Unleash Your Creativity Quotes

Reading activates and exercises the mind. Reading forces the mind to discriminate. From the beginning, readers have to recognize letters printed on the page, make them into words, the words into sentences, and the sentences into concepts. Reading pushes us to use our imagination and makes us more creatively inclined.

This is the challenge of creative thinking—as you open the spiritual channels of your mind, God can download divine, creative thoughts into your brain. Ask God to enlarge your capacity for thinking, to take the limits off.

Let me list for you some of the many ways in which you might be afraid to live a more creative life: You’re afraid you have no talent. You’re afraid you’ll be rejected or criticized or ridiculed or misunderstood or—worst of all—ignored. You’re afraid there’s no market for your creativity, and therefore no point in pursuing it. You’re afraid somebody else already did it better. You’re afraid everybody else already did it better. You’re afraid somebody will steal your ideas, so it’s safer to keep them hidden forever in the dark. You’re afraid you won’t be taken seriously. You’re afraid your work isn’t politically, emotionally, or artistically important enough to change anyone’s life. You’re afraid your dreams are embarrassing. You’re afraid that someday you’ll look back on your creative endeavors as having been a giant waste of time, effort, and money. You’re afraid you don’t have the right kind of discipline. You’re afraid you don’t have the right kind of work space, or financial freedom, or empty hours in which to focus on invention or exploration. You’re afraid you don’t have the right kind of training or degree. You’re afraid you’re too fat. (I don’t know what this has to do with creativity, exactly, but experience has taught me that most of us are afraid we’re too fat, so let’s just put that on the anxiety list, for good measure.) You’re afraid of being exposed as a hack, or a fool, or a dilettante, or a narcissist. You’re afraid of upsetting your family with what you may reveal. You’re afraid of what your peers and coworkers will say if you express your personal truth aloud. You’re afraid of unleashing your innermost demons, and you really don’t want to encounter your innermost demons. You’re afraid your best work is behind you. You’re afraid you never had any best work to begin with. You’re afraid you neglected your creativity for so long that now you can never get it back. You’re afraid you’re too old to start. You’re afraid you’re too young to start. You’re afraid because something went well in your life once, so obviously nothing can ever go well again. You’re afraid because nothing has ever gone well in your life, so why bother trying? You’re afraid of being a one-hit wonder. You’re afraid of being a no-hit wonder

It may seem like a daunting—if not exhausting—task to establish a greater degree of order in your life. That may feel impossible if you feel you are already overstretched. But taking time to order your day should not be an additional burden or one more “to do” on your list of duties and responsibilities. Order will ease your load and free your mind for greater peace, joy, and creativity. By more effectively ordering your day, you will gain a sense of control, a sense of purpose, increased productivity, an environment of creativity, and a greater focus and flow of accomplishments.

You’re standing in the middle of a blank piece of paper. Unleash your inner architect and design your path to success. Get wild, be creative, and don’t get distracted by the flow of traffic. Traffic sucks anyway.

Be attached to nothing. Be grateful for everything.

Belief in your creative capacity lies at the heart of innovation.

Like a muscle, your creative abilities will grow and strengthen with practice.

At its core, creative confidence is about believing in your ability to create change in the world around you.

When we are placed in a set of circumstances where we have to take initiative and be creative, some of us find it hard to transition. Those people have been trained not to think but to obey orders. They are slaves to the training, unconsciously pledging allegiance to the average. Mentally they recite from the manual of mediocrity.

The art of writing is not as solitary as one might think. When it finally dawns on us one day that our task as writers is to share what we know of the human spirit, we suddenly discover that we were never truly alone.

So design your space for flexibility instead of inertia and the status quo.

Passion is one great force that unleashes creativity, because if you're passionate about something then you're more willing to take risks.

If we don’t know what we have in our paint boxes, how can we know all the possible things we could paint?

Unleash your creativity and the universe will unleash its rewards.

Empathy means challenging your preconceived ideas and setting aside your sense of what your think is true in order to learn what actually is true

Accepting that we're imperfect, and knowing that we have a right to exist anyway, is an empowering and important life tool.

Success follows the grind you love.

With a bit of mental gymnastics, “I’m so anxious about what’s going to happen!” can be flipped into “I can’t wait to see what happens!

Fear teaches you to be cautious, careful, and conscientious. It also forces you to be creative, compassionate, and calculating.

