I Want To Be Alone

A person can be creatively gifted in many different ways, Howard suggests, citing the examples of Einstein, TS Eliot, Martha Graham, Sigmund Freud and Mahatma Gandhi, among others.

The only attribute that all creative people share, he concluded, is a large capacity to be alone.

Dr Gardner, was speaking in Bangalore as part of his India Tour 2012.  Full story: HERE

Creative Process Shortlink

Be What You Want

You must be the change that you want to see in the world, Mahatma Ghandi famously said. No logic in saying you want world peace, for example, if you’re engagedin violent protest.

Ghandi was an activist. Activists see more vividly than most what’s wrong with the world, what they want to put right.

For conscious creatives, it’s a little different.  We too need to be what we want to see and sometimes, yes, that means change. But sometimes not.

Sometimes conscious creation is more about being, owning, expressing or celebrating what already is.

Inhabiting more fully who we already are.

Be What You Want

Change or no change, the principle still stands. Be what you want to see.

Creative Process Shortlink

Overcoming Self-Sabotage

creative self

The biggest challenge – just see it!

When you set out to create something, the conventional, conditioned part of you sets off fear alarms, in the form of resistance and self-sabotage.

Stephen Pressfield’s book Turning Pro, talks a lot about this tendency, which he calls resistance, in terms of the “shadow self” of Jewish Kabbalism.

“The [conventional] self doesn’t care about you. It doesn’t love you. It has its own agenda and it will kill you,” says Pressfield, quoting rabbi Mordecai Finley. ”It will kill you like cancer…to achieve its agenda, which is to prevent you from actualizing your [creative] self.”

Overcoming this resistance is tricky. Try to suppress it and it will bounce back, twice as strong.

As Audre Lorde once wrote: “The master’s tools will not dismantle the master’s house“.

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Creative Process Shortlink

Fill Up To Flow – The Key to Creative Success

Fill Up To Flow – The Key To Creative Success

The key to creative success is excess, suggests Anais Nin, because creation comes from overflow.

Excess breeds creativity

“You must not fear, hold back, count or be a miser with your thoughts and feelings.

“… Creation comes from an overflow, so you have to learn to intake, to imbibe, to nourish yourself and not be afraid of fullness.

“The fullness is like a tidal wave which then carries you, sweeps you into experience and into writing. Permit yourself to flow and overflow, allow for the rise in temperature, all the expansions and intensifications.

“Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terrors, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them. If it seems to you that I move in a world of certitudes, you, par contre, must benefit from the great privilege of youth, which is that you move in a world of mysteries.

“But both must be ruled by faith.”

Creative Process Shortlink

The Multitasking Myth

Attention Blink - Cognitive Limit - Choice Delay

Attention Blink – Cognitive Limit – Choice Delay

The discovery in 2007 of a “bottleneck in the brain” showed that multitasking is not productive.

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Creative Process Shortlink

The Seven Stages of The Creative Process

The same process that creates one thing creates everything. And that process goes through seven stages, says Orna Ross. In the second part of this series, Orna talks about Stage one, Creative Intention.

The Challenge: To set a clear creative intention.

creative process stage 2

Creative intentions are not reducible to the ‘goals’ beloved of business management and success gurus. It is certainly possible to make things happen using this sort of motivation but for many, the goal approach leads to frustration, procrastination, overwhelm, giving up or block.

Goals are too managerial, too rational, too conscious, too directed. What’s missing is a tap into the vast reservoir of the imagination.

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Creative Process Shortlink

Only Connect. Phil Hansen’s Creative Intelligence

Full MoonSo let’s say you’re a writer/artist/musician and you’re feeling a bit blocked. What are some things you can do to get the juice flowing again?

Creativity is simply connecting information, so we have to be in a relaxed mental state that is open to seeing these connections, but aware enough to capture them. Getting to this mental state is different for everyone, so I always suggest people experiment and find what works for them. Whenever I feel creatively stumped, my first instinct is to do something to get myself relaxed. I usually go on a long walk, like two hours long, because it takes at least 45 minutes for me to get out of my head and into the ether.

In order to be in the creative flow, it’s really important to be process driven and hold the results loosely. Sometimes it’s better to keep pushing through it. If you’re a writer, keep writing — even if it’s gibberish — and eventually it will flow again. Sometimes it’s better to destroy and start over. Or, if what you’re working on is too broad, impose a limitation to spark your creativity.

More: TED Blog

Creative Process Shortlink

Flow. By Orna Ross.

 flow poem

I wish we could flow

as oceans tide,

swelling with joy at our

pulse to unfurl.

I feel we should roll

as planets turn,

dark days and seasons held

level with light.

I sense we can grow

as mountains rise

from stresses rock setting

solid and free.

I intend to go

as children run,

arms wide, smile plunging

into full stop.

Creative Living, Poetry Shortlink

We shall not cease from exploration
two waves of the creative seaAnd the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.

– TS ELIOT

Creative Intelligence, Creative Living Shortlink

The Pursuit of Creative Purpose

DANIEL PINK: “The paradox of prosperity is that while living standards have risen steadily decade after decade, personal, family, and life satisfaction haven’t budged.

“That’s why more people – liberated by prosperity but not fulfilled by it – are resolving the paradox by searching for meaning. As Columbia University’s Andrew Delbanco puts it, “The most striking feature of contemporary culture is the unslaked craving for transcendence.”

“Visit any moderately prosperous community in the advanced world and along with the plenteous shopping opportunities, you can glimpse this quest for transcendence in action. From the mainstream embrace of once-exotic practices such as yoga and meditation to the rise of spirituality in the workplace and evangelical themes in books and movies, the pursuit of purpose and meaning has become and integral part of our lives.

People everywhere are moving from focusing on the day-to-day text of their lives to the broader context.”

From A Whole New Mind

Creative Living Shortlink