Creativity Unleashed: Tools, Perspectives, and Insights to attain creative genius

1. Introduction: Creativity opens our eyes to the domain of the transcendent. Creativity is what I'm shackles us from the bounds of our limitations. As individuals, we are finite, small, confined by our mortality and inability to intimately comprehend the vastness of the unknown and the inexplicable. However, our ancestors taught us that there is a way for our species to capture, devour and savor that which would otherwise be beyond our reach. We are surrounded by countless examples of this reality. And these examples of creativity's power aren't just delivered to us to the artistic use of the likes of bricks and mortar, paints, and brushes. Creativity has delivered to us the best aspects of life and living. For examples of creativity can be seen in nearly everything that we cherish today. Creativity can be found in all creations that involved a brave creator venturing off alone into the unknown so as to return to us. But there's precious fruits that can only be harvested from the uncharted terrain. Such revelations can be found in literature, sculptures, architecture, paintings, and song. But to the point, creativity is gifts can also be found in new ideas, new approaches, even in the small improvements on the ways of old. Creativity is defined by specialists to be the act of creating something that is both novel and useful. And that dire need for novelty and usefulness can be found everywhere in every field and every occupation in deed and everything where there is room for growth and improvement. It doesn't matter if you consider yourself to be naturally creative or not. The lessons that this course provides you with will give you the knowledge you need to achieve your maximum creative potential. You see it's more accurate to perceive creativity is being a skill rather than seeing it as a talent. This course explores this notion at great depth. And once you come to understand that creative ability is a skill, you see that you can and should develop your creative ability. Thinking of yourself as being creative or uncreative makes as much sense as perceiving yourself as being a swimmer versus a person who is incapable of learning how to swim. Some may be born with a natural drive to immerse themselves in the water. But their early desired doesn't stop the rest of us from deciding to one day master the act of swimming. So to continue, there's this question. Why should I want to pursue obtaining my maximum creative potential? Well, this is a question that you will have to answer for yourself, but allow me to offer you some guidance first, creativity is not only what invites us to enjoy the best aspects of life living, it's a practical tool that can drastically enhance our quality of life in areas beyond just elation. In terms of practicality, possessing creative ability will allow us to thrive in the new technological era where all those without a developed creative ability will almost certainly struggle. The ever-growing existence of automation. Artificial intelligence in a global marketplace means that if we are to remain relevant in the coming age, we have no choice but to improve our creative ability. For with creativity on our side, those forces that appear as threats to others will be perceived as valuable tools, companions, and allies to us. The wonderful thing is that there's a great benefit to nurturing and developing our creative ability that exists beyond mere practicality. Creativity is what gives the human animal the means to dance with the divine. Creativity allows us to know ourselves more fully to better grasp this thing we call existence, and to intimately interact with others across space and time. For all these reasons, I believe that the decision to develop our creativity isn't a luxury. It isn't even optional. I believe that developing our creativity is now our responsibility as a human being. That is why this course was created to provide you with the tools, insights, perspectives, and practices to successfully fulfill this responsibility to yourself. There is so much more to you than you currently realize. This course will gently guide you to see how tremendous you already are and how magnificent and unstoppable you can be. So now that you're ready, let's dive in. 2. Definition: In this lecture, I'm going to be discussing what creativity is. While there are many different ways of proceeding creativity, this course is going to be defining creativity as something that is both novel and useful. By this definition of creativity, there are two elements that must be present for creativity to occur. First, a creative work must be original in some form or fashion. Meaning that creativity is in part, the ability to generate ideas that are unusual or novel in some way. Second, a creative work must have value. This is to say the other half of creativity is the ability to generate something that is appropriate, satisfying, and well-suited for the task at hand. So why am I saying that both being novel and useful is required for creativity to occur? Well, consider if creativity was only one of these elements. In that case, I could serve you a meal filled with rocks and sticks and gross things. And that meal could be called creative. Or I could be creative by building something that is useful, but in no way original. This is why experts use this two part definition. I just need to say that this course also defines creativity as something that we are all born with. I don't believe that it's some ultra rare ability that only the gifted among us get to play with. There's a great deal of research to support the belief that creativity is something that belongs to all of us. Many of us have just forgotten how to access it and develop it. That is why this course exists. To give you back something that many of you had taken from you. And to give you the tools, the techniques, and the understandings that will guide you towards achieving your highest creative self. Lastly, keep in mind that this definition of creativity means that creativity isn't something that only belongs to the arts. Visual artists, writers, musicians, such groups do not have a monopoly on creativity. Creativity just needs to be novel and useful. And you can find the need for that everywhere. 3. Motivation: In this lecture, I'm going to discuss what I personally believe should be the motivation for learning how to develop your creativity. My personal experience is that there is nothing more fulfilling than seeing the fruition of something that was born from your imagination. This experience delivers the sensation that is greater than joy and pride. You will have joy. You will have pride. But you will also touch something that nothing else in life will allow you to feel. Euphoria, serenity, bliss. This invitation I'm referring to falls within the domain of these extreme terms. So there's that I encourage you to develop your creative skills so that you might experience a sensation that I have personally never received from any other avenue. Along these lines, There's the calling. If you already perceive yourself as someone who can be creative, then it is a disservice to yourself to not develop your creativity. Abraham Maslow, the developer of the hierarchy of needs, stated, if you deliberately plan on being less, you are capable of being, then I warn you that you will be deeply unhappy for the rest of your life. You will be evading your own capabilities, your own possibilities. Those that discourage others to develop their creativity often speak from a place of both love and practicality. Such discouragement is usually rooted in a place that Mazlow refers to as lower order needs. These are, of course, the elements in life that we humans must have in order to remain alive. However, there's so much more to being alive and continuing to breathe in and out. There is also at Mazlow refers to as higher order needs. This is the realm of self-actualization and achievement that fully embracing creativity can allow you to capture. Aside from the intangible experiences, there are also practical reasons to develop your creativity. For one, artificial intelligence and robots are coming. There. Current presence is just the beginning. I explore this issue in greater depth in a different section of the course. For now, suffice it to say that one of the few domains that will be difficult for machines to reach our areas related to genuine creativity. The Third Industrial Revolution is over. In the fourth industrial revolution, the ability to be creative is nothing short of a necessity. In this lesson, I discussed multiple reasons why you should feel motivated to further develop your creative ability. Some of the reasons offered include the desirable sensation that occurs from completing a creative goal, that fulfillment of personal needs, and the advantageous preparation for the future. 4. Self-perception: In this lecture, I'm going to be discussing the matter of self-perception as it pertains to creativity. All the way back to the distant past, to even now in recent years, it was believed that creativity was a relatively rare thing. For example, those of ancient Greece believed that a divine spirit, referred to as a daemon, was the direct source of creativity. Ancient Romans had a similar belief, but they called this force a genius. Put another way within these cultures in, during this timeframe. When an individual completed a highly creative task, that individual would not really be credited for that achievement. Rather, the daemon or the genius would be deemed the creator. Creativity was considered rare because admirable creativity occurred only from the will of an external force. An individual being creative was considered rare in recent history, because people were pressured into perceiving themselves as being either creative or uncreative. Those who have come to see themselves as being uncreative have more often than not had their creativity forcefully suppressed do their environments. In other lectures, I discussed elements that are both good and bad for fostering creativity. In these lectures, you'll hear about creativity enhancing practices that do not occur in most environments. And creativity diminishing practices that do occur in most environments. In other words, despite the belief that creativity is rare, almost everyone is creative. Or at least has the potential to be. Most doubters have had their natural creative ability suppressed by external and internal forces. All you have to do is read about the journey that our species has endured. To understand that creativity is as human as our opposable thumb. Put simply, human beings would not have made it through that treacherous gauntlet. That is existence if it weren't for our creativity. You see, at its roots, creativity has nothing to do with art. Creativity serves a very real function. After all, within the scientific community, something is only considered creative if it is both novel and useful. Our ancestors were creative. They had to work with the most meager of tools to survive and eventually thrive on a planet packed to the brim with sharp teeth, unforgiving terrain in violent storms. We had our wits, but it was our creativity that put those widths to good use. Despite that, many people believed that creativity is a relatively rare thing. In here we arrive at the point of this lecture. How you perceive yourself should decide your next steps. In order to move closer to a goal, we must first determine where we are. People who already believe that they are very creative will approach a creative task far differently than people who believe themselves of having little to no creativity. So we should find out how you perceive yourself in terms of creativity. And it's not as simple as I'm creative or I'm not creative. Most people exist on a spectrum. There are those that see themselves as never having been creative. There are those that believe that they were born creative and are still very creative. There are those that think that they use to be creative. There are those that think they are only somewhat creative. There are those that enjoy engaging and creative acts, but have no faith and their creativity. They keep their creativity hidden away. In short, there are all types of self-perceptions when it comes to creativity. Again, before moving forward, I strongly suggest that you have a heart to heart with yourself and find out how you perceive yourself in terms of your creative potential. There's no wrong answer here. This course exists so as to foster creativity, to bring you to the full awareness that you can and, uh, we'll be creative. However, if, for example, you believe that your creativity is limited or restricted, then you will be right. If you think you can't, you won't. If you think you only sorta kinda cane, then you only sort of kind of will. It is almost certainly the case that it is U that will set the boundaries, the limits of your creative potential. Here's your homework. Find out where you stand, how you perceive your creativity to be. Then get an idea of where you want to go. Ask yourself such questions as, what's what I do with my creativity was limitless, then all you need to do is practice the steps that will take you from where you are to where you want to be. The thing that must be said is that the level of difficulty of the journey ahead is in many ways directly tied to where you are starting from. For example, those that believed themselves to be completely uncreative have in all likelihood gone through much of their life with this belief, like a scotoma, they have been blind to their regular creative acts. Their journey will be far more challenging than those creatives that are starting farther up the trail. But with proper consistent effort. Even those that once believed that they had never experienced inspiration will ultimately arrive at their destination. Where am I? Where do I want to go? How do I get there? It's my goal to help with answering this last question. But you're on your own with answering these vital first two questions. In this lesson, we discussed the subject of self-perception. We started by covering that creativity was perceived as an external phenomenon by some cultures during ancient times. During recent times, we are trained to perceive ourselves as being born either creative or uncreative. We then went on to explain in arguments as to why this is incorrect, that nearly all of us have enormous creative potential. The high degree of measurable creativity that we possess as children and the dire need for creativity during our ancestral past helps to support this argument. We then moved on to the core of this lesson, where we went over how self-perception plays an enormous role in our creative ability. Those who perceived themselves as being uncreative will likely struggled to further develop their creativity and vice versa. 5. Why Many of Us Believe Ourselves to be Uncreative: In this lecture, I'm going to be discussing why many of us believe that we are not creative. There's a general consensus among researchers who have studied this subject that formal institutions carry much of the blame for the reduction in our creative mindset. This lecture is going to be focusing on how most educational systems hurt creativity. However, while this lecture concentrates on the education system, keep in mind many of the qualities that I'm going to delve into are also found in most work environments as well. Also, another thing that must be addressed before I get into it is that in the lecture on limitations, I discuss how limits actually make creativity possible. However, limitations are only an asset to creativity when thinking outside of the box is encouraged, not discouraged. The limitations that exist within most educational systems are enforced in a manner that impairs creative thought. The limitations I'm speaking of are the following. There's the strict adherence to regulations and rules. There's the authoritarian environment where what the teacher says must be considered as law. There's the general perspective that disruptive, rebellious, difficult behavior is bad. And then there's the fact that teachers make a deliberate effort to stop students from daydreaming while in class. Now, a year or two within such a setting is not really enough to make us believe that we are uncreative. But six years, eight years, 12 years of this can make a measurable difference in how we perceive our creative ability. The rigid structure and order that exist in most classrooms settings are terrific at preventing chaos. However, this benefit comes at the cost of reducing creativity. The educational system that I am familiar with was based largely on memorization, linear, non-creative thinking, where my fellow peers were trained to find the correct answer to a question. There are many situations where the pursuit of one correct answer is the right one to have. For example, it is good that a math class we are taught to find the answer to what five plus five is. However, creativity does not work this way. A mathematical representation of creativity would be a question like, what plus what equals ten. The objective is clear in this example, but there are many ways to achieve that objective. In short, that teach to the test approach that many schools have adopted goes against what is good for creativity. Research has been done that I think clearly illustrates this point. There was a study done where 1600 five-year-olds were tested to determine their level of creativity. 