The neurotic exhausts himself not only in self-preoccupations like hypochondrial fears and all sorts of fantasies, but also in others: those around him on whom he is dependent become his therapeutic work project; he takes out his subjective problems on them. But people are not clay to be molded; they have needs and counter-wills of their own. The neurotic's frustration as a failed artist can't be remedied by anything but an objective creative work of his own. Another way of looking at it is to say that the more totally one takes in the world as a problem, the more inferior or "bad" one is going to feel inside oneself. He can try to work out this "badness" by striving for perfection, and then the neurotic symptom becomes his "creative" work; or he can try to make himself perfect by means his partner. But it is obvious to us that the only way to work on perfection is in the form of an objective work that is fully under your control and is perfectible in some real ways. Either you eat up yourself and others around you, trying for perfection; or you objectify that imperfection in a work, on which you then unleash your creative powers. In this sense, some kind of objective creativity is the only answer man has to the problem of life. In this way he satisfies nature, which asks that he live and act objectively as a vital animal plunging into the world; but he also satisfies his own distinctive human nature because he plunges in on his own symbolic terms and not as a reflex of the world as given to mere physical sense experience. He takes in the world, makes a total problem out of it, and then gives out a fashioned, human answer to that problem. This, as Goethe saw in Faust, is the highest that man can achieve.

No matter how high you rise in your career, no matter how much expertise you gain, you still need to keep your knowledge and your insights refreshed. Otherwise, you may develop a false confidence in what you already “know” that might lead you to the wrong decision.

Many parents have asked me: What is the point of my child explaining their work if they can get the answer right? My answer is always the same: Explaining your work is what, in mathematics, we call reasoning, and reasoning is central to the discipline of mathematics.

Dreams and visions are not always intended to be interpreted or analyzed. At times they say exactly what they mean, providing a set of images and meanings to be taken for no more or less than they are.

We'd like to imagine we can make evil disappear in one, decisive victory. But evil won't cooperate, it reappears endlessly. You attain Goodness by transforming it every time it returns. That's what Goodness is: the ceaseless commitment to transform evil.

New opportunities for innovation open up when you start the creative problem-solving process with empathy toward your target audience—whether

We do not just go through life blindly,we create our own journey. Your faith has sculpted you into the human being you have become.

There are no mistakes, just lines that you're not happy with.

creative confidence is about believing in your ability to create change in the world around you.

The reason most of your staff are asleep and disengaged, is because you have boring, and bully managers, and no REAL Leaders to inspire and unleash potential.

At the heart of it, being creative allows us to understand ourselves better. Just like fingerprints or personalized music playlists, our creativity couldn’t come from anyone else.

We’ll never know exactly what we’re capable of unless we push ourselves and TRY IT ALL.

when we integrate the WORK of creativity into our lives, we are choosing to fill our time with something that yields infinite long-term satisfaction and rewards.

Creating can be just a vehicle for releasing feelings.

There are seeds of possibility in each of your dreams. No matter how big or small. And there is nothing NOT worth planting.

Next time there’s an anxiety-inducing task at hand, why not visualize doing it in front of someone who’s delighted at everything you do?

Empathy means challenging your preconceived ideas and setting aside your sense of what you think is true in order to learn what actually is true. that people aren’t conscious of.

But as you look at the sweep of your life and start to think of a legacy that survives beyond it, giving others the opportunity to live up to their creative capacity seems like a worthy purpose.

If you see good circumstances around you, you tend to feel good and attract good things to you. If you see negative things around you, you tend to feel bad and likewise attract negative things to yourself.

It turns out that creativity isn’t some rare gift to be enjoyed by the lucky few—it’s a natural part of human thinking and behavior. In too many of us it gets blocked. But it can be unblocked. And unblocking that creative spark can have far-reaching implications for yourself, your organization, and your community.

Write down every possible solution to a problem you have that is giving you anxiety. Write until your imagination is exhausted. Then write more. Make sure to put the most ridiculous solutions you can think of on the list. When in doubt, add, “Aliens invade the earth and destroy it.” Nothing is so grim you can’t unravel it with a little dork-filled humor.

Imagining what would happen if you changed one thing you do on a daily basis—and thinking about how that change would affect everything else—is a clever way to conquer seemingly impossible scenarios and consider how even the smallest thing you deal with impacts everything else you do.

If we write to the point where we no longer have any solutions that could work, here’s the kicker: Simply accept that there is no solution right now. And that’s okay! We did everything we could! Sometimes accepting that the future is unknown is as big a relief as we can find in the moment.

