The Creative Mind

How we think about having and developing abilities can have a strong impact on actually using our talents. If we think creative expression has to wait for inspiration from a muse, or that there are only a few “chosen” geniuses with exceptional “gifts” in computer graphics, fashion design, writing novels or whatever – and think we aren’t one of those few – we may not even explore our talents well enough to create something worthwhile.

Professor of psychology R. Keith Sawyer says, "Forget those romantic myths that creativity is all about being artsy and gifted and not about hard work. They discourage us because we’re waiting for that one full-blown moment of inspiration. And while we’re waiting, we may never start working on what we might someday create."

> From my book Developing Multiple Talents: The personal side of creative expression
http://talentdevelop.com/DMTK

Visual spatial learners are more likely to be a late bloomer, as well as creatively, mechanically, emotionally, or technologically gifted.

Lesley Sword (of Gifted and Creative Services Australia) explains, “Temporal, sequential and analytic functions are thought to be associated with the left hemisphere of the brain. In contrast, spatial thinking involves synthesis, an intuitive grasp of complex systems, (often missing the steps) simultaneous processing of concepts, inductive reasoning (from the whole to the parts), use of imagination and generation of ideas by combining existing facts in new ways (creative thinking)."

A little anxiety may be just what you need to focus your efforts and perform at your peak, psychologists say... "Coaches and sports psychologists have always known that you don't want your athlete to be relaxed right before an event. You need some 'juice' to go fast," says Stephen Josephson, a psychologist in New York City who has treated athletes, actors and musicians.

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Book by one of the experts mentioned: The Compassionate Mind Approach to Overcoming Anxiety, by Dennis Tirch http://vsb.li/AqXVsD

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For much more on the topic:

Anxiety Relief Solutionssite

http://anxietyreliefsolutions.com/
Anxiety Relief Solutions/Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/AnxietyReliefSolutions

That’s a cool YouTube video you made. How much money is it making you?If you distribute your own clips on the world’s biggest video site, that’s easy enough to figure out: You look at the site’s analytics tool, which well tell you exactly how much ad revenue the video is generating.

But if you’ve signed up with one of a growing number of YouTube networks...

According to productivity expert Scott Belsky, no one is born with the ability to drive creative projects to completion. Execution is a skill that must be developed by building your organizational habits and harnessing the support of your colleagues.

As the founder and CEO of Behance, a company on a mission to empower and organize the creative world, Belsky has studied the habits of especially productive individuals and teams across industries. Now he has compiled the principles and techniques they share, and presents a systematic approach to creative organization and productivity.

Noomi Rapace "was raised in Iceland. When she was nine, her family returned to Sweden to enrol Rapace in a Rudolf Steiner school. 'They didn’t want to put me in a normal school because I was so wild,’ she says. 'I grew up in nature. I was always out playing with the horses, building and creating things, and Steiner schools give you a bit more freedom. It was good for me, because it’s very creative, loose and playful. But I didn’t really learn that much... I couldn’t read or write until I was quite old, and I didn’t learn any languages.’

By the time Rapace was 14, she wasn’t going to school much at all. She had got into music, had dyed her hair blond... and was drinking heavily. 'I was exploring and experimenting, hanging out with much older people. But they’d been drinking and doing drugs and whatever for years, and eventually I saw that they weren’t really moving in any direction, just going round and round in circles. And I hate that. I’m very restless, and I want to move forward.’

[Photo by Yu Tsai, Blackbook Mag.]

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Noomi Rapace [pronounced NOH-mee rə-PAHSS] created such a powerful performance as Lisbeth Salander. / Here are a couple of related posts:

Gifted and Talented, Drugs and Alcohol
http://talentdevelop.com/3212/gifted-and-talented-drugs-and-alcohol/

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – A Gifted Trauma Survivor
http://highability.org/644/the-girl-with-the-dragon-tattoo-a-gifted-trauma-survivor/

There is growing support for the creative value of mentally stepping away from our work for a while, and not being so captivated by only consciousness.

Neuropsychologist Eric Kandel writes, “When we take the wrong approach to a problem, which happens often, we get nowhere by continuing to think about it. But if we refrain from thinking about the problem and distract ourselves… [we] transition from a rigid, convergent perspective to an associative, divergent perspective.”

"Balance is the key to keeping temptations and evils at bay. It is the critical difference between an Entrepreneurial Author and a traditional author."

"The Entrepreneurial Author uses stress as a benchmark. If she feels any stress, she knows she must be going about things in the wrong way."

- Author David L Hancock - who is a presenter at The Digital Publishing Virtual Summit
http://theinnerwriter.com/DPVS

Art Is a Spiritual Path, by Pat B. Allen. "Art making is my way of bringing soul back into my life. Soul is the place where the messiness of life is tolerated, where feelings animate the narration of life, where story exists. Soul is the place where I am replenished and can experience both gardens and graveyards. Art is my way of knowing who I am."

"What I was interested in was something far more specific: the application of memory, of these sorts of memory-enhancing techniques, to literature—and, on an even broader scale, to creativity. (A complete side-note: I find it fascinating that embodiment has the same effects on creativity as it does on memory."

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Book in the article: Joshua Foer. Moonwalking with Einstein  http://vsb.li/FbOMqM