98% of these one hundred, six hundred kids tested as being creative geniuses. Their creative thinking was on par with the likes of Mozart, einstein, Picasso, and other deems that you'd recognize. These tests subjects were then tested again at the age of 10. The number that tested as creative geniuses dropped by 30 percent. When they were tested at the age of 15. Only 12 percent of them did well on the test. To a 180 thousand adults were tested by this same George Land creativity test. And only 2% of adults tested as creative geniuses. Established, highly creative people are usually recognized as being unconventional nonconformists who put a great deal of emphasis on not only their autonomy, also on their willingness to experiment and experience something new. These are qualities that many social systems discourage us to develop through their efforts to mandate conformity and enforce standardization. For example, back in the sixties, a researcher named Torrance found that there was a marked drop-off in children's creative ability when they first entered the formal educational system, he found that there was another mark drop-off in creative ability when the children were in fourth grade. These findings have been reinforced by studies that occurred in 1991, 1993, 2004, 2012, and 2015. These studies support the belief that school is the leading cause for these noticeable drops in creativity. Now, there's an element in the school system that I believe to be especially effective in fighting our natural creativity. This is the almighty concept of failure. In school, many of us are taught to dread failure. That's a fail is the end-all, be-all of worse things. Meanwhile, failure is as necessary a tool for creatives as a hammer. Is to a carpenter. Not only is it vital for creatives to be comfortable with the concept of failure. It is absolutely essential to embrace it, even encourage it. Many of us were taught in school to fear failure. A lots of things happen in formal social settings that are bad for creativity. I believe that it is mainly the fear of failure that convinces us that we are uncreative lookup any famous creatives that you want, and you'll find a long series of failures are occurring before the creation of their masterpieces. You'll find masterpieces that were only brought into existence because of the failures. Please understand. I'm not speaking of failure as Winston Churchill did when he stated, success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm. This relationship between success and failure is true, but it's not my point. My point is that failure is a discovery mechanism, a teaching device, a conduit to create a convention, a means to create a freedom. Because if a creative idea fails, then that failure functions as a teaching device. If we are to succeed in a creative domain, we must have a different perspective on failure than the one many of us were taught to have in school. And at work. You are likely trained in school and at work that you are uncreative. You were effectively trained to believe such a thing because creativity is like a muscle. It becomes weak when you don't exercise it. It really is like a muscle. You might look at a dumbbell and think to yourself that you are not currently strong enough to lift it. But you don't look at that dumbbell and think that you were born to never be able to lift it? No. You look at that weight and think, if I want to lift that weight, I need to train. I need to exercise. I need to be good to my body and continuously lift increasingly heavier weights in order to build a muscle that is strong enough to lift that dumbbell. I believe that the same is true for creativity. If you believe yourself to be uncreative. Can I think that is only because your creative muscles have atrophied. But this is not a permanent problem. Here's an analogy that might help to explain what I mean. I'm going to compare creativity to astronauts. When we are born. We are born creative. Before astronauts go into space, they are very strong. When we went to school and work, We were largely discouraged to exercise our creative muscles. When early astronauts were in space to weightlessness, the lack of resistance made their muscles become weak. When we graduated from school and when we are ingrained in the workforce, many of us became convinced that we are uncreative. When astronauts returned to Earth surface, they were unable to walk. However, just as you can regain the creative vigor that you are born with, with enough effort. These astronauts who at one time could barely stand, came to run again. You have more creative potential then you believe you just might have to first put in the hard work to reach your creative goal. 6. Curiosity : In this lecture, I'm going to be discussing the subject of curiosity. Curiosity is something that many of us resist because curiosity often requires humility. To be curious, is to recognize that there is something we don't know. That's our knowledge is lacking. But deeper than this is the awareness that curiosity can cause us harm. After all, what did Curiosity due to the cat? Curiosity can result in discovers that may force us to acknowledge that the way we've always done things that some of the beliefs that we think define us as a person are incorrect. In other words, curiosity results in discovery. And discovery results in change. The fear of change is something that our species has always wrestled with. Now, despite curiosities consequences, there are many wonderful things about curiosity, especially as it relates to creativity. Much of creativity involves thinking outwardly, openly, expansively. Curiosity is the perfect tool for accomplishing this feat. Creativity also involves the conceptualization of new possibilities. The ability to shift the way from the way we've always look at something. Curiosity is also the right tool for performing this great act. Curiosity takes many different forms. There's the curiosity about the details, such as the tiny elements that combine to make the whole. There's a curiosity about intangible things, such as ideas and paradigms. But rooted in curiosity is the questioning process. Questions like why and what if. This questioning process is so important that there's an entire lecture on it's within this course. One of the wonderful things about curiosity is that when we embrace it, we actually become more in touch with our natural selves. Human beings are wired to wonder. There's an element within our brain referred to as the seeking system. And it brings us joy when it is activated. Here. Please allow me to explain this more thoroughly. First, some brain anatomy. The seeking system involves the medial forebrain bundle, which connects many regions of the lower brainstem and midbrain to many of the higher regions in the brain. There is especially rich innervation of the medial frontal cortex. Blood rushes to our brain and dopamine is released when are seeking system is activated. As a side note, you'll better understand the significance of this after studying the lecture that explores dopamine in depth. In short, when pursuing a goal, dopamine is what makes us feel good when we achieve the milestone that brings us closer to achieving our goal. The neurological events that occur when the seeking system is activated results in many positive ramifications. In activated seeking system encourages us to experience such sensations as Wonder. All the search for meaning, zest, pleasure, and joy. Seeking system is involved in one of the seven major emotional tendencies of the brain. It is integral to our desire to explore, understand, and stay motivated. It is seen most vividly in children as it provides them with the eagerness to explore and discover meaning in the world. It's that element that brings us joy when we learn something new. In short, they seeking system plays a vital role in determining how we think it plays a fundamental role in our emotional and mental well-being. Without the seeking system, we would struggle to experience a happy life. The seeking system is probably best understood by fully grasping the evolutionary reason for why it exists. Before the age of modern convenience. Curiosity was the main engine for our survival. It played a huge role in motivating us to seek out shelter, food, and protection. Not only did the seeking system play a role in our survival, it also played a major role in our emotional and cognitive development. So fundamental was a seeking system involved in our survival that it is still a major part of our brain operating system today, seeking system plays a key role. It's very important. But like many other neurological activities, it requires practice and exercise to gain its full strength. The seeking system can be perceived as a muscle that either weakens or strengthens depending on how much it is used. It clear example of this can be seen in children. The seeking system is most apparent when watching kids at play. If you take them to a park, you'll see them climb trees and explore their curiosity with a level of determination, excitement, and purpose that we adults rarely exhibit. Now, if you were to put a child in an empty room where there are no means for external exploration. You'll likely see that the child seeking system is deactivated. The years that we spend watching television, not pursuing our interests or hobbies, not playing with others, and not exploring new environments come at the cost of a weekend seeking system. And so to tie this back together, the active pursuit of curiosity is the exercise equipment we all require to make our seeking system strong? To be curious, is to be human. Some of us may fear it because of the unexpected consequences it often brings. But to deny ourselves of curiosity, not only limits are creative ability, it also deprives us of an enriching life. And closing, it might help to think of curiosity in the following ways. If we were to say that creativity is the art of connecting dots, then curiosity is that means by which we collect those dots. Curiosity feeds our ideas, our imagination. It's what allows us to peel back the layers of the mundane to discover the amazing secrets that lay within. If you plan on going far in your creative domain, then curiosity is a companion that you should keep with you. 7. Questions: In this lecture, I'm going to be discussing how asking questions can help with the creative process. There are different types of questions to apply to the creative process. There are questions that are posed to the idea itself. And there are questions that we apply to ourselves as an individual. I'm going to cover both of these in this lecture. One of the best questions to use for the creative process is what if. What if is a question that forces us to be creative? Trying to answer the what if question will force expansive thinking. For example, things have always been done this way. Well, what if there's another way of doing it? Or what if I try what's always been done before, but in a different way. If you need a clear example of the power of the What-If question that consider the following questions. What if the Earth isn't the center of the universe? What if the sun is the center of the solar system? What if the Earth isn't flat? This what-if question has been a staple question for humanity sense, at least classical antiquity. It evokes lateral thinking, which allows us to challenge assumptions and explore a wide range of possibilities. What-if questions often result in combining two concepts or ideas. I believe that much of the creative process involves connecting metaphoric dots that appear to be far apart. Most, if not all, of the things that appear to us as brand new or actually the product of applying a new combination of multiple old ideas. Mark Twain put this best when stating, there is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely. But they are the same old pieces of colored glass that had been in use through all the ages. So what if questions help us with making our own masterpieces from the array of pre-existing colored glass. Now, there are essentially limitless questions that we can apply during the creative process. But the best questions are questions that force a re-framing. We're taught in school to always find the one correct answer to a question. However, with creativity, thinking in terms of a single solution will limit you. What if the Earth isn't the center of the universe? This was a radical question at the time it was posed. This question reframed the entire human paradigm. Reframing questions will take us to places that we would otherwise never consider to go. Next. There are questions that apply to ourselves as an individual. In the end, we are the source of our creative work. Who we are as a person, our beliefs, our emotions, our understandings play an enormous role in the creative process. As I go into more deeply in another lecture, our personal biases play a substantial role in determining the limits of our creativity. So many creative solutions and ideas come from the ability to look at something old, from a brand new angle. More than anything, it is our personal biases, our assumptions, our understandings that prevent us from proceeding something old in a new way. So the way around it, this self-imposed restriction is to ask ourselves questions that force us out of our comfort zone. Intertwined with this is the matter of personality type. There are personality tests such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, that provide insights into the manner in which we approach life and living by default. By answering the question as to how our personality type influences us, we are better able to recognize our potential blind spots. Then we just ask ourselves questions that pull our attention towards those elements that are personality makes us inclined to miss. Related to this is the matter of how we perceive ourselves. In short, if we perceive ourselves as being uncreative, we will struggle to persevere to the challenging creative process. Many scientific studies have been done to examine this reality. Their findings are perfectly aligned with the Confucian quote that he who says he can and he who says he can't are both usually correct. It has been shown empirically that those who do not perceive themselves as being creative will encounter profound difficulty in completing a challenging creative goal. Conversely, those who perceive themselves as being creative are not only going to approach a task with a more creative mindset, they are also far more likely to enter the struggles that come from the pursuit of a challenging creative goal. So ask yourself, if you perceive yourself as being creative or not. If you do not see yourself as being creative, than that belief alone is enough to limit to you. There are several lectures in this course that strive to dispel the belief that we are either born creative or we are not. There's another lecture where I explore how we are trained to suppress our natural creative abilities. In other words, you are creative. You just may not allow yourself to believe it. Believing that you are uncreative is enough to stop you. Use questions to uncover yourself, limiting beliefs. Then use those insights to reshape how you perceive yourself. If you believe that you can, you can. If you believe that you can't, you can't. If you need more healthier than try to consider creative ability as being malleable. You may not be able to do what you want to be able to do just yet. But if you believe that after enough effort experience in practice, you will gain the desired capability than the day will come when you can. In other words, instead of perceiving yourself as being uncreative, see yourself as growing towards your full and natural creative potential. Questions. Our keys to unlocking the doors that we don't even know exist. Answering the right questions will allow us to go places that we never thought we could go. In this lesson, we covered how questions can help with the creative process. We looked at the two different types of questions. Those questions that are posed to the creative project and those questions that we apply to ourselves as creatives. The first question we looked at was the question, what if, in short, we ask this question because it is a question that forces expansive thinking. It allows us to contemplate perspectives that we would otherwise never take into consideration. We then went over questions that assist us in reframing the matter at hand. Reframing questions are largely used to look at something in particular from many different angles. Next, we covered the y's in house to asking questions that are posed to us as individuals. And short, we ask ourselves such questions so that we can become better creatives. 