Have you ever thought about it? If somebody asks, “Who are you?” what do you answer? You say your name. The name is not yours, because you came into the world without a name. You came nameless; it is not your property, it has been given to you. And any name, A-B-C-D, would have been useful. It is arbitrary. It is not essential in any way. If you are called “Susan” good; if you are called “Harry” good, it makes no difference. Any name would have been as applicable to you as any other. It is just a label. A name is needed to call you by, but it has nothing to do with your being. Or you say, “I am a doctor” or you say, “I am an engineer”—or a businessman, or a painter, or this and that—but nothing says anything about you. When you say, “I am a doctor,” you say something about your profession, not about you. You say how you earn your living. You don’t say anything about life, you say something about your living. You may be earning your living as an engineer, or as a doctor, or as a businessman—it is irrelevant. It does not say anything about you. Or you say your father’s name, your mother’s name, you give your family tree—that too is irrelevant because that doesn’t define you. Your being born in a particular family is accidental; you could as well have been born in another family and you would not even have noticed the difference. These are just utilitarian tricks—and man becomes a “self.” This self is a pseudoself, a created, manufactured self, homemade. And your own real self remains deep down hidden in mist and mystery. I was reading:

You should let your mind do most of the work, and you physically step into the creation process at the appropriate time.

Research has shown that simply imagining yourself in a situation where the rules of regular life don’t apply can greatly increase your creativity.

This is your opportunity to design schools that value creation over compliance and making over memorizing. This

The heart together with the mind is the most powerful creative state to bring your wishes and ideas into reality.

You are alive here to perfect your creative ability.

Belief in your creative capacity lies at the heart of innovation.

Everything creative we put out into the world is just a way to figure out how we can be better.

To spend time observing, without drawing, thinking, without drawing, or feeling, without drawing, is the misfortune of nonartists.

Never, ever, ever, write off anything you’ve achieved as merely being lucky. You are not lucky: you are hard-working and capable. Don’t ever question it.

I have a right to spend my time this way.

How can I make this fun for me?’ should be the mantra in every creative activity that we do.

When you open your mind to the possibility that your capabilities are unlimited and unknown, you already have your running shoes on and are ready to race forward.

Start with a growth mindset, the deep-seated belief that your true potential is still unknown. That you are not limited to only what you have been able to do before.

The truth is that freeing ourselves up to create is a form of self-care. We NEED to do it. So we can be our best and happiest selves.

you have a great need to make people understand something, or a deep feeling you want to communicate, that is where you will find the seeds of your most rewarding creativity!

What matters most in the end, though, is this: your belief in your capacity to create positive change and the courage to take action.

It is through imagination that we transcend understanding and travel into the world of possibilities.

...Discipleship...a process of unleashing the creative potential in each person.

Adopt a clear mindset. Strive for pure ideas. Communicate in a matter that needs no further explanation. Avoid shades of grey. Focus on the fundamentals, and share them to the world

A lot of what holds many of us back from creating is thinking that if we’re not instantly good at something, we are not “talented.” And if we’re not talented, we should abandon the effort. “Try the next hill! There might be oil/gold/magic mushrooms there instead!” This is the mythology around creativity we have to dismantle. Because that’s what it is. A Big. Fat. Myth.

Everything is a prototype,” says Claudia. “So, we would do an org change and I would say to everyone, 'It's a prototype.” Which means (a) I have permission to be wrong and (b) I want your feedback if it's not working.

We WILL reach our creative goals if we persist. Stay focused. Look to allies for support. And use the tools in this book to cut off enemies when they start to spring with their cheery “Heyo! Care to hear how much you suck?” voices.

Self-awareness is a muscle, and in order to start creating, we must start flexing it. Because the more aware we are of ourselves, the more comfortable we’ll be in expressing our points of view. What we like and don’t like. What we want to embrace. What we want to shred to pieces with our vengeance!! (Oops.) We need to know and embrace who we are if we want to overcome resistance, criticism, and all the other hurdles that will pop up as we incorporate more creativity into our lives.

five guidelines that can improve your next karaoke experience—and your innovation culture: • Keep your sense of humor • Build on the energy of others • Minimize hierarchy • Value team camaraderie and trust • Defer judgment—at least temporarily

seems like disaster’s about to strike because there are so many people YELLING. That’s the time for us to back the truck up and journal it out. When we throw a ton of logical answers at our worries, we’re able to drain the power from our anxiety.

