which the company also benefits. In the end, the problem is still the same, but the feelings — and the points of view — associated with each of them are vastly different.

Play freely with the problem statement, rewording it several times. For a methodic approach, take single words and substitute variations. ‘Increase sales’? Try replacing ‘increase’ with ‘attract’, ‘develop’, ‘extend’, ‘repeat’ and see how your perception of the problem changes. A rich vocabulary plays an important role here, so you may want to use a thesaurus or develop your vocabulary.

2. Expose and Challenge Assumptions

Every problem — no matter how apparently simple it may be — comes with a long list of assumptions attached. Many of these assumptions may be inaccurate and could make your problem statement inadequate or even misguided.

The first step to get rid of bad assumptions is to make them explicit. Write a list and expose as many assumptions as you can — especially those that may seem the most obvious and ‘untouchable’.

That, in itself, brings more clarity to the problem at hand. But go further and test each assumption for validity: think in ways that they might not be valid and their consequences. What you will find may surprise you: that many of those bad assumptions are self-imposed — with just a bit of scrutiny you are able to safely drop them.

For example, suppose you’re about to enter the restaurant business. One of your assumptions might be ‘restaurants have a menu’. While such an assumption may seem true at first, try challenging it and maybe you’ll find some very interesting business models (such as one restaurant in which customers bring dish ideas for the chef to cook, for example).

3. Chunk Up

Each problem is a small piece of a greater problem. In the same way that you can explore a problem laterally — such as by playing with words or challenging assumptions — you can also explore it at different “altitudes”.

If you feel you’re overwhelmed with details or looking at a problem too narrowly, look at it from a more general perspective. In order to make your problem more general, ask questions such as: “What’s this a part of?”, “What’s this an example of?” or “What’s the intention behind this?”.

Another approach that helps a lot in getting a more general view of a problem is replacing words in the problem statement with hypernyms. Hypernyms are words that have a broader meaning than the given word. (For example, a hypernym of ‘car’ is ‘vehicle’). A great, free tool for finding hypernyms for a given word is WordNet (just search for a word and click on the ‘S:’ label before the word definitions).

4. Chunk Down

If each problem is part of a greater problem, it also means that each problem is composed of many smaller problems. It turns out that decomposing a problem in many smaller problems — each of them more specific than the original — can also provide greater insights about it.

‘Chunking the problem down’ (making it more specific) is especially useful if you find the problem overwhelming or daunting.

Some of the typical questions you can ask to make a problem more specific are: “What are parts of this?” or “What are examples of this?”.

Just as in ‘chunking up’, word substitution can also come to great use here. The class of words that are useful here are hyponyms: words that are stricter in meaning than the given one. (E.g. two hyponyms of ‘car’ are ‘minivan’ and ‘limousine’). WordNet can also help you finding hyponyms.

5. Find Multiple Perspectives

Before rushing to solve a problem, always make sure you look at it from different perspectives. Looking at it with different eyes is a great way to have instant insight on new, overlooked directions.

For example, if you own a business and are trying to ‘increase sales’, try to view this problem from the point of view of, say, a customer. For example, from the customer’s viewpoint, this may be a matter of adding features to your product that one would be willing to pay more for.

Rewrite your problem statement many times, each time using one of these different perspectives. How would your competition see this problem? Your employees? Your mom?

Also, imagine how people in various roles would frame the problem. How would a politician see it? A college professor? A nun? Try to find the differences and similarities on how the different roles would deal with your problem.

6. Use Effective Language Constructs

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all formula for properly crafting the perfect problem statement, but there are some language constructs that always help making it more effective:

Assume a myriad of solutions. An excellent way to start a problem statement is: “In what ways might I…”. This expression is much superior to “How can I…” as it hints that there’s a multitude of solutions, and not just one — or maybe none. As simple as this sounds, the feeling of expectancy helps your brain find solutions.

Make it positive. Negative sentences require a lot more cognitive power to process and may slow you down — or even derail your train of thought. Positive statements also help you find the real goal behind the problem and, as such, are much more motivating.

