dialogue for the Greeks were: "Don't argue," "Don't interrupt," and "Listen carefully." CLARIFY YOUR THINKING. To clarify your thinking, you must suspend all untested assumptions. Being aware of your assumptions and suspending them allows thought to flow freely. Free thought is blocked if we are unaware of our assumptions, or unaware that our thoughts and opinions are based on assumptions. For instance, if you believe that certain people are not creative, you=re not likely to give their ideas fair consideration. Check your assumptions about everything and try to maintain an unbiased view. BE HONEST. Say what you think, even if your t... posted on Jul 17 2012 (22,526 reads)

herself resonates with just about every woman who looks in the mirror. With Eat, Pray, Love and its follow-up, Committed, Gilbert’s connection to readers has been immediate and enduring. What woman hasn’t sobbed in secret on the bathroom floor, after all? Yet Gilbert is more than these two books. Her collection of short stories, Pilgrims, was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, and her debut novel, Stern Men, was a New York Times Notable Book. Her 2009 TED Talk on creative genius, where she claimed mysticism and the divine as allies in the creative process, has been viewed nearly five million times. Currently, she is putting the final touches on her next novel,... posted on Apr 7 2013 (32,424 reads)

Japanese stuffed toys have to do with The Bible and child mortality in Mali. We’re longtime fans of photojournalist Peter Menzel, whose visual anthropology captures the striking span of humanity’s socioeconomic and cultural spectrum. His Hungry Planet and What I Eat portrayed the world’s sustenance with remarkable graphic eloquence, and today we’re turning to some of his earliest work, doing the same for the world’s shelter: Material World: A Global Family Portrait — an engrossing visual time-capsule of life in 30 countries, captured by 16 of the world’s leading photographers. In each of the 30 countr... posted on Dec 16 2013 (42,673 reads)

What I wanted to do was break open the little silos of education where scientists  never see artists. Then I met Diane Ullman. She came into the studio and started to make some bugs out of clay.     I said, “Wow, these are really terrific. You know what you’re looking at.”     You look back at Charles Darwin, the people who changed the way that we see evolution, and they did it by doing little drawings. The art-scientists are the amazing creative people who I admire.   RW:  He looked. He used his seeing.   Donna:  He looked. Visual thinking and creative confidence.. So Diane and I feel like the students need to... posted on Apr 30 2016 (9,967 reads)

many ways, 2016 was a banner year for books related to our themes of compassion, kindness, empathy, happiness, and mindfulness. Judging from the number of books to arrive at our office, the science of a meaningful life is hitting its full stride, with more and more people recognizing how to apply new insights to our daily lives. Yet, while the number of books was encouraging, many of them seemed to repeat old themes and research, without offering much new in the way of insight. That’s why many of our favorite books of 2016 do something a little bit extra: They take our science to a new level, looking at how schools, organizations, and society at large can appl... posted on Dec 23 2016 (29,755 reads)

most regretful people on earth,” the poet Mary Oliver wrote in contemplating the artist’s task and the central commitment of the creative life, “are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.” That is what Rainer Maria Rilke (December 4, 1875–December 29, 1926), another great poet with a philosophical bent and uncommon existential insight, explored a century earlier in the third letter collected in his indispensable Letters to a Young Poet (public library) — the wellspring of wisdom on art and life, which Rilke bequ... posted on Jul 8 2018 (11,536 reads)

all goes away, and I'm just ... there. And that feeling, that is what I love, that, to me, is creativity. And that's the biggest reason I'm so grateful that I get to be an actor.  So, there's these two powerful feelings. There's getting attention and paying attention. Of course, in the last decade or so, new technology has allowed more and more people to have this powerful feeling of getting attention. For any kind of creative expression, not just acting. It could be writing or photography or drawing, music -- everything. The channels of distribution have been democratized, and that's a good thin... posted on Feb 24 2020 (5,711 reads)

the social stigma around late risers, or what Einstein has to do with teens’ risk for smoking. “Six hours’ sleep for a man, seven for a woman, and eight for a fool,” Napoleon famously prescribed. (He would have scoffed at Einstein, then, who was known to require ten hours of sleep for optimal performance.) This perceived superiority of those who can get by on less sleep isn’t just something Napoleon shared with dictators like Hitler and Stalin, it’s an enduring attitude woven into our social norms and expectations, from proverbs about early birds to the basic scheduling structure of education and the workplace. But in Internal Time: C... posted on May 20 2012 (18,094 reads)

and to move Samantha elsewhere in the organisation. Samantha says wisdom, an inner capacity within each of us, is beyond technology, and that it is the foundation for sustainable change. So she dares, like Jessica in another institution, to redesign programmes. She generates results by navigating the system with all that it takes in a large, global, established organisation where change is usually perceived as rocking the boat. Samantha is a living example of what Rollo May calls the creative courage to discover new forms, new symbols and new patterns on which society can be built.   Distinguish one’s wisdom from social, professional and personality identities. ... posted on Jul 20 2012 (17,546 reads)