If you have only a few ideas in your idea bank, you’re more likely to settle on one of the few you have and defend it fiercely, even if it’s not optimal. But when ideas are plentiful and easy—if you (or your team) have a dozen a day—then there’s no need to become territorial about them.

In the beautiful words of Lore Wilbert Ferguson: Tell me, I want to say to my fellow writers, tell me of your inner demons, tell me of your flesh. I want to hear the war that waged within you as you navigated complex stories and spaces. I want to know how hard you fought and how much you wept and how little you prayed. Tell it honest, tell it slant, tell it however you want to, but tell the truth because the truth is ten thousand little protests that got you where you are and every one of them matters to God and to me and even to you because there you are and there you were all along.5

Have you ever thought about it? If somebody asks, “Who are you?” what do you answer? You say your name. The name is not yours, because you came into the world without a name. You came nameless; it is not your property, it has been given to you. And any name, A-B-C-D, would have been useful. It is arbitrary. It is not essential in any way. If you are called “Susan” good; if you are called “Harry” good, it makes no difference. Any name would have been as applicable to you as any other. It is just a label. A name is needed to call you by, but it has nothing to do with your being. Or you say, “I am a doctor” or you say, “I am an engineer”—or a businessman, or a painter, or this and that—but nothing says anything about you. When you say, “I am a doctor,” you say something about your profession, not about you. You say how you earn your living. You don’t say anything about life, you say something about your living. You may be earning your living as an engineer, or as a doctor, or as a businessman—it is irrelevant. It does not say anything about you. Or you say your father’s name, your mother’s name, you give your family tree—that too is irrelevant because that doesn’t define you. Your being born in a particular family is accidental; you could as well have been born in another family and you would not even have noticed the difference. These are just utilitarian tricks—and man becomes a “self.” This self is a pseudoself, a created, manufactured self, homemade. And your own real self remains deep down hidden in mist and

The only thing in our life we have control over is ourselves. Unfortunately, we are not born with user manuals. (Or warranties. Or return slips, for that matter.) So we have to work hard to uncover who we are and what sparks our passions. It’s a job. In fact, I believe it’s an integral part of the act of living.

The brain, you see, is not a computer, despite oft repeated claims to the contrary. The brain is a living thing; much like an overgrown garden than an orderly filing cabinet. And mind wandering through your own garden of thoughts, memories, feelings and desires is a sure way to discover your inner creative self.

Poetry reminds us that we are not alone, that we have never been alone, and that we will never be alone. It offers a sort of communion, a kind space to share with someone. It is a humble form of hospitality, of swinging wide open the door of your soul, as if to say the things that confess that state of your soul. It is an invitation. It is a welcome. It is home.

imagine that creativity is a way of giving our souls a voice. If we give no other consideration to the concept of “spirituality,” just try to imagine that we actually HAVE spirits and we need to treat them nicely. They are delicate. And easily bruised. And they wither when they’re made mute. Creativity gives our spirit a voice. What do we LOSE by letting it speak?

If your CEO has enough good ideas to fuel the company’s growth objectives in perpetuity, maybe you don’t need to tap into the reservoir of talent at other levels of the organization. But the most innovative companies in the twenty-first century have transitioned from command-and-control organizations to a participatory approach that involves collaboration and teamwork.

Soon I was to find that people who had been creative at one stage of growth now seemed empty of ideas—and worse, they seemed not to notice that the ground had moved up under their feet! As I grew and encountered higher ideals and new goals, what had once been acceptable now seemed lethargic at best and lethal if ignored. You can’t take everyone with you just because they were with you where you were before.

If you’re seeking to unleash originality, here are some practical actions that you can take. The first steps are for individuals to generate, recognize, voice, and champion new ideas. The next set is for leaders to stimulate novel ideas and build cultures that welcome dissent. The final recommendations are for parents and teachers to help children become comfortable taking a creative or moral stand against the status quo.

Die Empty. I want to know that if I lay my head down tonight and don’t wake up tomorrow, I have emptied myself of whatever creativity is lingering inside, with minimal regrets about how I spent my focus, time, and energy. This doesn’t happen by accident; it takes intentional and sustained effort. But I can say with confidence from my own experience and the experiences of others I’ve worked with that the effort is well worth it.