8. Play: In this lecture, I'm going to be discussing the subject of play as it relates to creativity. There is potentially no better route to effective creativity than playing. First of all, creativity closely resembles childlike play. The moments that creatives are usually the most effective are the moments that are filled with fun, enthusiasm, passion, interest, intrigue, and the desire to explore. As I argue in other lectures, we are all born creative. It is the attrition that we experience as we grow that convinces us otherwise. When we were young, we embraced the realm of the make-believe. We hadn't yet incorporated the rules of life into our very being. Give us a crayon and we'll show you something new. Give us building blocks and Legos, and we'll construct something you wouldn't expect. Put to us with others our age and will create games. They pretend scenarios that have never existed before. The freedom that play provides allows people to approach problems differently. And the result of these different approaches, creative and effective solutions emerge. For example, there's a test that clearly articulates what I'm saying. So there is a piece of paper, and on this paper there are three rows of three dots. This test is referred to as the nine dots puzzle. The assignment is to link all nine dots using no more than four straight lines without lifting the writing utensil and without tracing the same line more than once. Most adults struggle to complete this task. But most younger people can easily pass this test. Most adults are able to connect all but one of the dots. Adults typically start with one-quarter and then draw a line to another corner. And then the adults realize that they are almost out of lines. The creative solution to this comes from the realization that you don't have to stop at a dot. The reason that this is a puzzle is because life experience has trained adults to insert roles that are not, they're nowhere in the rules is it stated that you must stop at the dots. When children are given this test, they are usually not only able to solve it with a four-line restriction, they are able to solve it with less than four lines. Some children can solve it with three lines. This is done by making the lines extend far beyond the dots. Some children can complete the task with less than three lines. For example, some fold the paper into a circle and draw lines wrapping around the page. Some are able to connect the nine dots by using one straight line. By making the realization that nowhere in the rules is it stated that the line can only be so wide. These children make the line thick enough to encompass the nine dots in a single pass. Scientific studies on creativity revealed that there are certain individual factors that give rise to creativity. These are possibility thinking, task motivation, openness to experience in divergent thinking. I cover divergent thinking in great detail in another lecture. The quality is mentioned in this list, can be found in nearly all children. When playing with their toys, children explore the limitless possibilities for what their toys can do and say, when they are having fun playing, they are very motivated. They take their place seriously. When a companion mentioned another fun game to play, they are open to try it out. And when problems arise with their play, their ability to practice divergent thinking provides a creative solutions to the problem. Researchers have spent a lot of time studying children while they are engaging and pretend to play. Playing, make-believe. Utilize this divergent thinking, flexibility of thought, remote associations, joy and creative expression, and access to affect related memories and cognition. While children are playing, pretend, they're able to go back and forth between logical thinking and illogical thinking. Psychoanalytic theorists call this type of thinking adaptive regression. Such researchers have discovered that adaptive regression not only makes the play a more creative experience, it also motivates people to engage in creative activities in the future. Adults use all these same qualities when they are engaged in highly creative work. We adults can learn from this childlike approach by relaxing into a playful attitude. New insights will emerge. Now, all of this isn't to say that we adults need to regress to our childhood in order to be creative. Rather, the point of this lecture is to illustrate that are years on this planet to have slowly but surely degraded are innate curiosity or adventurousness. Our energy, our rebellious snus. Regaining these qualities will set the groundwork for our natural creativity to return and prosper. And if that isn't enough for you, if you think that being playful as an adult is counterproductive, then I encourage you to study the recent findings in neurology that revealed that playing with our work will maximize our productivity and effectiveness by keeping our brain chemistry conducive with forward movement. The specifics behind this statement are covered within the brain section of this course. In my mind, there are two great benefits to engaging in play when it comes to creativity. One, the qualities that are involved in play, or the same qualities that are found within creatives when they are at their most creative. To authenticity is a key feature of creativity. And the main barrier to accessing and embracing our true selves is fear. Play seems to shift the sense of fear from being debilitating to being encouraging. For example, when kids are engaged in competitive play, they might be afraid that they will lose the game. But instead of allowing the sphere to make them curl into the fetal position, they play even harder. Fear is perhaps the biggest boundary between us and our natural creativity. By removing fear or by redirecting fear, our creative potential has a chance of being fully unleashed. In this lesson, we went over the relationship between play and creativity. We started by exploring the connection between playing creativity and childhood play. We covered further evidence in support of the argument that we are all born creative. We did this by looking at multiple factors. One such factor being the strong similarity in the qualities found in childhood play and creativity. We also took a look at the nine dots puzzle and how children historically performed far better at this test than adults do. We then looked at the involved in divergent thinking and how children have shown to be prone to thinking in this manner that benefits creativity. One of the main points in this lesson wasn't to encourage we creatives, to strive to request to our childhood selves, but rather to recognize that we are more creative than we possibly currently perceive ourselves to be. The other main point was to encourage you to invite to productive play into your life. Play has a way of allowing us to move forward despite fears, discouragement into play allows us to move forward by promoting the thoughts, attitudes, and actions that invite creativity. 9. Limits, Restrictions, Boundaries, and Barriers: In this lecture, I'm going to be discussing how limits, restrictions, boundaries, and barriers actually empower creativity. You need a box before you can think outside of the box. For example, resourcefulness is a form of creativity. And resourcefulness only exists in a realm with constraints. Consider the familiar expression. Necessity is the mother of invention. If you lived in a setting where you are completely boundless and free, you couldn't be resourceful. Your solution could never be considered a creative solution. There's another way to appreciate the value of limitations. New research has come out that we humans often take the path of least mental resistance. For example, outbreak prefers to work from pre-existing understandings and to consider utilizing resources that are already easily accessible. In other words, brain doesn't like to work hard if it doesn't have to. But we humans can deliberately choose to make our brain work hard. And from a creative standpoint, we do this by imposing restrictions upon ourselves. There are three main ways that limitations actually help with creativity. As previously discussed, it makes ingenuity possible. Creativity exists because of limitations. Books have covers, paintings have frames. Laws can find business plans and creatives must respect these barriers to create their masterpieces. A second way is that it actually boosts our mental capability for creative work. I'm talking on an actual personal neurological level here. This is explained in great detail during this course is neuroplasticity lectures. A third way is that it actually provides creative freedom. One would assume that creativity with thrive in a realm where restrictions did not exist, we naturally believe that inspiration can only thrive in a place free from limits. However, the fact of the matter is that such an environment will paralyze creative thought. The limits provide us with direction. It functions as the catalyst for creative thinking. The best archer in the world cannot hit an unknown target. Limits empower us by getting creative something to aim at. For example, you are likely familiar with Dr. Seuss book, Green Eggs and Ham. This book was written because his editor made a bet that he could not write a book using less than 50 different words. If you ever find yourself struggling with creative thought, a potential solution is to tighten the boundaries of possibilities. Such restrictions may give you the insight that you desire. However, before you impose too many limitations, remember that when it comes to creativity, a box is only beneficial if you are free to think outside of it. In this lesson, we covered the role that limits can play on the creative process. Limitations may creativity possible? And the more than this, if we properly apply limits to ourselves, we can use boundaries to actually boost our creative ability. A key way that limitations improve our creativity is that it provides us with a narrow target to aim act. As all success books teach us. The most important factor to completing a goal is to be very clear on the desired objective. 10. Routine: In this lecture, I'm going to be discussing how routine will help you achieve your creative goal. Consistently making time for your creative goal is arguably the most important thing that you can do. This course covers a lot of ground about all things related to helping you achieve your creative goals. However, of all the things to consider, time is the most important and effective creative process begins and ends with routine. Having a routine for your creative effort accomplishes many vital feats. First, having a set time and place on which to work on your creative goal removes the inclination to procrastinate. Creative work is perhaps the easiest work to find excuses to avoid. It's not always fun pursuing your creative goal. You will likely encounter frustration, aggravation, and other forms of fear. Making yourself push that heavy creative goal up that mountain is rarely an inviting task. So many creatives have failed to bring their dream to fruition because they were always waiting for the inspiration and motivation to find them. Well, a rigid routine removes those problems from the equation. By promising yourself a certain time and place of which to work on your creative goal, you remove procrastination from the table. A second defeat that routine accomplishes is that it invites the Muse, so to speak. Inspiration hits us all at random times. And because of this reality, we assume that it is our job as a creative to always be ready for when the IM use unexpectedly shows up. This approach to achieving a creative goal is almost certainly doomed to utter failure. Most creative goals requires so much effort that if we were to only get to work when inspiration and free time are aligned, then our goals will not be completed. The beautiful thing that I and many other creatives have discovered is that a routine invites the muse to you when you've set aside a certain timeframe to work on your creative goal, you will discover that inspiration will find you more often than you would expect. It's true. Some days you'll go to work and nothing will happen. No great ideas will pop in your head. Seemingly no progress will be made. However, by you sitting or standing there, forcing yourself to work despite the inability to move forward, you are telling yourself that this goal is of great importance to you. With enough practice, enough effort, Enough routine, you'll come to regularly encountered a pleasant experience of having the Muse at your side. A second feet, that routine accomplishes is that it allows you to better understand yourself. Many of us are unique and our circadian rhythm, what we are better at in the morning, others are much better at after the sun has set. If our life is flexible enough to experiment, we can determine what's part of the day is most aligned with our peak hours for creative performance. Many writers, for example, immediately start to work as soon as they awake from a night's sleep. For others, it might be much easier to work during the early hours while everyone else is asleep. Routine is what allows us to discover these things about ourselves. If we scheduled the morning to work in our creative goals and the muse never seems to show up. Then we can try at night and see if the nighttime makes us more inspired. Another beautiful thing about routine is that it builds momentum. You'd be surprised how many things we do only out of habit. I encourage you to watch yourself someday and take notice of how many things you do, just because you've always done it that way. Well, the same reality applies to your creative routine. If you do it long enough and regularly enough, you'll find yourself getting to work on your creative goals without having to first pass through the muss and fuss of your minds. Protest. Since we develop habits whether we want to or not, we might as well make habits that bring us closer to achieving our goals. Another wonderful aspect of momentum is that like anything being built, the more you construct, the more you see, and the more you see, the more you are naturally encouraged to finish building the project. Here's an analogy. It becomes like a heavy train. A big train starts off slowly. The engine exerts enormous effort. And yet the cars, it's towing barely budge, but the engine continues to pool, and eventually the cars start rolling despite their reluctance. When you begin a large creative task, you'll work and work and likely had little to show for all of that effort. But if you continue to show up to your scheduled routine, you'll see substantial movement shifting in the right direction. This constant movement will create a momentum that we're hurl you towards your desired destination. Two things need to be said before I close this lecture. One, taking breaks is necessary for succeeding. If you can't yet gauge your own mind. Did schedule in 10 to 15 minute breaks here and there within your scheduled time to work on your creative goal and analogy that might help you to better understand this point is to think of weight lifting. If your goal is to do a 100 reps in a day, you don't try to do all 100 reps in one sitting. You