For example: instead of finding ways to ‘quit smoking’, you may find that ‘increase your energy’, ‘live longer’ and others are much more worthwhile goals.

Frame your problem in the form of a question. Our brain loves questions. If the question is powerful and engaging, our brains will do everything within their reach to answer it. We just can’t help it: Our brains will start working on the problem immediately and keep working in the background, even when we’re not aware of it.

If you’re still stuck, consider using the following formula for phrasing your problem statement:

“In what ways (action) (object) (qualifier) (end result)?”

Example: In what ways might I package (action) my book (object) more attractively (qualifier) so people will buy more of it (end result)?

7. Make It Engaging

In addition to using effective language constructs, it’s important to come up with a problem statement that truly excites you so you’re in the best frame of mind for creatively tackling the problem. If the problem looks too dull for you, invest the time adding vigour to it while still keeping it genuine. Make it enticing. Your brain will thank (and reward) you later.

One thing is to ‘increase sales’ (boring), another one is ‘wow your customers’. One thing is ‘to create a personal development blog’, another completely different is to ’empower readers to live fully’.

8. Reverse the Problem

One trick that usually helps when you’re stuck with a problem is turning it on its head.

If you want to win, find out what would make you lose. If you are struggling finding ways to ‘increase sales’, find ways to decrease them instead. Then, all you need to do is reverse your answers. ‘Make more sales calls’ may seem an evident way of increasing sales, but sometimes we only see these ‘obvious’ answers when we look at the problem from an opposite direction.

This seemingly convoluted method may not seem intuitive at first, but turning a problem on its head can uncover rather obvious solutions to the original problem.

9. Gather Facts

Investigate causes and circumstances of the problem. Probe details about it — such as its origins and causes. Especially if you have a problem that’s too vague, investigating facts is usually more productive than trying to solve it right away.

If, for example, the problem stated by your spouse is “You never listen to me”, the solution is not obvious. However, if the statement is “You don’t make enough eye contact when I’m talking to you,” then the solution is obvious and you can skip brainstorming altogether. (You’ll still need to work on the implementation, though!)

Ask yourself questions about the problem. What is not known about it? Can you draw a diagram of the problem? What are the problem boundaries? Be curious. Ask questions and gather facts. It is said that a well-defined problem is halfway to being solved: I would add that a perfectly-defined problem is not a problem anymore.

10. Problem-Solve Your Problem Statement

I know I risk getting into an infinite loop here, but as you may have noticed, getting the right perspective of a problem is, well, a problem in itself. As such, feel free to use any creative thinking technique you know to help. There are plenty to choose from:

You may want to give yourself an Idea Quota of problem statements. Or write a List of 100 problems to solve. SCAMPER your problem definition. These are just some of dozen techniques you can try.
Of course, how much effort you invest in defining the problem in contrast to how much effort you invest in solving your actual problem is a hard balance to achieve, though one which is attainable with practice.

Personally, I don’t think that 55 minutes of defining a problem versus 5 minutes acting on it is usually a good proportion. The point is that we must be aware of how important problem defining is and correct our tendency to spend too little time on it.




In fact, when you start paying more attention to how you define your problems, you’ll probably find that it is usually much harder than solving them. But you’ll also find that the payoff is well worth the effort.

Short narrative meditation acknowledges that we speak and learn through stories and introductions

Short narrative meditation acknowledges that we speak and learn through stories and introductions; that it maintains an ongoing and coherent story of “me.” Building on the constructive nature of us, our meditation uses new narratives to help us reshape old negative understandings into new beginnings and endings.

Survival has to come first.

Survival has to come first. As a survival strategist, We are no longer surprised that survival is almost always the first reaction in a ten stage course.The promise of pain, suffering and grief are singularly unattractive as a sales line for a taught course. While it’s generally to a psychological more than a physical threat, we interprets all as a threat to existence and re-acts accordingly; one could feel like an angry, frustrated animal backed into a corner, all the way to a cold-calculating hunter about to pounce on its prey.Thats why our most important training are around Truth, Trust and Consent, pre-course work in our meet-ups. 