This is why we seek personal growth—to be free from the pain we cause ourselves, to make better choices, to feel better about who we are becoming, to act more confidently in social situations, and to unleash our full creativity and contributions into the world in order to make our highest difference. Gaining Personal Freedom in this sense is letting go of any self-doubt and self-loathing and allowing ourselves permission to be our unique, powerful, authentic selves.

Networking is a fundamental operating principle of the human brain. All knowledge within the brain is based on networking. Thus, any one piece of information can be potentially linked with any other. Indeed, creativity can be thought of as the formation of novel and original linkages. James Burke refers to this as the pinball effect. Rather than training ourselves in narrow specialties, suggests Burke, we should train ourselves “to think in a different way about knowledge and how it should be used.” Philosophers

The strange and beautiful truth about the adjacent possible is that its boundaries grow as you explore them. Each new combination opens up the possibility of other new combinations. Think of it as a house that magically expands with each door you open. You begin in a room with four doors, each leading to a new room that you haven’t visited yet. Once you open one of those doors and stroll into that room, three new doors appear, each leading to a brand-new room that you couldn’t have reached from your original starting point. Keep opening new doors and eventually you’ll have built a palace.

We’ve seen the pattern dozens of times at IDEO where new employees are uncertain or tentative at first, trying to “be on their best behavior.” And then over time, they let down their guard. You see the transformation in the way they dress and the way they act around people they see as authority figures. As they become more confident, they eventually adopt a bring-your-whole-self-to-work attitude and allow themselves to be vulnerable in a creative context. This vulnerability and ability to trust the people around you can help to overcome so many of the barriers to creative thinking and constructive behavior.

cognition refers to the ability of our brain to attend, identify, and act. More informally, cognition refers to our thoughts, moods, inclinations, decisions, and actions. Included among the components of cognition are alertness, concentration, perceptual speed, learning, memory, problem solving, creativity, and mental endurance. Each of these components of cognition has two things in common. First, each is dependent on how well our brain is functioning. Second, each can be improved by our own efforts. In short, we can make ourselves smarter by enhancing the components of cognition. This book will provide you with methods for enhancing cognition by improving your brain’s performance. Regular

She is also the power behind spiritual awakening, the inner force that unleashes spiritual power within the human body in the form of kundalini. And she is a guardian: beautiful, queenly, and fierce. Paintings of Durga show her with flowing hair, a red sari, bangles, necklaces, a crown—and eight arms bristling with weapons. Durga carries a spear, a mace, a discus, a bow, and a sword—as well as a conch (representing creative sound), a lotus (symbolizing fertility), and a rosary (symbolizing prayer). In one version of her origin, she appears as a divine female warrior, brought into manifestation by the male gods to save them from the buffalo demon, Mahisha. The assembled gods, furious and powerless over a demon who couldn’t be conquered, sent forth their anger as a mass of light and power. Their combined strength coalesced into the form of a radiantly beautiful woman who filled every direction with her light. Her face was formed by Shiva; her hair came from Yama, the god of death; her arms were given by Vishnu. Shiva gave her his trident, Vishnu his discus, Vayu—the wind god—offered his bow and arrow. The mountain god, Himalaya, gave her the lion for her mount. Durga set forth to battle the demon for the sake of the world, armed and protected by all the powers of the divine masculine.1 As a world protector, Durga’s fierceness arises out of her uniquely potent compassion. She is the deity to call on when you’re

The last name made Ro unleash an impressive string of ogre curses. “I take it that means you know the guy?” Keefe asked. Sophie could see every one of Ro’s pointed teeth when she said, “I do.” “And?” Keefe pressed. “It’s none of your business,” Ro snapped back. “Pretty sure it is, since Foster’s supposed to trust him with her life,” Keefe argued. Ro muttered a few more creative words under her breath. “Bo’s a loyal Mercadir. That’s not the issue.” “You call him Bo?” Keefe noted as Sophie asked, “Then what’s the issue?” Ro ignored both of them. “Stay here,” she told Keefe, “and don’t even think about leaving until I return.” “Where are you going?” Elwin called as she headed for the exit. “To throttle my father.” The door slammed hard enough to shake the walls, and Sophie, Keefe, and Elwin all shared a look. “Yeah . . . we definitely need to get the story on Bo and Ro,” Keefe decided. Sophie nodded. “Do you think they dated?” “Ohhhhhhhh, now I do! And I’ve been trying to get dirt like that on Ro since she got here!” He cracked his knuckles. “Okay, this is going to call for some epic-level snooping—and if that doesn’t work, I guess I know what my next bet will be!” “No more betting,” Elwin warned. “At least not on my watch. And today’s lesson better be chaos-free or I’m nixing these little sessions.” “Aw, we can’t have that. Foster would miss me too much. Who knew the way to her heart was my mad teaching skills?