Kafka is considered one of the most creative and influential writers of the 20th century, but he actually spent most of his time working as a lawyer for the Workers Accident Insurance Institute. How did Kafka produce such fantastic creative works while holding down his day job? By sticking to a strict schedule. He would go to his job from 8:30 AM to 2:30 PM, eat lunch and then take a long nap until 7:30 PM, exercise and eat dinner with his family in the evening, and then begin writing at 11 PM for a few hours each night before going to bed and doing it all over again. Kafka is hardly unique in his commitment to a schedule. As Mason Currey notes in his popular b... posted on Oct 13 2014 (21,867 reads)

seismic event can severely shake, threaten, or reduce to rubble many of the schematic structures that have guided understanding, decision making, and meaningfulness,” they write. The physical rebuilding of a city that takes place after an earthquake can be likened to the cognitive processing and restructuring that an individual experiences in the wake of a trauma. Once the most foundational structures of the self have been shaken, we are in a position to pursue new—and perhaps creative—opportunities. The “rebuilding” process looks something like this: After a traumatic event, such as a serious illness or loss of a loved one, individuals intensely proces... posted on Jan 27 2016 (31,319 reads)

within people. Billboards, buses, commercials, community outreach, etc. Meaningful moments. Nothing for sale. Gifts for human consciousness. Powered by The People.”  Over the last four years, inspirational messages have appeared on 36 billboards, 12 buses, and 3 newspapers, resulting in over 14 million media impressions, bringing countless positive moments for the people in the San Francisco Bay Area and illustrating how individuals matter when they consciously come together as creative force. In 2014, Inspiration Campaign received a grant award from The Pollination Project. “Inspiration Campaign is a way for us to decide what kind of media we want to see in ou... posted on May 3 2017 (10,981 reads)

who speak in spiritual terms routinely refer to God as creator but seldom see "creator" as the literal term for "artist". I am suggesting you take the term "creator" quite literally. You are seeking to forge a creative alliance, artist-to-artist with the Great Creator. Accepting this concept can greatly expand your creative possibilities." --Julia Cameron, "The Artist's Way" Through a 'not-so-smart' smartphone mishap, the Universe tapped me on the shoulder recently and invited me into the Universal Flow of abundance and creativity. I'd meant to send a text message to a certain Julia I know, but my smartphone... posted on Feb 9 2021 (6,802 reads)

because all life builds on relations and unfolds through mutual transformations. Poetic ecology restores the human to its rightful place within ‘nature’—without sacrificing the otherness, the strangeness, and the nobility of other beings. It can be read as a scientific argument that explains why the deep wonder, the romantic connection, and the feeling of being at home in nature are legitimate—and how these experiences help us to develop a new view of life as a creative reality that is based on our profound, first-person observations of ecological realities. Poetic ecology allows us to find our place in the grand whole again. From this vantage point, we can ... posted on Jun 29 2021 (3,829 reads)

we don’t teach it. JM: All that said, in Focus you also touch on the value of letting your mind go adrift sometimes. DG: There are many kinds of attention, and each has its value. When we think of focus, we tend to think of one point of concentration—‘I’m going to get this thing done if it kills me,’ just keep your eye on the target. Well, that’s useful in many respects—in school, at work. But not always. If you want to be creative, actually, that is a creativity killer. To be in a creative state of mind, you want to let your mind wander. You do want to focus on the problem at first and gather all the information tha... posted on Mar 25 2014 (23,076 reads)

after a while the muse shows up, too.” Legendary composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky put it similarly in an1878 letter to his benefactress: “A self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood.” Indeed, this notion that creativity and fruitful ideas come not from the passive resignation to a muse but from the active application of work ethic — ordiscipline, something the late and great Massimo Vignelli advocated for as the engine of creative work — is something legions of creative luminaries have articulated over the ages, alongside the parallel inquiry of where ideas come from. But, perhaps unsurprisingly, the most succinc... posted on Sep 29 2014 (26,808 reads)

features in her film. Gifting as a concept can seem so abstract. I get a lot of people commenting to me that gift economics sounds great in theory, but what are some examples of it working? People want to know how they can practically put gift culture into practice in their lives, because all around them they only see examples of a taking culture. Gifting feels like a utopia, rather than something we can enact in our everyday lives. This film, by providing real, concrete examples of the creative use of this paradigm-shifting idea, illuminates the power of gifting and encourages more creative work in this area. I sat down with McKenna to discuss the movie and her vision in more det... posted on Nov 1 2015 (12,649 reads)

at 5am,start playing and not stop until I had mastered them. Eventually it got so out of hand that a local newspaper came and did a story on the dark side of Nintendo, starring me. (Laughter) (Applause) Since then, I have traded hair for teeth. (Laughter) But this served me well in college, because I finished my senior thesis four months before the deadline.And I was proud of that, until a few years ago. I had a student named Jihae, who came to me and said, "I have my most creative ideas when I'm procrastinating." And I was like, "That's cute, where are the four papers you owe me?" (Laughter) No, she was one of our most creative students, an... posted on Apr 28 2016 (28,827 reads)

don’t think you can fast forward or cheat that process. The creative journey requires you to put in that time.” James Clear is a productivity expert who uses behavioral science to help nearly half a million newsletter subscribers optimize their habits. He recently sat down with bestselling author Steven Johnson for a conversation on what drives and contextualizes creativity and innovation. Steven is the author of ten books, including Where Good Ideas Come From and, most recently Wonderland, which highlights the influence of wonder and delight on the movements that shape history. This conversation has been edited and condensed. To view James and Steven’s full ... posted on Sep 24 2017 (9,106 reads)

But when we speak and I ask about these challenges, he is fearless. Motivated by the excitement of making the impossible possible, I can hear the sparkle in his voice as he speaks about helping people, “Oh my gosh I can do that! I can do more!” And doing more he is, continuing to pose provocative questions that offer us a new way of seeing. Muhammad Yunus has always challenged the way the poor are perceived, insisting that they are not unimaginative or lazy but creative and entrepreneurial. In his new book, A World of Three Zeros: The New Economics of Zero Poverty, Zero Unemployment, and Zero Carbon Emissions, he is challenging the way we think about ou... posted on Jul 24 2018 (7,479 reads)