Our realities are different; it has to be. While our brains are exceedingly similar,.

As we quickly find out at the Ten Stages our realities are different; it has to be. While our brains are exceedingly similar, each brain works with different raw material: nearly 70% of the structure of a human infant’s brain is added post-birth. That means that the bulk of the brain’s connections are experience-dependent -- they are added post-birth and depend on what happens to us. The brain then creates our perception by combining inputs from the outside world with past experience. The entire process is constructive and builds from the bottom-up: our memories, rules, and expectations get incorporated into the properties of the stimuli and shape what we ultimately see. The brain thus shapes both our reality and our experience of it. The net result is that we really cannot know the experience of another person.

The goal of our meditations is not to generate more information. Its to gently release the hijacked connections to our prefrontal cortical area of our brain

The goal of our meditations is not to generate more information. Its to gently release the hijacked connections to our prefrontal cortical area of our brain, its is not the rational brain; it doesn’t have veto power over our behaviour nor can it ensure we do “the right thing.” When we can gradually engage the prefrontal cortex, become aware of weighing the various new options, meditate on our new choices, and still sometimes make a lousy decision, but it still assists in the critical thinking we require to engage with our intuitive mind.

 The prefrontal cortex is more intentional than it is rational; it is built on a foundation of sub-cortical structures and owes its prowess to those layers. Rather than an executive controller, the value of the PFC lies in its generative powers: in its capacity to take in more and more information, re-sort it, reorganise it, and realign is so it makes sense and has meaning in a new way.Its the gateway to the intuitive voice and the truth buried in the child within and it unlocks our sub-conscious.  

Our goal of meditation is to free our survival explanations and walk out with another, deeper and wider understanding a deprogramming of our minds perceptions. Such an understanding helps us individuate the child within beginning to become awakened to the effect we have on others.
This brings us back to the beginning: Meditation is a process among equals. For the we, change is a slow and consistent process, habits unfold automatically and repetitiously, and we seem to naturally revert back to the path of least effort. Everyone in a mediation session has something to learn. 

 Beneath our everyday mind patterns lies a set of expectations we each carry around with us about the world: rules about how things should happen, what we’re entitled to, what fairness means, etc. To the extent that meditation provides a glimpse of these mind patterns to everyone involved – in addition to evoking a new understanding of our situation – it should be considered a huge success however long the length of the practice.This creates a solid bridge to an awakening within The Ten Stage course.

ADDICTIONS: We acknowledge that we have different genetic make-ups

Addictions Journal: We acknowledge that we have different genetic make-ups, levels of connectivity in our brains, sensitivity to our internal and external inputs, unique or frozen thresholds for stress and other emotions. To be of value, ten stage course work has to draw on these differences to elicit how we make sense. Making sense means how something fits within our past, with what we think or imagine “knows about how our world works” . Making sense of our world is another one of the our primary jobs, and doing so reveals our static mind patterns. Mind patterns are repetitive thoughts and behaviours that become unconscious over time. And in our world, practice does not make perfect, it gives a rigidity a form of permanence. Our entrenched patterns govern how we make sense of a situation, our role in it, and the other parties involved.Abuse freezes these patterns giving a static frozen response of fear, flight or fight.

ADDICTIONS: We are not born with a sense of who we are

ADDICTIONS: We are not born with a sense of who we are, we design and hone one. It is acquired by us through our relationships and our personal constructs, and it becomes the principle around which we organise our life. The self is not real; it’s a series of neural connections, a set of fixed ideas. Yet we work hard to maintain a consistent sense of self, it’s one of our primary jobs. Conflict erupts when our sense of self feels threatened; when how we see or want to see our self and the world that self is part of, feels under attack.