When was the last time you made something that someone wasn’t paying you for, and looking over your shoulder to make sure you got it right?” When I ask creatives this question, the answer that comes back all too often is, “I can’t remember.” It’s so easy for creativity to become a means to a very practical end—earning a paycheck and pleasing your client or manager. But that type of work only uses a small spectrum of your abilities. To truly excel, you must also continue to create for the most important audience of all: yourself. In her book The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron discusses a now well-known practice that she calls “morning pages.” She suggests writing three pages of free-flowing thought first thing in the morning as a way to explore latent ideas, break through the voice of the censor in your head, and get your creative juices flowing. While there is nothing immediately practical or efficient about the exercise, Cameron argues that it’s been the key to unlocking brilliant insights for the many people who have adopted it as a ritual. I’ve seen similar benefits of this kind of “Unnecessary Creation” in the lives of creative professionals across the board. From gardening to painting with watercolors to chipping away at the next great American novel on your weekends, something about engaging in the creative act on our own terms seems to unleash latent passions and insights. I believe Unnecessary Creation is essential for anyone who works with his or her mind.

CHOOSE CREATIVITY: To be more creative, the first step is to decide you want to make it happen. 2. THINK LIKE A TRAVELER: Like a visitor to a foreign land, try turning fresh eyes on your surroundings, no matter how mundane or familiar. Don’t wait around for a spark to magically appear. Expose yourself to new ideas and experiences. 3. ENGAGE RELAXED ATTENTION: Flashes of insight often come when your mind is relaxed and not focused on completing a specific task, allowing the mind to make new connections between seemingly unrelated ideas. 4. EMPATHIZE WITH YOUR END USER: You come up with more innovative ideas when you better understand the needs and context of the people you are creating solutions for. 5. DO OBSERVATIONS IN THE FIELD: If you observe others with the skills of an anthropologist, you might discover new opportunities hidden in plain sight. 6. ASK QUESTIONS, STARTING WITH “WHY?”: A series of “why?” questions can brush past surface details and get to the heart of the matter. For example, if you ask someone why they are still using a fading technology (think landline phones), the answers might have more to do with psychology than practicality. 7. REFRAME CHALLENGES: Sometimes, the first step toward a great solution is to reframe the question. Starting from a different point of view can help you get to the essence of a problem. 8. BUILD A CREATIVE SUPPORT NETWORK: Creativity can flow more easily and be more fun when you have others to collaborate with and bounce ideas off.

10 Practical Strategies to Improve Your Critical Thinking Skills and Unleash Your Creativity In today's rapidly changing world, the ability to think critically and creatively has become more important than ever. Whether you're a student looking to excel academically, a professional striving for success in your career, or simply someone who wants to navigate life's challenges with confidence, developing strong critical thinking skills is crucial. In this blog post, we will explore ten practical strategies to help you improve your critical thinking abilities and unleash your creative potential. 1. Embrace open-mindedness: One of the cornerstones of critical thinking is being open to different viewpoints and perspectives. Cultivate a willingness to listen to others, consider alternative opinions, and challenge your own beliefs. This practice expands your thinking and encourages creative problem-solving. 2. Ask thought-provoking questions: Asking insightful questions is a powerful way to stimulate critical thinking. By questioning assumptions, seeking clarity, and exploring deeper meanings, you can uncover new insights and perspectives. Challenge yourself to ask thought-provoking questions regularly. 3. Practice active listening: Listening actively involves not just hearing, but also understanding, interpreting, and empathizing with the speaker. By honing your active listening skills, you can better grasp complex ideas, identify underlying assumptions, and engage in more meaningful discussions. 4. Seek diverse sources of information: Expand your knowledge base by seeking information from a wide range of sources. Engage with diverse perspectives, opinions, and ideas through books, articles, podcasts, and documentaries. This habit broadens your understanding and encourages critical thinking by exposing you to different viewpoints. 5. Develop analytical thinking skills: Analytical thinking involves breaking down complex problems into smaller components, examining relationships and patterns, and drawing logical conclusions. Enhance your analytical skills by practicing activities like puzzles, riddles, and brain teasers. This will sharpen your ability to analyze information and think critically. 6. Foster a growth mindset: A growth mindset is the belief that your abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work. Embracing this mindset encourages you to view challenges as opportunities for growth, rather than obstacles. By persisting through difficulties, you build resilience and enhance your critical thinking abilities. 7. Engage in collaborative problem-solving: Collaborating with others on problem-solving tasks can spark creativity and strengthen critical thinking skills. Seek out group projects, brainstorming sessions, or online forums where you can exchange ideas, challenge each other's thinking, and find innovative solutions together. 8. Practice reflective thinking: Taking time to reflect on your thoughts, actions, and experiences allows you to gain deeper insights and learn from past mistakes. Regularly engage in activities like journaling, meditation, or self-reflection exercises to develop your reflective thinking skills. This practice enhances your critical thinking abilities by promoting self-awareness and self-improvement. 9. Encourage creativity through experimentation: Creativity and critical thinking often go hand in hand. Give yourself permission to experiment and explore new ideas without fear of failure. Embrace a "what if" mindset and push the boundaries of your thinking. This willingness to take risks and think outside the box can lead to breakthroughs in critical thinking. 10. Continuously learn and adapt: Critical thinking is a skill that can be honed throughout your life. Commit to lifelong learning and seek opportunities to expand your knowledge and skills. Stay curious, be open to new experiences, and embrace change.