break that goal up, you separate it by points of time when your muscles are encouraged to rest and recuperate, you are likely to produce much better work when you give your brain moments to recuperate. The hardest part about taking breaks is actually getting back to work when the break time is over. What works for me is that I say allowed time to get back to work. Those words help me. But you may need to invent a tactic that works best for you. Lastly, a goal without a deadline is arguably not a goal. A deadline is what forces us to assess and reassess what we are doing well and what we are doing poorly. A routine is your best ally for meeting a deadline. A routine is your best ally for achieving your goal. 11. Schedules and Deadlines: In this lecture, I'm going to be discussing the role that schedules and deadlines can play in your creativity. Working on a creative project often comes with a variety of built-in complications. One of these complications has to do with actually completing the project at hand. Procrastination and perfectionism often function as a barrier between us and the finalization of our creative goal. It is a human tendency to retreat from discomfort and working hard on a difficult project for an extended period of time without immediate reward often results in this feeling the need to procrastinate. Conversely, it is a human tendency to be terrified of negative judgment of that which we've created. This is often the case because we usually have so much of ourselves imbedded within our creative work that criticism of our work feels like an attack upon ourselves. Perfectionism often functions as a form of defense against the possible negative feelings that the future may deliver upon us. Now, before I continue, I feel obligated to say that I'm not completely opposed to procrastination and perfectionism. Working on long difficult projects can take a heavy toll on our mind, embody. It's been my personal experience. Then I get the desire to procrastinate at times when my body and mind really do need a period of deliberate rest. As for perfectionism, I believe that it is a good thing to hold ourselves up to a high standard. Sometimes we have to just keep starting over until we get it right. Being creative often requires us to venture into the unknown and mistakes will certainly be made while we explore that unfamiliar terrain. The point of all this though, is that unless we actually finalize our creative project, we've actually failed. If we don't deliver anything, Then we didn't create anything. This failure may have allowed us to personally grow from our experience. But if we don't deliver the creative project that we set out to complete, then that creative project was not accomplished. Simple as that. If we are fully committed to completing a specific goal, then the solution to this problem is to set deadlines for ourselves. Many studies have been done to determine if self-imposed deadlines help in project completion. There was one specific study done by O'Reilly and worked in brock that I encourage you to read. This study determined that setting self-imposed deadlines not only functions as a means of overcoming the derived to procrastinate, it also results in improving the quality of our work when compared to not having a deadline. Such studies teach we creatives that if we genuinely want to complete our creative objective, we must work from a schedule that includes deadlines. There are some other wonderful perks that come from operating from a deadline mindset. One, it often stops writer's block. For example, Trey Parker, the head writer of the popular television series called South Park, has said that he absolutely concrete rule, the show must be finalized by Wednesday has stopped his ability to experience writer's block. We usually don't get stuck in the mud when we are driven to completion. Secondly, much of the difficulty that comes from working on creative projects is the realm of ambiguity within which we often find ourselves. Such as there's often no hard reason to work from one time to another. As a result of this, we often find ourselves drifting, only working on the project when we feel like it. And when we feel that we should be hard at work. This kind of loosey-goosey approach actually adds more strain to the creative process because it removes certainty from our life. As I covered in the brain section of this course, our brain seeks out creativity when we find ourselves diligently falling or routine, the stress in our brain actually reduces because it doesn't feel the inclination to resist it. Third, many creatives believe that creative thought often flows more readily when it is being expected to deliver at a certain time each day. Now, hopefully, I've succeeded in making the point that you should operate with a deadline and schedule mindset. However, if you have the freedom to do so, it is extremely important that you don't treat the schedule as a tyrant. It is another tool in your creativity toolbox, not an oppressive force. In other words, you must be reasonable in sensible with the schedule that you set for yourself. Meaning that you factor in time to procrastinate, time to be a perfectionist, time to play, and time to attend to other vital matters in your life. It is almost always the case that if you fail to be reasonable with your schedule, that you will become overwhelmed, which will result in you falling behind, which will result in defeated feelings, which will ultimately lead to giving up. With this in mind, unless your final deadline is rigidly set by an outside source, you can amend your schedule and deadlines as you learn more about yourself. In other words, operating from a schedule is a learning and training process. Everyone who becomes excellent at something fails many times between beginning and becoming a master. Operating from a schedule is such a skill. I'm including this final piece of advice here because many ambitious people have allowed their deadlines and schedules to stop them from moving forward. Remember, it can be a debilitating tyrant or powerful tool. And you are in control of what's role it will play in your life. In this lesson, we discussed the role that schedules and deadlines play with creativity. We began by going over the pros and cons to procrastination and perfectionism. They function as a defense mechanism and they can help us with our work if we use them properly. We then went over how to use deadlines to improve the likelihood that we will complete a high creative goal. Lastly, we discussed how carefully crafting a schedule will drastically boost our chances of success as long as that schedule appropriately meets our needs. 12. Bravery: In this lecture, I'm going to be discussing how bravery relates to creativity. It is perfectly natural to think of the wonderful aspects of creativity. Creativity allows us to witness and create fantastic beauty. And creativity allows us to move forward both individually and as a species. Many of us are inclined to romanticize creativity due to the wonderful aspects of creativity. However, there was a brutal aspect to creativity that we must confront. If we are to be true creatives. Creatives must be courageous. There are several steps in the creative process that require bravery. The creative process can be very long and tedious. We creatives often set out on a challenging journey that is littered with encounters with frustration, aggravation, and fatigue. While creators regularly encountered these negative sensations, it is largely bravery that allows creatives to continue forth with their creative goals despite their uncomfortable encounters. Bravery, isn't it just required for the endurance aspect of the creative process? The types of thought that are often required within the creative process is courageous as well. Creative solutions are often found from approaching a problem from unusual avenues. If a creative work is to live up to the definition of being both new and useful. Then it is usually the case that unusual thought was involved in the creation of that work. In other words, safe thinking rarely produces new ideas. Puts yet another way. The fear of judgment in rejection often stop people from exploring avenues that many successful creatives are willing to contemplate. For example, the creative process is often composed of a series of failures. But from these failures, valuable lessons in ideas emerge that ultimately lead to a valuable result. Core to all of this is the concept that we are the most creative when we are embracing our authentic self. Creativity is just too demanding on us to factor and external concerns during the process as well. For example, no piece of fiction would be completed. If after every sentence the authors asked themselves, what would the audience think about this sentence? What would the audience think about that idea? Is this too much for them? Is that too controversial? And other such issues that I explored during the lecture on the inner critic. The books that get completed, or the books that the authors write the first draft for themselves. However, another stage of bravery is required after the completion of the equivalent of the first draft. The creatives completed their preliminary work. They've allowed their authentic self to assist them in the creation of the equivalent of their entire first draft. Now is when a different type of fear musters. Not only is the fear of judgment of factor, there is also the fear of rejection. Human beings are social creatures except for some anomalies here and there. We all feel good when we are embraced and accepted. And we all feel terrible. Let me feel disgraced and are rejected. We often open ourselves up to receive negative feedback when we send our creative work into the world. Again, creativity is to generate something that is novel and useful. That useful component of the definition usually requires that we creatives share the creation with others. Bravery is required to accomplish this feat. In order to be creative. It is often the case that we must embrace our genuine self. As such, are creative works usually have a part of our most intimate selves embedded within the final creation. When our creation is poorly received, it is common to feel as if the negative feedback isn't an assault on our work, but rather upon ourselves. The injury from such feedback and cut deep into our psyche. If we let it. The thing is, before we even begin, we recognize that the potential for such negative results may be awaiting us, but we proceed nonetheless. When we began a creative endeavor, the fear of this potentiality usually feels way off in the distance. But when the work is done, that fear can become palpable. But creatives are brave because they decide to share this work with the world despite this fear. If you doubt your ability to be brave than my advice is to not overthink it. Ultimately, all that is required is forward movement. It can be terrified at each step of the process. But as long as you are moving forward, you are succeeding. Remember Mark Twain's wise words? Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear. In this lesson, we discussed the role that courage place in the creative process. There are unpleasant experiences that often coincide with creative activity. These are elements such as frustration, aggravation, fatigue, and judgment. We require bravery so as to endure and even thrive with such negative exposure. We continued by exploring how courage isn't restricted to only helping creatives with endurance. Bravery also helps creatives with productivity. Courage allows we creatives to explore ideas that fear would prevent us from contemplating. In short, if we plan on being true creatives, we have no choice but to adopt a courageous attitude. 13. The Inner Critic: In this lecture, I'm going to share my thoughts on the inner critic. When we fire up our creativity so that we can bring something new into the world. There's often an annoying companion that seems to tag along. This is our inner critic. This inner critic tends to show up as thoughts that what we are doing is incorrect. Our thoughts are doomed to failure. Or the parts we are at in the project needs are lots more work before we can move on. The inner critic has caused a great deal of pain amongst many creatives. It is often the reason why many creatives abandon their efforts. Now, while the inner critic is uncomfortable, I believe that it exists to help us not to hurt us. I think that it has some sort of relationship with the reasoning behind perfectionism. We fear harsh judgment. We fear failure. We fear wasting valuable time and energy. Our inner critic will relentlessly remind many of us of the variations of these fears. But these fears are not unfounded. We have a right to be afraid of judgment, to be afraid of failure, and have losing that resource, that no amount of money can buy more of. We creatives have a right to be afraid. And that's a big reason why the inner critic wield so much power within many of us. I think the inner critic doesn't share thoughts that bring us such discomfort so as to hurt us, but rather to protect us from that which we fear. It's trying to tell us to retreat back to our bunker, back to where we are safe. Or when it sees that we are ignoring its hollers to stop and we continue on. It ramps up perfectionist tendencies so as to hinder our progression towards judgment day. I believe that the inner critic is an ally. It's that thought that, that keeps us from doing something dangerous. That makes us second guess the decisions that could redesign our life. For example, me, I want to go base jumping. I'm going to get parachute of a skyscraper. My inner critic, you can't go base jumping. You've never eaten parachute out of a plane before. They're ridiculous for even thinking such a thing. Me, if I take the shortcut to the dark alley, I can get there much quicker. I can run fast. If there's any danger in there, I can outrun it. My inner critic, you're overestimating yourself. If there's danger in that alley, it's going to get you. My point is that in life, it's helpful to have an ally that makes us stop before we do something that invites and welcomed discomfort. The thing is, however, that with creativity, There's a place and a time for the inner critic. And even then, it's influence must be continuously reined in. The time where self-doubt has some benefit is during the revision phase of the process. In literary terms, this would be during the second draft of writing a book. Even then, however, we must be cautious about listening to those second guessing thoughts. There is no place for the inner critic during the early stages of the creation process. Once we've made the decision to proceed with our creative goal to completion, we must train ourselves to override those nagging thoughts that the inner critic so aggressively provides many of us with. Earlier in this commentary, I use the example of the inner critic, keeping us away from the dangers that might be lurking in that dark alley. Well, to be creative is to create something novel. To create something new and useful. In order to create something novel, we must be willing to venture into the unknown to bravely explore that which has not yet been fully revealed. To turn that dark alley example into a metaphor. In order to be creative, We must be willing to venture into the darkness of that dark alley, despite the dangers that may be eagerly awaiting us. If you experienced the inner critic as I do, then what I recommend is the following. Until you have fully completed the equivalent of the first draft of your creative project. Ignore the inner critic. If you can't ignore it. As I struggled to, then proceed forward despite its best efforts. What helps me might help you. Before I begin, I just accept that the first draft will not be perfect, nor will my final draft. But before I send it the creative project off into the world, I will give my inner critic permission to provide me with some guidance on my work. I seem to diminish it sway over me by letting my inner critic know that I will potentially heat its best advice after I've reached the light on the other side of that dark alleyway. I don't refuse to ever listened to it. I just delay its power over me until it's genius at second guessing, can actually serve a beneficial role in the creative endeavor. This works for me. It may not work for you. The inner critic is an intimate thing and you certainly know yourself better than I do. Please keep in mind that there are stages to creative endeavors. Step one, step two, step three, and so on. If you're like many creatives, you will experience the inner critic at each one of these stages, I suggest that you determine ahead of time at what stages, if any, that you allow your inner critic to have some sway. In this lesson, I suggested that you make a conscious effort to decide ahead of time, when and how you allow your inner critic to influence you. For example, the inner critic will only ever hurt you at the beginning stages of the creative process. But it can help you substantially improve your work when you are nearly completed with a creative endeavor. 