ADDICTIONS JOURNAL and the Loss of the Right to Life

Addictions Journal and the Loss of the Right to Life: The shame curse begins to create the core belief that one does not have the right to live. A child so betrayed by his or her parents begins to lose the confident sense that they have a right to life; that their life has tremendous worth. They may become apologetic about their existence. They say: "I am sorry" way too much as if apologising for their existence.

While a shamed person will 'apologise for living' a loved person will not. Love relationships have affirmed their right to be alive. They have healthy self-esteem; will value themselves. .

2. Taking Blame for Abuse: Shame issues can come up when an abuse victim talks about the belief that "I am to blame for what had happened." "I always felt that I was the reason she was upset because she never explained why she was unhappy all the time."

3. Not entitled to Good things: The shame core belief results in the loss of any sense that you are entitled to good things. The victim begins to expect bad things to happen in their life. This comes out when you say: "I don't deserve good things." "I don't believe I deserve happiness." Or I deserve a "rubbish" life. This can result in self punishment, accepting bad things, living with injustice, self-sabotage.

Christians may dwell on the idea that they have committed the unpardonable sin. Not true by the way, it just becomes an obsession because of the experience of living subject to the shame curse and developing the core belief that you are bad and do not deserve good things.

4. Loss of Hope: Loss of hope is the loss of the belief that life is good.

5. Oppression. Curses may cause one to be under an addictive obsession.

6. Fear and Hiding: "I was afraid of mother and would run and hide everyday I heard her coming onto the porch from work. I had fear of punishment from authority figures in subsequent years."

7. Try to gain love: "I tried to spend time around my mom by watching TV and walking to the store with her for groceries. I must have watched over a 1,000 movies with her and she never ever affirmed me or treated me as valuable or loving. I felt very sad and depressed that she did not." "I surmised that if I would be good, someone would love me. That did not work." (People Pleasing.)

8. Disengagement: I just slept all the time or laid down and closed my eyes. I would live inside my head and stay in my room. I recall saying, "forget them all, I don't need anybody."

9. Give up and shutdown: I recall saying, "forget them all, I don't need anybody." I pretended I was from another family and they would one day come and get me. I then gave up altogether on ever being loved in my home.

10. Go to Sleep: "I just went inside my head like I did in my home with my mom. I gave up on getting love from anyone. When being loving so that I will be loved did not work, and doing things to be loved didn't work. I then decided be perfect then I would be loved. This went on for years and years.

I went to sleep by going inside myself. I shutdown and did not act as my real self which is soft, kind, warm, trusting, open, loving. I became angry, critical, or nitpicky and very competitive with others. Mainly with my spouse and we would argue about everything and nothing he did was ever good enough. I complained all the time. I was hurt inside and I acted out a lot."

ADDICTIONS JOURNAL: Shame inheritance is set up against a Child

ADDICTIONS JOURNAL: Shame inheritance is set up against a Child

1. Snarly 'anger' rather than love. "My mom was very mean or angry all the time. She never smiled and always felt unsatisfied with everything me and my siblings did. Mother would sit and snarl at me almost everyday in disgust." Result: "I was afraid of her and I felt that she hated me."

2. Punitive discipline rather than verbal rebuke. "She would always punish us by spanking us and she rarely (if ever) talked to us regarding something we did wrong."

3. Mother who goes absent in a bad mood. "She came home from work every single day mad and would slam pots and pans when she cooked. Or, just go to her room and slam the door and never come back out that evening. "

4. Parents who do not want their children to have fun. "She always seemed jealous that me and my siblings had a carefree life and did not work. She did not want us to have any fun and made us get up early on the weekends---6:30 am and yanked all the covers off of us and opened the blinds."

5. Parent chooses some, excludes others. "Mother had favorites were my younger brother and my older sister. She would let the rest who was her favorites by doing put downs regarding the rest of us. For example, she would cook breakfast for my younger brother Milton and tell the rest of us to fix our own with our lazy selves."

