Personal Benefits

Happiness and success in life are largely dependent upon our ability to think critically and creatively. From childhood until old age our brains are malleable, or as neuroscientists say, plastic. They become sharper, quicker, and more skillful with excitement and challenges or atrophy and grow stale with disuse, repetitive tasks, and boredom. 

One of the opportunities to change and improve our lives lies in our ability to enjoy the challenges of stimulating our brains with a wide variety of mental activities.

More and more researchers are recognizing that we don’t think alike, learn alike, or even have the same intelligences, abilities, or skill sets. But the exciting part of their research is that adults, children, and seniors can learn to think in a multitude of ways by playing games, solving or making puzzles, building or creating sculptures with 3-D construction sets, learning a sport, playing an instrument, etc. Each of us has to move at our own pace.  In this way we invite periodic glowing moments of success. 

Thought Juggler's Game Fairs bring this stimulating world of fun, thought, and play to your organizations. By playing a wide variety of different games with different people, a Thought Juggler Game Fair presents an interesting and intriguing array of challenges not normally available to us. Thought Juggler was born out of a passion to help young and old alike improve their chances of success and happiness.

The Power of Games: Playing games and solving puzzles increases our ability to focus, our mental stamina, and our overall powers of concentration. This is especially true of games because they are not only active, but also interactive. 

Game play is thousands of years old and was traditionally confined to the elite.  Games, were and are, popular for three reasons.  Firstly, because our brains view mental exercise  as active fun (as opposed to something that is pleasurable, which is passive).  Secondly, because games are highly social.  And thirdly, and most importantly, because games teach children, adolescents, adults, and seniors how to solve problems as well as how to plan and think strategically; skills that the elite needed in order to remain in power.

Thought Juggler is based on three premises.

First, that students and people of all ages who enjoy exercising their minds by playing a variety of games and doing puzzles are more resourceful thinkers and do better at school, at work, and in life.

Second, unlike buying games or puzzles over the Internet or in stores, people who attend Thought Juggler Game Fairs actually have fun playing the games, solving the puzzles, and sampling the thinking tools they are thinking of purchasing rather than looking at sealed boxes in stores or product descriptions on the Internet.

And third, that it is emotionally far healthier—and much more joyful—to play games together in real life than to hide in isolation behind computer screens in virtual worlds.

Benefits to Organizations

Uniqueness: At a Thought Juggler Game Fair, guests sit down and explore a highly unusual and stimulating selection of thought provoking games, puzzles, and thinking tools that they can play and tinker with as they choose. This is a new event category that combines the excitement and social benefits of a fair with the mental stimulation of visiting a fascinating hands-on exhibit.  No other organization offers an event of this nature.  But, of course, no other organization possesses Thought Juggler’s passion and commitment to making creative and critical thinking enjoyable.

Tumultuous times: Success, no matter how an organization defines it, is threatened when old eras are ending and new eras beginning.  Pre-existing rules and strategies may or may not remain effective.  In times of turmoil and upheaval creative, inventive, and out-of-the-box thinking can bring about solutions that help an organization flourish.  Thought Juggler’s Game Fairs encourage and enhance just those sorts of thinking skills.  Thought Juggler also offers workshops that boost out-of-the-box thinking skills that are crucial to turning crises into opportunities.        

Creating Community:  According to psychologists, longevity experts, and business leaders, our happiness and our success are dependent upon the strength of our social bonds and networks.  Thought Juggler Games Fairs help people meet and get to know one another in a relaxed and enjoyable manner.  This happens naturally as guests sit at the same table and engage each other while playing a game, sorting out a puzzle, or building a 3-D structure.  They get to chat and joke while focusing upon something mutually entertaining.  Discussion comes easily, as whatever they are engaged in becomes the centerpiece of their attention.

At Thought Juggler’s festive game fairs guests, can choose to play at as many as 50 different tables.  As they move about, they have a rich variety of opportunities to interact with, and meet, other guests.  Another distinguishing feature in helping people to intermingle and get acquainted are the facilitators (either your volunteers or Thought Juggler staff) who help guests with the games and puzzles. 

Networking: While performances (speakers, shows, entertainers, etc.), breakfasts, wine and cheese parties, and similar gatherings are popular, they lack the many “natural icebreaker moments” that occur throughout a Thought Juggler Game Fair.

Attracting new members: All organizations, whether they be houses of worship, associations, or clubs, compete for members, people’s time, and their commitment. The correct mix of benefits, mission, leadership, and current membership are key deciding factors in joining an organization. The types of events organizations hold give potential members a way of evaluating the nature of an organization and the benefits that await them when they join.  Holding a Thought Juggler Game Fair indicates an organization’s commitment to, and an understanding of, the creative and critical thinking needs of its members—to not only survive, but to flourish and make the most of their lives and careers. 

Family-centric:  Thought Juggler Game Fairs are truly intergenerational and family friendly.  Guests see parents playing with children, teens playing with grand parents, moms playing with daughters and dads playing with sons and visa-versa.  They also see siblings playing happily with one another.  Think about it.  Families have very few mentally rich and stimulating environments available to them.  And of those available, even fewer are openly structured.

Bonding and team building: Trust and respect are the indisputable foundations of teams functioning together effectively to solve problems and overcome obstacles.  Rather than place people in stressful and sometimes risky or threatening situations, as is frequently done in bonding and team building exercises, Thought Juggler workshops make use of games, puzzles, and thinking tools, to help team members uncover their individual strengths and inventiveness.  Not only does this process build trust and respect, it also builds humility as well as a stress-reducing sense of humor: all qualities necessary for people to succeed in developing meaningful working relationships.

Breaking barriers: Thought Juggler Game Fairs encourage one-to-one communication in an engaging and festive environment.  They work to change age, gender, racial, ethnic, political, religious, and economic perceptions.  In short, Thought Juggler’s fairs have the potential to bring different groups together and expand their fields of vision in a unique and community-embracing way.

Brain benefits: Thought Juggler’s games, puzzles, and thinking tools enhance critical thinking, creative thinking, strategic thinking, focus, concentration, and mental stamina.  They quicken thought processes, pattern recognition, and learning.  They improve memory, neurogenesis, and aid in keeping our neurons, dendrites and synapses alive and functioning.  Thought Juggler’s biofeedback computer program improves stress reduction, emotional control, focus and concentration.

Motivation:  Scientific studies from Pavlov to the present, have largely focused on positive and negative forms of motivation, in other words: reward and punishment.  In contrast, Thought Juggler Game Fairs focus upon reducing de-motivators and creating uplifting emotional spirals. 

Fear and intimidation inhibits curiosity, which in turn inhibits the innate joys of learning, thinking, and risk taking.  As scientists and educators claim that motivation is more important than ability in predicting success, someone suffering from fear or anxiety—whether generated internally or by external circumstances—avoids risks and therefore is often locked into a repetitive de-motivational cycle.  Thought Juggler’s game play and puzzle solving actively encourage curiosity and inventiveness in a risk-free arena, thus incrementally rebuilding the pleasures of success and therefore acting as motivational building blocks.  Over time, this type of learned motivation effectively rewires the brain.

$$$  AMAZINGLY COST EFFECTIVE  $$$

Because Thought Juggler sells its games, puzzles, and thinking tools at its Game Fairs, workshops, and special events, it is able to keep its charges extremely reasonable. 

Thought Juggler Game Fairs are a very enjoyable way for people to engage one another.  In fact…at Thought Juggler, we make thinking fun!