14. Handling Negative Feedback: In this lecture, I'm going to be discussing this subject of negative feedback. Arguably, the most difficult thing about being creative isn't performing the creative act. It's having to enter negative feedback. We are social creatures. The studies that support the idea that we are swayed by the opinions of others fill libraries. This is common sense, really. Human beings require other human beings to remain alive. So has it been since as far as we can tell, the fact that negative feedback can be severely upsetting, It's probably best seen by the statistic that many people would rank public speaking as their greatest fear. Here's the cold hard truth. The more you share your creative efforts, the more negative feedback you will be exposed to. And largely due to our evolutionary need to be embraced and not shun by other humans. This negative feedback can cause us a lot of damage. The pain that this negative feedback causes is probably connected to the notion that performing a creative act involves revealing a part of yourself to the world. In many cases, being creative is a personal act. While there are techniques that facilitate in gracefully aid and creativity, there isn't a formula, there isn't a dry, impartial and personal scientific method in which to plug in and get out creative works. In this light, a creative work can be interpreted by the creator as being an extension of themselves. They are the book, they are the painting. The creative is the brand new approach to solving a problem. It's extremely common for negative feedback to stand out in our minds. Say, for example, a creative receive 10 comments praising his or her creative act. But the 11th comment is highly negative. Well, the odds are high that the negative comment will stand most vivid in the creator's mind and memory. This is a common experience and it's a shame that this is the way most of us are built. Negative feedback is common. And thus I would feel that this course was incomplete if I didn't do my best to help you with this area, you see it gets worse, much worse. Because while the mean critics can hurt us tragically, they can also help us. I say tragically, because despite the damage that they can do to our psyche, I'm going to tell you that in many cases you shouldn't just ignore them. I wish that I could tell you to defend yourself at all costs, to embrace your creativity in all of its glory and blow off that which makes you feel uncomfortable. Alas, while I would love to only say that which brings good feelings, it would be a disservice for me to do so. Creativity is exploration. When we are the most creative, we are essentially venturing into the darkness, into the unknown. And in such a terrain, we are bound to get lost, to make mistakes, to miss things that escaped our eye. This is where those mean critics come in, whether intentionally or not. They insult us, they attack us, they wound us. But it is not uncommon that their brutality allows us to see something in the darkness that we had missed. Think of it this way. If you were the ruler of a land, would you prefer to be surrounded by yes, men, people that only ever told you what you wanted to hear. What would you prefer to hear contrary perspectives? Which audience would help you to become a better ruler? The truth is, is that we need both. We need the encouragement. Because so much of ourselves are wrapped up in our creative acts. That if it's all bad, will simply stop trying. Think of a child learning to swim. You don't just throw the kid into the deep end and expect him or her to love swimming for the rest of his or her life? No. You nurture the child. You slowly and consistently pull the students swimmer just outside the edge of their comfort zone. Enough time with this process. And the child will come to always loved swimming. Supportive words for our creative acts, or the water wings on our arms. Keeping our time in the creative waters as being nothing but enjoyable. The criticisms, however, are akin to the unexpected hand that plunges our head beneath the water. Reminding us the valuable lesson that though water can be fun, it is also extremely dangerous. Not all criticism is helpful. Much of it should be ignored. But to ignore all of it might cost you insight. That would help you. So if you are willing and able, this is what I suggest. The first steps involve distancing yourself from the criticism, not discarding it. Distancing yourself from the negative feedback. If you feel inclined to offer response to the critic, you should say something like Thank you, think about it, or thanks for the feedback or I'll give that a second look or I'll consider that. If the circumstance allows, I would either recommend killing the critic with kindness or saying nothing at all. Unless the critic is a troll, many critics change their approach or go away. If you respond to the feedback as if you were coming from a place of gratitude. Like you're thanking them for taking the time to point out how your work could be made better. I'm nervous saying this though, because in the digital era, this advice is becoming less and less applicable. You'll have to assess your environment and the type of feedback on a case-by-case basis to determine how best to respond, if at all. But here's the point. This response to the criticism should be something akin to a reaction, a knee-jerk response. Something you do to simultaneously a piece that critic and give yourself an opportunity to give the feedback space. Think of this as more of an automated machine response, that a personal response. Then, depending on your timetable, you revisit the criticism and write down its central message. Remove everything extraneous. What was its core message? Its main critique. Then, once again, if your time allows, you give the now condensed criticism space. What you are doing with this step is detaching the emotional aspect of the message and retaining the dry central message of the criticism. Depersonalizing it. In other words, later, when you feel ready, you do something that puts you in a cheerful mood or otherwise elevated state. This should be done at you feel rested, are calm, and feel at least acceptably comfortable. If you so choose before you start, you can practice neuro linguistic programming to put yourself in the ideal state for you. There's a lecture in this course specifically on neuro linguistic programming. So I'm not going to delve too deeply into it here. But I will offer one of its many techniques that will likely help you in this situation. I'm going to begin by asking you a series of questions. How would you be sitting if you are terribly depressed? How would you be breathing if you were terribly depressed? How would you hold your head, your face, your eyes? If you were to answer these questions via your body, you will likely come to feel sad. Now, the same questions. How would you be sitting if you are bored and tired? How would you be breathing if you are bored and tired? How would you hold your head, your face, your eyes? Pretty much the same as depression, right? Ever wonder why a lot of bored and tired people are sad? Now the reverse. Ask yourself body position questions that are related to elation, intense joy. How would you hold your head, your shoulders, your arms, your hands? How would you be breathing if you just accomplished a magnificent feat? How would you be standing? How wide would your smile be? How loud would your laughter be? Now there is a strong likelihood that you can not maintain sadness while making your body perform in such a way. If you were to try, you'll notice that you will have to fold your body inwards to allow the sadness to take hold. By denying yourself this inclination to shrink inwards, to cease your wide smile and laughter, the depression would really struggle to take hold. In other words, you can prepare your psyche for appropriately handling criticism by first putting yourself in a confident and curious state of being and maintain this body position while you addressed the feedback, how would you hold your body if you are competent and curious? How would you be breathing? How would you be holding your shoulders, and your back, your head, your eyes, and so on. The point is that before you allow the criticism in, you first, prep yourself for it. Not what a brace for the bad news type of preparation, but rather a how can I learn from this critique type of perspective? See, you might have gone through all of this preliminary work only to discover that the negative feedback was never any good for you to begin with. You would've been better off discarding it right away. But there is a percentage of criticism that might just give you an edge if you were to appropriately adopted. But that determination should only happen after you are ready, after you are emotionally prepared to make this decision. If the criticism is good or good enough, you incorporate the feedback into your approach. If you deem it is no good, then you throw it away. When this process is over, it helps to turn your attention to a pre-made list of things that you are genuinely grateful for. Gratitude seems to be one of the most, if not the most effective tools against psychological decline. Conclude this process on a happy note and then leave it there. Negative feedback is a reality that you will encounter during your creative pursuits. And prepare yourself for this inevitability. You can transform this thing that has ended so many creative careers into just another tool in your creativity tool box. In this lesson, we covered the reality is revolving around negative feedback. We discussed that negative feedback is an inescapable part of the creative process. We went over my belief that negative feedback hurts us so much because our creative works are an extension of ourselves. Therefore, negative feedback feels like an assault on us personally. We covered the likelihood that negative feedback will stand out much more vividly in our memory and thoughts then positive. We then discussed the reality that even though negative feedback is often painful, we shouldn't always ignore it. This is because there is potentially valuable information to be gained from those unpleasant comments. The vital point to remember here is that we shouldn't try to glean valuable lessons from negative feedback until we've gone through the ritual and allows us to protect our psyche from the negative feedback. Only after you are ready. Do you decide whether or not to transform the negative feedback into valuable constructive criticism? 15. Getting Into Calm: In this lecture, I'm going to be discussing techniques that can be used to put yourself into a state of calm. When it comes to dealing with creativity. There are many reasons to embrace this state of being calm. The few biggest reasons in my mind is that it's a valuable tool for effectively handling criticism. It's usually the case that it boosts creativity. And many creative efforts require many hours of attention. It is difficult to remain in an anxious gung-ho state for that long duration of time. The right amount of calmness facilitates both healing and productivity. Thus, the ability to access the state of being calm drastically increases your chances of completing your creative goal. Obviously, there are many ways to get into a state of calm. Therefore, I'm not going to cover them. All. The ones I will cover are either backed by science and, or have been very beneficial to me personally. There are essentially two types of tools for dealing with the subject of stress. There are techniques to use while you are experiencing the state of stress. And there are techniques to use when you are free of stress. The techniques that you use while you're experiencing stress are geared towards calming you down. Many of the techniques that are used when you are free of stress are geared towards deliberately causing stress and forcing yourself to handle that self induced stress. Well, I'm not going to be covering the deliberately causing stress techniques in this course because I don't want to be responsible for you injuring yourself. Many of these types of techniques aren't supposed to be practiced by yourself. Now please understand that I'm not encouraging you to use these types of techniques, especially if you are prone to panic attacks. That said, there is quite a bit of evidence that practicing such techniques allows people to, in the long run, handle stress amazingly well. And I do mean amazingly well. The creator of one of these techniques, practices, a form of meditation and breathing that allowed him to shatter the Guinness World Records for swimming under ice. Having prolonged body contact with ice. And if this current moment in time, he still holds the record for the barefoot half marathon on ice and snow. So if you are comfortable and healthy enough to explore such an avenue to handling stress, then you can start by looking up the Wim Hoff method. The point of such an approach to handling stress is that by deliberately inducing stress in your body and then forcing yourself to handle that induced stress. Very well. You are training your mind and body to react to stress differently than how we are programmed to at birth. You do these techniques because when you unexpectedly encounter stress, all that is u is already prepared and thoroughly trained to perfectly react to stress. And the experts of such techniques have proven that handling extreme stress is even possible from practicing such techniques. Again, disclaimer, disclaimer, I'm not encouraging you to explore these techniques. I'm just letting you know that they exist. The techniques that I'm going to cover in this course are the techniques that help you to deal with stress in the moment. The first technique is referred to as a physiological psi. And many scientists agree that it is a fastest way to calm yourself down. This is a type of breathing that all mammals regularly use. Dogs, for example, use it so frequently that it is assumed that dogs are fully aware of this breathing technique and deliberately and intentionally practice it. We humans do it all the time, especially before and during sleep. The thing is that most of us aren't aware that we are breathing in such a way. Cutting to the chase. A physiological psi is a method of breathing that forces the body to rid itself of excess carbon dioxide. While we're sleeping. And sometimes during the day, we inhale twice and perform a long exhalation. We breathe in such a manner without our awareness. Because we have neurons and the back of our neck that evaluates the balance of carbon dioxide and oxygen in our lungs and bloodstream. When this balance is off, we unknowingly perform physiological psi. Just to be clear, our brain isn't only geared towards making sure that we have enough oxygen. It is also geared towards making sure that we do not have too much carbon dioxide in our system. The extra energy that we burn while we are stressed often results in excess carbon dioxide production. Our brain detects this excess carbon dioxide and this detection results in us becoming increasingly stressed out. Other animals often perform a physiological psi to expel this excess carbon dioxide. We humans, however, tend to retain it. All right, so here's the technique. Take a deep breath in through your nose, then top off your lungs by breathing in again through your nose. That's two back-to-back inhalations. Then you perform a long exhale. You perform this technique at least three times. All right, So here's what's happening. When you do that. Your lungs are essentially two big bags that have millions of little sacs called alveoli. Now, here's an analogy to help you better understand what breathing in twice does. Think of a time when you're blowing up a balloon. Oftentimes, when you first blow into the balloon, the balloon barely inflates. So you keep your lips over the balloon to keep the