6. Parent's attitude and tone: "My mom's overall tone or attitude that was depicted by me was you are not worth the time or effort. Or, I don't have worth and value and there is nothing special about me. I always felt rejected by her and she seemed intent on me knowing this and I felt very unloved and unpleasing."

7. Lack of warm affection: "She could not give proper hugs to any us and it felt unloving. Mother would just put her arms around us and pat us hard on the back and release us."

8. Abusive language: "Mother made me feel ashamed. She and my older sister would joke about me and my sister and say inappropriate things about our menstruation beginning etc."

9. Loss of voice: Whatever I said was not given consideration by the family. My opinion did not matter. "I remembered that I had lots of ideas about how things worked, and was always excited to share them with people. However, my parents were always busy, and I had no one who would listen. It was also a rule in the house that children should not meddle with adults’ conversations and not answer back. The odd thing was that my mom was always opening up to me about family problems, but I was not expected to say anything; only listen. I was always reminded to behave and just be quiet. I realised I must have been denied my voice in reaction to being forbidden to speak when I wanted or needed to."

The best insights in my report didn’t emerge in my office, during conference calls, or at meetings. They somehow appeared in the bathroom.

Not too long ago, as I was putting the final touches on a client presentation, I stumbled across a surprising observation. The best insights in my report didn't emerge in my office, during conference calls, or at meetings. They somehow appeared in the bathroom.

Research on the nature of creativity suggests my experience isn’t all that unique. Often, the most effective way of solving a difficult problem is simply walking away. The moment we allow ourselves to disengage from the individual pieces of a puzzle is the moment a solution appears. It’s why Albert Einstein regularly went sailing and why Charles Darwin planned his day around a countryside stroll. Thomas Edison simply napped.

In many ways, problem solvers are like artists. Taking a few steps back provides painters with a fresh perspective on their subject, lending them a new angle for approaching their work. Problem solving follows a similar recipe, but it’s not always the physical distance that we need. It’s psychological distance; mental space for new insights to bloom.

In a world where finding solutions makes up the crux of a typical workday, we are all artists. Cognitive artists. And to deliver our best work, we need revitalizing breaks. Distancing ourselves from our work grants us a broader view, activating a global perspective that precedes breakthrough.

So, why the bathroom?

If you’re like most office employees, access to sailboats, the countryside and a relaxing couch is in short supply. A walk to the bathroom is one of the few opportunities you have for disengaging, letting go of trivial details and refocusing on the bigger picture--even Steve Jobs recognized the bathroom's potential, insisting that Pixar only build two in its studios, to provide employees with maximum enforced mixing. Neurologically, it is during these moments away from your desk the right hemisphere of your brain comes to life, making you more appreciative of the forest and less sensitive to the trees.

While most of us give little thought to our workplace bathroom, there’s good reason to believe it can have an impact on the quality of the work we produce -- especially in organizations that rely on creativity and problem solving to stand out. Over the past decade, studies have shown that both our thoughts and behaviors are heavily influenced by our surroundings, in ways we often fail to recognize.

A few examples:
The sound of classical music makes consumers spend more money
The smell of cookies makes shoppers more likely to help a stranger
The sight of red hurts intellectual performance but improves physical performance

Psychological findings like these are now commonplace, pointing to one irrefutable fact: Our environment shapes our thinking in powerful ways.

Which brings up some intriguing questions: How can we make the most of our time away from our desks? Is there a way of designing bathrooms to make them more inspiring? And what can organizations do to maximize the insights its employees get out of each bathroom visit?

Recent research on the science of creativity provides some helpful suggestions.

Rethink Muzak

One of the ways we become more creative is by exposing our minds to a broad variety of stimuli. The wider the selection of information you mentally digest--whether it be foreign movies, experimental novels or exotic travel--the more remote associations you’ll have in your arsenal. Or, in laymen’s terms, the more creative you’ll be.

Hearing unusual music primes us to think different--inspiring ideas, emotions and experiences that increase the associations active in our brain.