You’re afraid you have no talent. You’re afraid you’ll be rejected or criticized or ridiculed or misunderstood or—worst of all—ignored. You’re afraid there’s no market for your creativity, and therefore no point in pursuing it. You’re afraid somebody else already did it better. You’re afraid everybody else already did it better. You’re afraid somebody will steal your ideas, so it’s safer to keep them hidden forever in the dark. You’re afraid you won’t be taken seriously. You’re afraid your work isn’t politically, emotionally, or artistically important enough to change anyone’s life. You’re afraid your dreams are embarrassing. You’re afraid that someday you’ll look back on your creative endeavors as having been a giant waste of time, effort, and money. You’re afraid you don’t have the right kind of discipline. You’re afraid you don’t have the right kind of work space, or financial freedom, or empty hours in which to focus on invention or exploration. You’re afraid you don’t have the right kind of training or degree. You’re afraid you’re too fat. (I don’t know what this has to do with creativity, exactly, but experience has taught me that most of us are afraid we’re too fat, so let’s just put that on the anxiety list, for good measure.) You’re afraid of being exposed as a hack, or a fool, or a dilettante, or a narcissist. You’re afraid of upsetting your family with what you may reveal. You’re afraid of what your peers and coworkers will say if you express your personal truth aloud. You’re afraid of unleashing your innermost demons, and you really don’t want to encounter your innermost demons. You’re afraid your best work is behind you. You’re afraid you never had any best work to begin with. You’re afraid you neglected your creativity for so long that now you can never get it back. You’re afraid you’re too old to start. You’re afraid you’re too young to start. You’re afraid because something went well in your life once, so obviously nothing can ever go well again. You’re afraid because nothing has ever gone well in your life, so why bother trying? You’re afraid of being a one-hit wonder. You’re afraid of being a no-hit wonder . . . Listen, I don’t have all day here, so I’m not going to keep listing fears. It’s a bottomless list, anyhow, and a depressing one. I’ll just wrap up my summary this way: SCARY, SCARY, SCARY. Everything is so goddamn scary. Defending Your Weakness Please understand that the only reason I can speak so authoritatively about fear is that I know it so intimately.

Two things will paralyze our creativity faster than anything else: 1. We haven’t defined success. 2. We haven’t defined failure.

Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds. JAMES 1:2

When we react to problems, as opposed to create with them, we get hooked into stress. When we are under constant low-grade stress—and it’s estimated that over 80 percent of us are all the time—this begins to hurt us.1 When we are stressed, our nervous system tightens up and we lose our creativity. Stress stops us learning, and if we aren’t learning, we aren’t growing.2 Stress, AKA fear, corrodes the curiosity and courage we need to experiment with the new. It is almost impossible to play big in life, if we are scared of looking like idiots, going bankrupt, or being rejected. Stress kills creativity and kills us too. Whereas small amounts of stress help us focus, engage, and learn, chronic or elevated stress burns us out, literally as well as metaphorically. People who live near airports and deal with the stress of giant airplanes roaring above them have higher rates of cardiac arrest than those who don’t.3 People who deal with a controlling or uncommunicative boss have a 60 percent higher chance of developing coronary heart disease than those who don’t.4 Stress leads to tangible changes inside all the cells of the body. Specific genes start to express proteins, which leads to inflammation; and chronic inflammation is associated with killers such as heart disease and cancer. Over time, stress reduces our ability to prevent aging, heal wounds, fight infections, and even be successfully immunized.5 Unmanaged stress, simply from having a sense of disempowerment at work, can be more dangerous than smoking or high cholesterol.