balloon from losing what little air is already in the balloon. You then breathe in through your nose and blow again into the balloon. This second attempt to inflate the balloon is far more successful than the first attempt. This is essentially why you inhale twice. This double inhalation forces the alveoli, those sacs in your lungs to fully inflate. When the alveoli are fully inflated, they pull the excess carbon dioxide out the bloodstream. This polled excess carbon dioxide is expelled during that long exhalation. Ok, so here's the gist. Your body performs this breathing strategy, whether you are aware of it or not. However, we don't usually unintentionally do it while we are stressed. Now that you know what a physiological psi is, you can deliberately force the excess carbon dioxide that the stress created out of your body. This removal of excess carbon dioxide will help you to return to a state of calm. The next calming techniques that I'm going to discuss are related to our eyeballs. Before we begin with discussing these techniques, you need to understand that your eyes are brain. It's more accurate to perceive her eyes as being brain, not attached to the brain. In other words, when you look into someone's eyes, you are actually seeing a part of their brain. The following techniques should make more sense to you after acknowledging that your eyes are a part of your brain. All right, so the first technique is called lateralized eye movements. And it is also referred to as eye movement desensitization reprocessing. This technique quiets the activity in the region of the limbic structure in the brain that is primarily responsible for detecting threats and stress. The region of the brain that I'm referring to is called the amygdala. And laboratory experiments have shown that calming its activity down will allow you to make better choices. Okay? So the process that you deliberately perform is actually pretty simple. All you do is keep your eyes open and your head stationary and look from left to write. This may seem too simplistic to you, but there's actually a lot of scientific stuff happening when you do this. I'll explain. This activity taps into an ancient mechanism of the brain. Looking left to right with just our eyes, simulates a mental activity that occurred during those times when our distant ancestors would be walking through nature in search of something, repeatedly looking left to right forces a type of vision called panoramic vision. Panoramic vision essentially means that we are taking in as much of the visual environment as possible. This is in stark contrast to the other form of vision, which is highly focused vision. Our ancestors relied on panoramic vision to find what they were looking for. And our ancient brain knows that when we are using panoramic vision, we must be calm or else we will miss seeing what we are looking for. In other words, being anxious and stressed while using panoramic vision would be counterproductive. Because when we are stressed, we hone our attention in on that threat. We would quickly burn ourselves out if we tried to see absolutely everything with a high degree of attention and focus puts another way. Engaging in panoramic vision tells our brain to be calm because panoramic vision only works well when we're calm. To state the opposite by way of clarity. When we are focused on something particular, we get to high degree of depth perception in detail articulation. Concentrating our focus invokes an increase in vigilance and attention through mechanisms that connect our eyes to our brains reticular activating system. In other words, we hone our focus. When we are stressed. We ease into calm when we are in panoramic vision. Here's an example to better make this point. Have you ever wondered why looking out over a large body of water or across mountain tops or over wide areas of open space is so calming. Neurologically speaking. It is so calming because you are engaged in panoramic vision while you're looking so far into the distance. When you look into the horizon, your eyes defocus, which causes the opposite reaction than that which happens when your vision is focused. Conversely, this explanation should help to explain why people who are trapped in confined spaces for an extended period of time remain in a nearly constant state of high stress. In summary, keeping your eyes open and repeatedly looking left to right with your head stationary forces, panoramic vision, which in turn calms you down. The next vision-related calming technique has to do with light exposure. Again, remember that our eyes are our brain. And on top of this, in evolutionary terms, the light bulb is brand new for the human species. When we look at bright lights for an extended period of time between the hours of 11 PM. And for many of us, pay the price through dopamine suppression. Dopamine suppression can result in mood disorders such as depression. And obviously, when we're depressed, we are less capable of experiencing a state of calm. So that's 0.1. Limit your exposure to bright lights during the late at night and early morning hours. The second light exposure technique has to do with when we should be exposed to light. The longer-term practice of getting up and immediately getting exposed to sunlight results in chemical releases that will significantly help us with fending off depression, anxiety, and other dark feelings. Conversely, not doing this has been scientifically shown to increase our susceptibility to anxiety, depression, and other dark feelings. And again, it is difficult for us to make ourselves calm when we are captured by dark feelings. If you really want it to perform this practice properly. The steps are to get exposure to sunlight for 20 minutes. First thing in the day, then again at noon, and then again at sunset. It needs to be sunlight or equality bulb that is specifically designed to mimic sunlight. For this technique to work. Other forms of artificial light will not work. Doing this, you put your brain on a schedule that will greatly improve the manner in which your neurochemistry functions. Conversely, not doing this will make you more prone to stress. A bit of information that needs to be tackled on this is that light needs to come from overhead. You see you have special cells in your eyes that are only located at the bottom of your eyeballs. These cells know if the light is originating from directly in front of you or from overhead. In other words, if you're going to practice this technique, VA suddenly amp, you must place that special bulb above your head. All right, moving on. Other effective ways to bring about com is to practice meditation. There's also the vital role that sleep plays and giving us the ability to find calm. I provide a lecture specifically on sleep. So we'll move on. The last technique that I'm going to cover is based on the intimate relationship between mind and body. There is a contract between the mind and body that they must be in congruence, meaning that they must remain in alignment or an agreement with one another. It almost never works to command yourself to be calm during a time when you're very stressed out. If anything, ordering yourself to become only makes you more upset. Therefore, because the brain and body must be in sync, we therefore ln on our ability to fully control our body. In other words, we can't force our brain, but we can force our body. And because our brain must be in sync with our body, our brain will follow what we force our body to do. For example, if you make yourself stand up tall with your chin up and your shoulders back. And you make yourself smile and laugh. Long end loudly, you will feel a sense of happiness comb-over you. What is happening is that your brain is seeing that your body is behaving as if you're super happy. Therefore, it believes that you are super happy and it performs as it would, as if you were indeed super-happy. Think of it this way. Hold your body as you would if you were bored and tired. How would you be holding your shoulders? How would you be holding your face? What would your mouth and eyes be doing? How would you be breathing? Okay. Now hold your body as you would if you were very sad. Take notice how your body and breathing didn't change much. This is a big reason why many people who are bored and tired or sad. Obviously, there's more to our long-lasting states of mind and this, I'm just trying to illustrate a point. You can use your body to steer your emotions. So to apply this distress, you can ask yourself, what state of mind is ideal for you to best manage stress with the best state of mind, be from a place of confidence and authority. If it is, then ask yourself, how would you be standing if you are highly confident? How would you be holding your shoulders? How would you be holding your chin? How would you be breathing? How would you walk? Holding your body in a confident way makes most people feel much more confident. Now, something to keep in mind is that you lose the corresponding emotion as soon as you drop the posture. For example, you will lose the positive emotions from this confidence bodily stance. If you immediately collapse from this confident body posture and go into the fetal position. The point of all of this is to say that if you want to be calm, you need to determine how you will be holding your body when you are the calmest. How would you be standing or sitting? How would you be breathing? You take yourself to a range of such question answer sessions that makes that what you can control best represent the state of mind that you wish to be in. You then hold that desired position for as long as you need to. Now, this instruction would be incomplete if I did it include vaults. Okay. So you've gotten your body into a state of calm. Your brain is following your body's lead. However, if you were to actually perform this process correctly, the next step to seize control over that last element that you have at least some control over. Your thoughts. Controlling our thoughts is not as easy as controlling our posture. It's in that ballpark of difficulty of controlling our mind with our mind. But it is something that is at least moderately within our domain of control. Usually, our thoughts resemble a poorly filtered Internet connection where we keep getting slammed with uninvited pop-ups. After you've gotten your body as you need it to be. Your next step is to direct your thoughts to elements that encourage relaxation, confidence, and other such thoughts that empower you. Remember, it's far easier to embrace thinking positive thoughts than it is to try to suppress negative thoughts. Your brain can pretty much only think of one thing at a time. So if you fill that time up with positive thoughts, the negative thoughts won't have room to grow. I apologize for this long lecture, but I thought it was a subject worthy of thorough exploration because stress can destroy our creative goals and efforts. Creatives are usually far more effective and productive when we possess tool to take care of the stress that we encounter. In this lesson, we went over how and why to get into a state of calm. In short, the answer to the why question included such reasons as handling criticism better, boosting creative ability, increasing creative endurance, and stamina. The answers to that question included a physiological psi, which is too deep inhalation to do the nose M1 long exhalation. There is also the lateralized eye movement technique, which involves keeping your head stationary and repeatedly looking left to right. It along these lines, there is also the technique of looking far into the horizon. Another tactic for inducing calm is to take personal light exposure and duration. Encountering sunlight first thing in the day, at noon, and then again at sunset has been shown to impact the brain in a way that makes it easier for us to readily access a state of calm. Then there is, of course, meditation and giving attention to our body. Remember that it's difficult to control the mind with the mind, but it's relatively easy to control the mind with the body. In short, moving your body into a position that it would comfortably hold while in a state of calm will push the brain to follow the body's lead and adopt a calm state of mind. Lastly, being selective about what thoughts we give up also plays a role in our ability to experience calmness. For example, positive thoughts will make communist easier to access. And negative thoughts will make it more difficult to become and remain calm. 16. Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation: In this lecture, I'm going to be discussing the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and why you need to tailor your own motivational strategy. We should begin by defining intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation involves the internal drive to pursue something without concern for an external incentive. In other words, intrinsic motivation is doing something because you personally want to do something. You do it with or without the outside world rewarding you for your efforts. In short, passion is a sensation that is usually rooted in intrinsic motivation. This isn't to say that intrinsic motivation is directly rooted in pleasure. Oftentimes, people who are primarily driven by intrinsic motivation deliberately undergo discomfort so as to achieve a personal goal. They continue to pursue their goal because it is what they want, not because of what others want. Many people who voluntarily pick up an instrument do so because of an internal reason. They may just want to be a source of melodic harmony. For example, in the early days, these people typically don't continue to pick up their instrument because of the potential of one day making millions of dollars and fans. Picking up an instrument only because of the millions of dollars and fans would be an example of extrinsic motivation. Behavior that is driven by external elements is extrinsic. Motivation. Praise, celebrity, status, monetary wealth. These are extrinsic rewards. Extrinsic motivation usually entails a focus on the end result as opposed to the deed itself. There have been many studies done on motivation for a very long time. There was a consensus in the West that there was a right and a wrong way to attain effective motivation. However, it was relatively recently discovered that motivation, as it pertains to creativity, is a much more personal matter than originally believed. As a teacher. I wish I could simply say that all you need to do is this, that and the other thing in this specific order. And you will have all the motivation necessary to complete a creative goal. If I created this course decades ago, I could do that. But unfortunately, new insights and scientific discoveries have complicated the matter. In order to find effective motivation, you're going to have to figure out yourself what methods work best for you as an individual. What I can do is to educate you about the options that exist. First of all, you need motivation to complete any difficult endeavor. So to this point, you need to determine what type of person you are. Now, I'm personally in advocates of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator or MBTI personality test. The MBTI test informed me that I am an INTJ. And this information has helped me a great deal and determining how I am personally motivated. While I suggested taking the MBTI test, there is another test that offers better insight into ones predisposition to creativity. This other test is known as the Big Five Personality Test. One of the big five is referred to as openness. Those who are high in openness can usually depend solely upon intrinsic motivation to complete a high creative goal. Conversely, those that are low in openness must usually rely on extrinsic rewards to complete a create a goal. Also, those that are low in openness must usually work harder to attain the skills necessary to successfully pursue creative goals. So I recommend taking these tests to gain some insights into what motivational strategy will likely work best for you personally. All that being said, the motivational strategy that is typically the most effective is to use both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation with emphasis put on intrinsic motivation. It's kind of like using the carrot and the stick as effective motivation. Motivation comes from both a push and a pull. The synergistic motivation is rooted in intrinsic motivation because most studies make the case that in situations