Surprise The Senses

Another creativity nugget: We tend to find more insightful solutions to a problem when we're in a good mood. One method experimentally proven for improving people’s moods is enjoyable scents. Positive scents don’t just make us feel better--they lead us to set higher goals for ourselves and experience a greater sense of self-efficacy.

Now, if you’re like most people, the restroom isn’t the first place that comes to mind when you think of positive scents, and partly that’s because of how hard custodians work to mask negative smells, leaving most bathrooms feeling like an assault on the senses. But in our case, that’s a good thing. It means the bar for surprising people with positive scents is that much more accessible. A few opportunities for enhancing the scent of a workplace bathroom: unusual soaps, exotic candles, and the hallway outside a bathroom, boosting people’s mood before and after a visit.

Encourage Mental Stimulation

Part of what makes bathroom visits a boon to creativity is that they represent one of the few times during the workday when our physiological attention is directed inward, mimicking the psychological experience of insight. But it’s not just inward attention that’s needed--it’s inward attention in the context of fresh ideas.

Think about the last time you saw graffiti in the bathroom. Chances are, not only did you read it, you probably thought about the person who wrote it, perhaps wondering what (the hell) was going through their mind. We can’t help but think about the things we see, but we can choose what we look at. Providing a diet of mentally stimulating material in workplace bathrooms can be done in a number of ways: posting unusual artwork, leaving out thought provoking magazines or using digital picture frames to keep the imagery fresh. The key is for the material to be stimulating and indirectly related to work you do.

Once upon a time, going to the bathroom was a distraction. Something that kept us from work; an unfortunate bodily shortcoming that compromised efficiency. But that world doesn’t exist anymore. Today, our economy is powered by an engine of insight. Creativity in the workplace isn’t a “nice to have”—it’s what keeps companies in business. Which is why it’s ironic that most office bathrooms offer a bleak and unwelcoming environment. One that discourages insight and implicitly chides us to get back to our desks.

There’s just one problem. Creativity doesn’t work that way.

And if the science has taught us anything about the creative process it’s this: Finding unexpected solutions often requires an unexpected approach. Why not start in the bathroom?

The richest woman in the world, according to a respected business magazine, is not Oprah Winfrey, Queen Elizabeth II or L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt.

It's a relatively unknown Australian mining magnate. So who exactly is Gina Rinehart?

Asked once to sum up her concept of beauty, Gina Rinehart did not point to the pearls that so often adorn her neck.

Nor did she rhapsodise about the ochre landscape of her beloved Pilbara, a beautiful, if unforgiving, expanse of land in the northwest corner of Australia.

Instead, she spoke of the unlovely commodity that has made her family rich, and the giant holes in the ground from where it came. "Beauty is an iron mine," she famously remarked.

When her father, Lang Hancock, discovered one of the world's biggest reserves in the early 1950s, the export of iron ore was banned in Australia because it was deemed such a scarce and finite resource.

Continue reading the main story

Gina Rinehart

• Georgina Hancock born in Perth in 1954, studied in Sydney
• Father Lang Hancock made huge iron ore discovery in Western Australia before her birth
• Married lawyer Frank Rinehart in 1983
• After father's death in 1992, Gina became executive of the company
• Widowed with four children

• Rinehart 'world's richest woman'

Tens of thousands of iron ore shipments later, royalty payments from that Pilbara mining field in Western Australia continue to swell her coffers.

The Hancocks were not the sole beneficiaries. The multi-billionaire fervently believes that her father's discovery also made Australia prosperous, which partly drives her recent quest for influence, gratitude and respect.

It is partly borne of a lifelong sense of grievance - that Australia's traditional east coast elites have not recognised her family's contribution to the country's development, nor the local media.

With an estimated net personal wealth of $A29 billion ($US29.3bn, £18.79bn), Rinehart has in recent years gone from being Australia's richest woman to Asia's richest woman to arguably the world's.

Australian business magazine BRW has named her the world's wealthiest woman, and Citigroup has also predicted that the 58-year-old businesswoman will soon top the global rich list, with more than $100bn (£64.8bn) of assets to her name.