creativity is not a gimmick, but a lifestyle.

customers. But this girl was weaving in and out of the picnic tables, handing out chicken-sandwich samples to those of us who were already stuffing our faces with these same chicken sandwiches.   Most people give up just when they're about to achieve success. They quit on the one-yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game, one foot from a winning touchdown. H. ROSS PEROT   “Ed,” Lisa said, “that's hilarious. I mean, all she has to do is walk about fifteen paces and offer those samples to the people who haven't eaten yet.” Hundreds of starving shopaholics were nearby,

Krisis, the ancient Greek word from which the modern term is derived, doesn’t mean something terrible. It means a ‘turning point,’ a moment for a major decision. Across the other side of the planet, the Chinese developed a word for ‘crisis’ that also brings with it a sense of change. Their word contains two characters: One means ‘emergency’ and the other ‘opportunity.’ Within every crisis there is something dangerous, which we can, and must, pay attention to. Yet, after we have dealt with the most pressing issues, we get access to an opportunity too. We can use any crisis as a turning point to find more peace, purpose, and power inside us. Some wisdom traditions, such as the Eleusinian Mysteries in Ancient Greece, even created artificial crises for their adepts to ensure they got their money’s worth. Few people want to engage in a transformational experience and not come out with a change in attitude or a shift in consciousness! A good crisis is the gateway to this. It serves as the incentive to switch on. The great psychologist Carl Jung believed that even psychotic crises could be deciphered as turning points for transformation and change. So every crisis is asking you: Which way will you turn? Toward the future or the past? Up onto the Breakthrough Curve or back into your comfort zone

You talk too much.”  “You are a real communicator!” “Stop daydreaming.”  “You are creative!” “Don’t be so bossy.”  “You are confident!” “Stop wiggling. Sit still.”  “You were born to move!

what to do about it. Let me list for you some of the many ways in which you might be afraid to live a more creative life: You’re afraid you have no talent. You’re afraid you’ll be rejected or criticized or ridiculed or misunderstood or—worst of all—ignored. You’re afraid there’s no market for your creativity, and therefore no point in pursuing it. You’re afraid somebody else already did it better. You’re afraid everybody else already did it better. You’re afraid somebody will steal your ideas, so it’s safer to keep them hidden forever in the dark. You’re afraid you won’t be taken seriously. You’re afraid your work isn’t politically, emotionally, or artistically important enough to change anyone’s life. You’re afraid your dreams are embarrassing. You’re afraid that someday you’ll look back on your creative endeavors as having been a giant waste of time, effort, and money. You’re afraid you don’t have the right kind of discipline. You’re afraid you don’t have the right kind of work space, or financial freedom, or empty hours in which to focus on invention or exploration. You’re afraid you don’t have the right kind of training or degree. You’re afraid you’re too fat. (I don’t know what this has to do with creativity, exactly, but experience has taught me that most of us are afraid we’re too fat, so let’s just put that on the anxiety list, for good measure.) You’re afraid of being exposed as a hack, or a fool, or a dilettante, or a narcissist. You’re afraid of upsetting your family with what you may reveal. You’re afraid of what your peers and coworkers will say if you express your personal truth aloud. You’re afraid of unleashing your innermost demons, and you really don’t want to encounter your innermost demons. You’re afraid your best work is behind you. You’re afraid you never had any best work to begin with. You’re afraid you neglected your creativity for so long that now you can never get it back. You’re afraid you’re too old to start. You’re afraid you’re too young to start. You’re afraid because something went well in your life once, so obviously nothing can ever go well again. You’re afraid because nothing has ever gone well in your life, so why bother trying? You’re afraid of being a one-hit wonder. You’re afraid of being a no-hit wonder . . . Listen, I don’t have all day here, so I’m not going to keep listing fears.

Knowing what you want to do and then what you have to do to make it happen is one big difference between adult creativity and child’s play.