where creativity is the goal, intrinsic motivation produces better results than extrinsic motivation. People operating from a place of intrinsic motivation tend to be more mentally flexible and focused in areas involving creativity. I keep repeating in areas involving creativity because extrinsic motivation tends to work better as a primary force of drive in many fields that aren't based in creativity. But this is a course on creativity. So I encourage you to begin by developing your intrinsic motivation. Unless you are one of the relatively few people were intrinsic motivation is enough. The next step after finding your intrinsic motivation is to determine your extrinsic motivation. For example, many authors first develop their intrinsic motivation by focusing on how they are working in a field that they love, that their work offers a chance at immortality and so on. However, once this floor is established, it is the objective of earning a living that repeatedly forces the person to the rider's chair to elaborate. First step, I'm doing what I love. It's challenging, but such a challenge is rewarded with intense fulfillment. Second step, I'm getting paid for my efforts. My words will bring me food and shelter. In this example, you can see how in even extremely creative pursuits, both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation play a major role. Please remember that unless your personality demands it, you should really try to firmly determined your intrinsic motivation first, having your extrinsic motivation, as your foundation, tends to not only make creative endeavors more difficult, they usually result in worse results. Again, though, we are all unique. And while this seems to be the case in most cases, it isn't true in every single case. For example, people who have very low in openness may have to be primarily driven by extrinsic motivation. Also, culture plays an enormous role in the effective hierarchy of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and creative endeavors. By enlarge and intrinsic motivation, foundation is most effective in the Western world. However, there are quite a few studies that show that extrinsic motivation foundation is more effective in much of the eastern world. So in addition to your personal personality, you should also consider your culture when determining or most effective motivational strategy. The last point to make is that you need to make sure that your intrinsic and extrinsic motivating factors are in agreement with one another. For example, if my intrinsic motivation for writing fiction is to better express myself and maybe even doing some healing work by allowing my subconscious to come out and play. And my extrinsic motivation for writing is to get a lot of people to like me. Then the result is that my intrinsic and extrinsic motivations are combating one another. I can't boat express my true self and be driven to make people like me. In this case, a close and better relationship between the two would be to write so as to allow me to better express myself into right, so that those in the external world who are already similar to me can be helped and or entertained by my personal expression. In other words, I can do what I love and by doing what I love, I can in turn help others. In this example, I want to make a connection with other people, people who might in turn like me. But this reward comes as a result to my intrinsic reward. Obviously, you need to tailor your internal and external motivation to your creative agenda and specific situation. In this lesson, we discussed the difference between intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. In short, intrinsic motivation is motivation that originates from within ourselves. While extrinsic motivation is motivation that is derived from external sources. We also discussed why you should consider your unique personality when deciding how to effectively use intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Remember, the key is to make sure that your intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are in alignment with one another. If your intrinsic and extrinsic motivational factors disagree with one another, you will impair your will to proceed further along on your creative journey. 17. Brainstorming: In this lecture, I'm going to be discussing brainstorming. Whether intentionally or not. You've probably practiced brainstorming before. I think it's reasonable to assume that we humans have always used a brainstorming as a route to discovering solutions. While I believe that brainstorming has been with us for a very long time. It's invention is credited to Alex Osborn. Osborn originally called this process think up. When he articulated the idea in 1938, he coined the term brainstorming in his book, Applied Imagination that was published in 1953. First of all, it needs to be said, brainstorming is really a process that works best with groups of people. The process involves the encouragement for everyone to voice their ideas without the fear of criticism. The more applicable and imaginative ideas, the better. This process tends to work better with groups of people, because one person's imaginative ideas often results in inspiring and other persons imaginative ideas. Sort of building and creative ideas on top of each other. And you can apply that saying, two heads are better than one to better understand this concept. While brainstorming tends to work better with groups of people, the process essentially remains the same when practiced by an individual. Now, the first step in the brainstorming process is to articulate the problem or the objective. Even though brainstorming is geared towards the generation of wide open and free ideas, these ideas usually only had the chance of becoming beneficial if it is related to the task at hand. So the first step is to get as clear as possible as to what you're striving to solve or where you are trying to go. Clarity is power here. Even the best marksman in the world can't hit a target, he can't see. The next step is to make sure that you and those others involved have enough knowledge and information to warrant a brainstorming session. It's harder to come up with good ideas if you don't know what you are talking about. After this comes the stage with the process got its name. You brainstorm. You try to think up the best ideas. You try to think of the worst ideas. You try to think up the impossible ideas. You record as many ideas as you can. The process of reframing can help a great deal with this part of the process. There are lectures in this course that delve deeply into reframing. So in short, reframing involves asking and answering questions that force a shift in perspective. A major parts of the creative process entails looking at something old and a new way. You'll come up with more ideas if you've reframe your perspectives. The real benefit of brainstorming occurs during the refining phase. In the previous stage, you gathered as many ideas as you could think of. The refining phase involves what the name implies. You increasingly reduce your list of ideas down to the best. This is usually done in one of two ways. The first way is to just reach a consensus on the best ideas right off the bat. I believe that this is what humans have mostly done throughout history. The second way is much more tedious. The second tactic is to rank at the ideas from best to worst ideas. After you've ranked the ideas, you delete the worst ideas. And once again, brainstorm to see if there is a way of combining the better ideas. Fortunately, effective brainstorming is a skill that you can become increasingly better at performing. You'll likely get better at brainstorming with each additional path you take. Then once again, you rank these ideas and refine them down to the best few. You repeat this process until you refine the idea down to the single best idea. Due to the nature of problem-solving and the realm of creativity in general, it is likely that unexpected events and consequences will arise from the implementation of this new idea. The brainstorming process can also be applied to find solutions to these unanticipated encounters. Now, there are some ways to make brainstorming potentially more effective. A large part of the population is oriented towards visual learning and geared towards the visual. Since in general, therefore, there was a technique referred to as mind mapping that will likely help you in a team brainstorm more effectively. You can put ideas on a large dry erase board and draw different color lines between the two or more connecting ideas. Or you can use one of the many professional mind-mapping programs to produce a digital medium from which you can see and share all of your ideas in visual form. Bringing in colors, pictures that represent the ideas. And being able to search for connecting keywords amongst your ideas have not only made the brainstorming sessions more effective for people, they've also made the process more fulfilling. Obviously, you'll need to consider how much time you can dedicate to the process, because certain approaches are more time-consuming than others. There's just a couple more things I want to discuss before I end this lecture. There is a perspective of describing creativity that is very much in line. Brainstorming process. There's a framework view that creativity is a process that consists of multiple stages. These stages are preparation, incubation, idea generation, and evaluation. Now stop for a second. I compare that with what we just talked about, preparation, incubation, idea generation, and evaluation. You can see the similarities, right? The wonderful thing about brainstorming, in my opinion, is not that it works. It doesn't always lead to the results that we want or need. Rather, the best thing about brainstorming is that it helps us what the incubation part of the creative process. This entire brainstorming process involves looking at the task at hand for many possible angles. And we become intimately familiar with those angles when we perform the refining stage of the process. This involved approach to a creative endeavor, we'll usually motivate our subconscious to produce fantastic solutions. Which brings me to my last point. There are lectures in this course that explore at depth how a great deal of creative and learning work is performed while we are asleep. If you were to look at your brainstorming notes just prior to going to bed, it is probable that you'll have new insights when you wake up in the morning. This lecture has hopefully helped you to better see that creativity is a process, not an event. This insight into the nature of creativity should assist you in achieving your creative goals. In this lesson, we went over the history of brainstorming, the purpose of its application, and how to perform brainstorming. The main takeaway from this lesson is to embrace the freedom of idea generation when striving to tackle a specific and clear problem. Brainstorming also involves a refining phase where the freely generated ideas are whittled down to the best view. The more you practice brainstorming, the better you will get tied to it. Remember that the key benefit to brainstorming isn't that you will discover a desired solution. The key benefit is that the result of the brainstorming process is that it cements the creative project into our subconscious mind, thereby drastically increasing our creative potential on that particular project. 18. Daydreaming: In this lecture, I'm going to be discussing how thinking freely benefits the creative process. Daydreaming gets a bad rap. Many of us are trained to perceive a wandering mind as being unproductive and disciplined behavior. However, contrary to popular belief, when it comes to creativity, disciplined daydreaming can be incredibly productive. You'd be surprised at how many epiphanies and eureka moment had been brought about by daydreaming. Mind-wandering is so vital to the creative process that it could be argued that daydreaming is a necessary part of creativity. Also, just to be clear, mind-wandering is the experience of having a retention move away from the objective world and its related perceptual input and towards internal reflection. This usually involves imaginative, often seemingly random thoughts. There are stages in the creative process that required divergent thinking and require the default mode network to be fully activated. Divergent thinking and the default mode network are deeply explored in other lectures. In these other lectures, I explained their vital role in the creative process. You require these elements to be profoundly creative and daydreaming is a route to accessing these elements. For example, I'm sure that you've had an experience where you are out working hard and some difficult problem and you reached a point where you felt stuck. Then you take a break, go for a walk, take a shower before Dr. cook a meal. And during such times you released the reins on your brain. Random thoughts pop into your head and you focus on them, follow them without stress or anxiety. Then seemingly out of the blue, you think of the solution to the problem. While it might feel that we aren't thinking hard when we're daydreaming. Mris of the brain shows that there's an increase in activity within the areas connecting the different regions of the brain while we're daydreaming. This increase in activity helps us to come up with solutions that we are unable to conceive while we are engaged and focused thought. Now, let me talk about mindfulness for a moment. This course contains a lecture or the beneficial qualities of mindfulness are explored. In brief. Mindfulness is a type of meditative practice that prevents us from following our thoughts. We essentially become an observer of our thoughts, not a participant. Within that lecture, I explained how mindfulness helps with creativity. Therefore, it may seem contradictory, but I'm saying in this lecture that doing the exact opposite is greatly beneficial to creativity. This paradox exists mainly because creative thought requires a range of creative tools. Just as there are different phases to the creative process, there are also different places where certain types of thinking works better than others. This point is explored in other lectures, but for now, please understand that there's a time for mindfulness where you let your conscious rest and allow the thoughts to drift on by. And there's a time for daydreaming where you let your thoughts grab me by a leash and pull you wherever they want to take you. The wisdom comes from knowing at what time you should use each tool. And that's something that you need to figure out for yourself because the timing is contingent on your personality and the specifics of your creative goal. Now, to be clear, just as there's a right way and a wrong way to practice mindfulness. There is also a right and a wrong way to effectively Daydream. Daydreaming. Just for daydreaming sake. We'll probably hinder you more than help you. Several things need to happen for daydreaming to be helpful in the creative process. First, you must have enough relevant information stored in working memory. This means that you need to have spent enough time on the creative endeavor to adequately understand the variables that are involved. In other words, your subconscious needs to have enough material to work with before it can help you. Daydreaming usually only helps if you've already put in the hard hours to become very familiar with the creative task at hand. Second, daydreaming with a positive, optimistic, and confident outlook has been found in studies to help with the creative process. While negative ruminations typically hinder the creative process, which as a side note, is especially challenging to do when you're bored. And I get into that at the end of this lecture. Third, it's tremendously helpful to be able to keep the daydreaming thought at least relatively close to the creative goal. This isn't to say that you need to be thinking about the creative goal Exactly. Rather, it's the case that when you're daydreaming produces a thought that is relevant to the creative goal. You need to have the capacity to immediately recognize the value of that thought and capture it. When you're daydreaming is too chaotic. When you're daydreaming with an exhausted, overworked, cluttered mind, you are very likely to not benefit from the daydreaming process. In other words, daydreaming can only help you creatively if you are able to capture its elusive