Gina Rinehart is said to make nearly A$600 (£393) a second

The royalty stream from that initial discovery - the "rivers of the gold," as it has been called - still contributes to her wealth, but it pales alongside the value attached to her mining interests in Western Australia and Queensland.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

Whatever I do, the house of Hancock comes first”

She hates being called a mining heiress because she considers herself a self-made businesswoman who turned her company around after her father's death in 1992.

From a worldwide perspective, her spiralling wealth illustrates the shift in economic activity from the west to the east. From an Australian one, she embodies the shift from the east to the west. Once it was media moguls like the late Kerry Packer who topped the Australian rich lists. Now it is minerals magnates who are profiting from the country's China-fuelled resources boom.

Rinehart has set out to become both a magnate and a mogul, which is why she is the subject of so much attention and controversy.

Along with her mining interests, she now owns a share of Channel Ten, one of the three major commercial television networks, and has also become the single biggest shareholder in Australia's second largest newspaper group, Fairfax Media, although she reduced the size of that stake last week.

The group publishes three of the country's most venerable mastheads - the Sydney Morning Herald, the Melbourne Age and the Australian Financial Review, and the suspicion among many Fairfax journalists is that she will attempt to turn them into mouthpieces for her right-wing views.

The dark joke is that the Sydney Morning Herald might become the Sydney Mining Herald. However, she has not been able to gain seats on the board because of a dispute about her refusal so far to accept the group's declaration of editorial independence.

Her father Lang Hancock was a huge influence on her

Her mining company, Hancock Prospecting, is essentially her life. She has few outside interests. She does not go in for the normal blandishments of wealth, like art, racehorses or a private plane.

She is renowned for her 24/7 work regime, and a tunnel-visioned determination. Her personal feuds are the stuff of legend and her long list of adversaries has included her father, his business partner, her first husband, her Filipino mother-in-law, Rose Porteous, and now three of her children.

Rinehart spoke at an anti-tax rally in Perth in 2010

Famously litigious, many of her battles have ended up in court. "Whatever I do, the house of Hancock comes first," she once told a reporter. "Nothing will stand in the way of that."

Like her rambunctious father Lang, who railed against the scourge of "Canberra-ism," and "eco-nuts" in the environmental movement, her political views are a blend of conservatism and libertarianism.

An early heroine was Britain's Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher, whom she met over lunch in 1977. Afterwards, the young Gina took much more care to dress in a business-like fashion, got a new hairdresser and started to wear more make-up.

Another intellectual hero was the free-market economist Milton Friedman. One of the reasons she cited for raising her children in the US, aside from her marriage to the Harvard-educated Frank Rinehart, was the hope that they might be taught by Friedman.

She is also a climate change sceptic, and close to the British Viscount, Christopher Monckton. On a visit to Perth last July, during which he delivered the Lang Hancock Memorial Lecture, Monckton spoke of Australia's need for an equivalent of Fox News, which could be funded by the "super-rich".

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Other rich women

• Christy Walton - widow of John, son of the founder of Wal-Mart, Sam Walton
• Liliane Bettencourt - daughter of L'Oreal founder Eugene Scheueller
• Johanna Quandt - third wife of German executive who rescued BMW
• Oprah Winfrey - television host and media mogul, one of the world's richest self-made women
• Birgit Rausing - art historian from Sweden inherited packaging firm Tetra Laval after death of husband
• Rosalia Mera - after dropping out of school to make dresses before her teens, the Spaniard co-founded retail company Inditex, which owns Zara

Rinehart was not present at the private meeting, but few doubted the identity of the "super-rich" person whom Monckton had in mind. When a video of his remarks was posted online, it heightened speculation that she was pursuing some kind of Foxification strategy in Australia.

I have also been told by one of her associates that she met Rupert Murdoch earlier this year, partly to discuss Fox News.

Given that the newspapers published by Rupert Murdoch's Australian arm, News Ltd, boast a 70% share of Australian readership, and that Fairfax has the remaining 30%, the widespread fear is of a conservative duopoly, and an end to editorial pluralism.

Rinehart's $A165m (£107m) stake in Channel Ten has already lost more than half its value and Fairfax, which last week announced 1900 job cuts, is not seen as a particularly attractive investment. Like her father, who started two newspapers, the profit motive is not a major consideration. Her investment, it is thought, is about political influence.

Besides, the amount of money involved is for her comparatively small. As an associate recently explained to me, she is adopting the same approach that the super-rich use when purchasing luxury yachts or private planes, which is not to invest more than 10% of their wealth.

In her ongoing drive for influence, the debate two years ago over the Labor government's plans to hit the mining sector with a super profits tax was a major milestone.

Unusually for a woman who has preferred to exert a behind-the-scenes influence, Rinehart led the chant of "axe the tax" at a protest rally in 2010 aimed at the then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

Her billionaire activism lent itself to easy caricature. A reporter from the Fairfax-owned WA Today joked that it was possible to hear her gold bracelet jangling "a note-perfect version of 'Money, Money, Money' as she pumped her fist". Within weeks, however, Rudd had been ousted, and his successor, Julia Gillard, immediately announced a climbdown over the mining tax.

Rinehart met the Queen when the British monarch visited Perth

Just as Rinehart wants influence and gratitude, she is also determined to maintain rigid control of her company. Presently, she is locked in a highly-publicised legal battle with three of her four children over a family trust set up by Lang Hancock for his grandchildren.

The trust, which owns a share of her company, was due to settle its assets last September, when Lang's youngest grandchild, Ginia, turned 25. But Rinehart allegedly tried to push back the date that her children could become trustees until 2068.

Determined to retain sole control, she warned her children they faced ruin if they refused to bend to her will. "Sign up or be bankrupt tomorrow," she threatened in an email. "The clock is ticking. There is one hour to bankruptcy and financial ruin."

Her three eldest children described the manoeuvre as "deceptive, manipulative, hopelessly conflicted and disgraceful". It is not so much about greed. Rinehart offered her three estranged children big payments to go along with her plan. It is more about control.

Commentators expect the same aggressive approach with her media strategy. After all, Australia's richest ever person is used to getting her own way.

Assange seeks political asylum

On Tuesday night WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange applied for political asylum at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London after failing in his bid to avoid extradition to Sweden to face sex crime allegations. The 40-year-old Australian is currently inside the building in Knightsbridge, having gone there on Tuesday afternoon to request asylum under the United Nations Human Rights Declaration. The country's foreign minister Ricardo Patino told a press conference in the South American country that it was considering his request. In a short statement last night, Mr Assange said: "I can confirm that today I arrived at the Ecuadorian Embassy and sought diplomatic sanctuary and political asylum. This application has been passed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the capital Quito. I am grateful to the Ecuadorian ambassador and the government of Ecuador for considering my application." The computer expert, who was on £200,000 bail after failing in several attempts to halt extradition, attracted several high-profile supporters including Ken Loach and socialite and charity fundraiser Jemima Khan, who each offered £20,000 as surety. Other supporters included Bianca Jagger and veteran left-winger Tony Benn. The Swedish authorities want him to answer accusations of raping a woman and sexually molesting and coercing another in Stockholm in August 2010 while on a visit to give a lecture. Assange, whose WikiLeaks website has published a mass of leaked diplomatic cables that embarrassed several governments and international businesses, says the sex was consensual and the allegations against him are politically motivated. The Supreme Court last month ruled in favour of a High Court ruling that his extradition was legal. Last week the Supreme Court refused an attempt by him to reopen his appeal against extradition, saying it was "without merit". He had until June 28 to ask European judges in Strasbourg to consider his case and postpone extradition on the basis that he has not had a fair hearing from the UK courts. A statement issued on behalf of the Ecuadorian Embassy said Mr Assange would remain at the embassy while his request was considered.