gifts. Put another way, when you daydream, have a way and an eagerness to capture your thoughts and hint, hint. Boredom helps with this. Fourth, it needs to be said that while daydreaming isn't necessarily vital for a short duration creative projects. Studies have found that daydreaming is enormously beneficial for long duration creative projects. Daydreaming helps us to perform self-reflection and contemplate the future in a manner that often yields very beneficial insights. From this, we can see solutions to problems that have not yet arisen. Also, the longer use span with a creative project, the more familiar you are with the project, and thus, the more material your subconscious has to work with. When you invite to your brain to chew on a problem in a very carefree way, in a daydreaming way, your subconscious will often provide insights that you would otherwise never get. Fifth, it is often very motivational to make great progress and a creative goal from a daydreaming session. As I hope you've experienced before. Those seemingly random eureka moments that surprises during a leisurely walk or in a nice shower feel terrific. The rush of euphoria that comes from those epiphanies really helped us to stick with a long duration creative goals. Another benefit of daydreaming is that it invites us into the open mode. Now, first let me explain the difference between open mode and closed mode. Closed mode is absolutely essential for functioning in the modern world. This is the mode that we exist in most of the time while we are awake. This is a mode based on activity, anxiety in patients purpose and is heavily related to stress intention. It is because of the closed mode that we remember to brush our teeth and go to work. Without the closed mode, we could not function, but it is in the open mode or the creative magic lives. This is a mode based upon relaxation, expansion, contemplation, humor, play, curiosity and freedom. We have been trained to stop ourselves from embracing the open mode. Every time a parent or teacher yelled at you to quit, you're daydreaming and pay attention that adult was teaching you to avoid the open mode. Well, if you want to be creative, you need to learn to daydream again, because it is in the open mode where your most creative self resides. I'm going to end this lecture by discussing the unpleasant secret to conjuring up the most effective daydreaming sessions. A kind of tool to force you to re-learn how to daydream. The prerequisite for the most productive daydreaming sessions is boredom. Yes. In this age of instant gratification, where a smartphone can provide you with a lifetime of entertainment and distractions. I'm saying that if you want to experience the best daydreaming sessions, you must put the phone away and embrace being bored. Imagine that you are trying to grow a crop and the fruit of this crop is creativity. Boredom is the fertile ground from which this crop first sprouts. Being bored is an uncomfortable experience. And the brain does not like uncomfortable experiences. So the displeasure from boredom motivates the brain to entertain itself, to distract itself from the discomfort that an unstimulated environment provides. Boredom is well-known for stimulating curiosity, discovery, and invention. Here's some examples to illustrate this point. Steve Jobs stated, boredom allows one to indulge in curiosity. Jrr Tolkien stated that The Lord of the Rings was only thought up because he was extremely bored while grading college papers. Jk Rowling stated that the idea for Harry Potter came to her while she was extremely bored, while waiting hours for a delayed terrain. In 1581, Galileo Galilei made a breakthrough discovery while board during a church service in Piazza. During this time of profound boredom. He used nothing more than the chandelier overhead and the Bolton his veins to think up the law of pendulum. These creatives recognize that boredom is unpleasant. They are under no illusion about that. They just came to understand that boredom is a tool for creativity. Now, please don't get me wrong. I'm not encouraging you to strive to be bored as often as possible. Such a tactic can result in depression. What I'm saying is the same thing I pushed throughout this entire course. There was a time and a place for all things when it comes to creativity, you can actually schedule in time to be away from your toys and distractions and make these arranged to times about embracing boredom and in turn, daydreaming. In this lesson, we went over the explanation as to why and how daydreaming benefits creativity. In brief, mind wandering is beneficial to creativity by increasing brain activity, alleviating anxiety, accessing divergent thinking, and engaging the default mode network. We then covered what is involved with effective daydreaming. Beneficial mind-wandering involves several elements, such as already having enough irrelevant information stored in working memory, meaning that you already know enough about the problem and relevant content to be justified tackling it. There's also the need to engage in daydreaming from an optimistic and overall positive attitude. Then there's the need to keep the reins on a daydreaming well enough to keep your thoughts from wandering too far away from the subject at hand. While it's fine to think about unrelated elements while daydreaming. If you become emotionally invested in those unrelated thoughts, it is likely you will become too distracted and involved to benefit from the daydreaming process. Next, the point was made to perceive daydreaming as an essential part of the process for longer term creative endeavors. One could go so far as to say that a long term creative endeavor can not to be successfully completed without incorporating a daydreaming practice. We close this lesson by covering the beneficial aspects of boredom. In short, the uncomfortable sensations that boredom causes have been shown to accelerate and enhance creativity. 19. Meditation: In this lecture, I'm going to be discussing the role that meditation can play in the creative process. First of all, it has to be said that this lecture will not be comprehensive. There are many different forms of meditation in all of these varying approaches have pros and cons as it relates to creativity. Therefore, this lecture will speak in generalities. Some forms of meditation require the meditator to hone their attention to a single thing. The training for these forms of meditation teach the person to take notice when their thoughts have drifted away from that single thing and to gently return their focus to that single thing. Such a technique benefits creativity and mostly two ways. One, it strengthens the muscle for intense concentration. Many of us get the teat when we retain laser-like focus on something for a prolonged period of time. Such meditation techniques will allow us to spend more time on a creative topic than usual. Another benefit is that reducing the world into a single thought eventually results in a state of relaxation that is so deep that it can rival deep sleep and it's healing properties. I believe that the healthier the brain and body, the more creative potential we possess. Therefore, this course will only be addressing healthy ways of capturing creativity. There are other forms of meditation that involve mindfulness or, or mindfulness related. Generally speaking, this involves a practice that forces a person to be fully present in the moment. Essentially, such meditative techniques and tethers the meditator from external and internal stressors, thus allowing the individual to relish in the present state of existence. Such techniques allow the individual to gain better control over themselves by shifting the perspective on thoughts themselves. Here's an example to better understand. Our thoughts resemble a person sitting on a park bench in a busy park. This person is trying to be calm and just enjoy the beauty of their current view. Then along comes a person walking a cute little dog. This dog captures the spectators attention, which forces the person to stand out from the park bench and follow the dog. The person takes notice that the dog's wagging tail, and it's just about to ask to pet the dog when it very attractive joggers crosses their path. This jogger is more captivating then the dog. So the spectator leaves the dog and follows the jogger. The person has to run to catch up. Just when they're about to be shoulder to shoulder, the spectator takes notice of the beautiful birds flying overhead. The person stops to watch the gorgeous birds in their majestic flight. Then along comes something else and then something else, each more captivating than the next. And this person who had once been sitting peacefully on the park bench is now running around chasing one new thing after another. This is a metaphor for most of our thoughts. We chase them down until a new thought pulls our attention away. Meditation's like mindfulness. Teach that person on the park bench to take notice of the dog as it passes, to take notice of the jogger and the birds as they glide on by to recognize their existence, but to let them go on their way without following them. Such forms of meditation granted the ability to think clearly and to live a life that is far less stressful. For example, self-criticism is something that many creatives must regularly confront. That's a bad idea. This piece looks ugly. Nobody will like it. What was I thinking? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Such self-criticism does not hurt us in and of itself. It's when we follow these thoughts around as if they have us on some sort of leash, that our ability to be creative becomes impaired. If instead of following these thoughts, we recognize their existence and then leave them alone as they walk on by. This practice releases us from the unnecessary stressors that will impede our creative efforts. This seems like as good a place as any to discuss the subject of gratitude. Now, practicing gratitude isn't necessarily a form of meditation, but I would argue that its benefits are just as good if not better. Any other form of meditation? First of all, it's been shown in scientific laboratories that there are many measurable beneficial aspects to actively practicing gratitude. For example, gratitude has been shown to release both dopamine and serotonin, 2 of the neurochemicals required to feel good. Some would even argue that it's impossible to be sustainably happy without a regular gratitude practice. Being grateful shifts the focus away from that which we don't have, to, that which we do. In case you find such an act too difficult, allow me to pose questions to you by way of example, would you sell me your ability to see in here $4 million? Would you trade sight and sound for a billion dollars? Would you trade all of your senses for a trillion dollars? Most would say know, many of us think ourselves deprived. But there are some things in life that we would never so not at any price. This is a type of gratitude. By writing a list of everything you are grateful for, your endowing yourself with a powerful tool that can help you more than you thought possible. As long as you keep adding to this list and regularly revisit it to cherish those things to which you are grateful. Gratitude will help you find the inner peace you will need to achieve many of your creative goals. The point of this lecture is not really to explore the nuances of meditation, but rather to make the case that it is possible to find serenity, insight, and inspiration from within yourself. There's an entire universe within you and what deliberate thought and attention you can bend it to help you with your creative goals. In this lesson, we differentiated between the varying types of meditation. For example, we went over the difference between forms of meditation that require home detention and the forms of meditation that encouraged the releasing of deliberate thought. We discussed how such techniques benefit us. For example, focused meditation trains us to concentrate better and rest more effectively. While mindfulness related practices releases the meditator from external and internal pressure, thus allowing the brain to relax towards finding creative solutions. We also covered the role that gratitude practices play in the creative process. 20. Immersion: In this lecture, I'm going to be discussing the concept of immersion as it pertains to creativity. It's a cold hard truth that the vast majority of successful creative works or not, 100% original ideas. Many popular contemporary songs are based off of successful classical musical pieces. Many of the plays credited to Shakespeare were alterations of pre-existing stories. Many of today's successful stories are based off of Shakespeare's plays. The fact of the matter is that an ultra pure original idea is incredibly rare. Much of creativity is applying your own thoughts against in on top of preexisting ideas. Please understand that this isn't demeaning the creative process by any means. Humanity is blessed in that we can and should pass down the wisdom of our ancestors. We do not live in a vacuum, and we shouldn't perceive creativity as if we are all on our own. We are taught to learn from our history for a reason. Insofar as it relates to creativity, we learn from history so that we can take something old and craft it into something new. Hence the notion of immersion. There are many aspects of creativity. There are many different fields to which to apply creative thought. Musicians, painters, writers, sculptors, inventors. The list goes on and on. But if we are to create something new, we must first be skilled in our particular creative domain. Painters don't just paint for years on end to achieve their mastery. They also study the works of the greats and those other paintings that they personally enjoy. Musicians don't just select a single instrument to dedicate their time to practicing. They also committed the music of the masters into the reflexive memory. Writers don't only practice sentence and passage structure. They also follow a story structure that only exists because of the thousands of years of humans struggling to figure out what story structures work best. And so it goes. Again, we shouldn't conceive of our creativity as something that emerges from a vacuum. We immerse ourselves in our narrow creative field so that we can learn from the masters of our past. As Sir Isaac Newton wrote in 1675. If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. Depending on your creative field, you may have no choice but to immerse yourself in the practice and study of the particulars of your chosen field. And while this may seem like a lot of work at first glance, at a second look. It should put you at ease. You are not expected to be perfectly original. You are encouraged to stand on the shoulders of giants so that you can grab something new. You'd be hard-pressed to find a new idea isn't related to the lessons of old. The more you immerse yourself in your creative field, the more your creative powers will be strengthened. In this lesson, we hopefully relieve the stress over the concern that we creatives must be 100% original. We also covered the concept of immersion as it relates to creativity. The takeaway here is that after you have isolated your creative field, it is a good idea to then strive to absorb yourself into that field. Try to learn and experience as much as as possible so that you can improve your abilities in many more ways that you can consciously realize. 21. Sharing Goals: In this lecture, I'm going to be discussing the subject of telling others about your ambitious, creative goals. It is commonly taught that if you want to complete a difficult goal, that you should tell others about this goal. The reasoning behind this is that if you tell others about your goal, you are in turn, committing yourself to completing the difficult task. This reasoning makes perfect sense. On the face of it. It seems reasonable to believe that the sense of obligation that comes from telling others about our goals will increase the likelihood that we will accomplish set goal. However, while this advice makes sense, It's usually backfires. Studies on various types of groups in anecdotes from successful creatives, make the case that if you want to complete an ambitious creative goal, you should be extremely selective about who you tell about that goal. In fact, if possible, it's often best to tell no 1. First, I'm going to offer a broad explanation for this. And then I'm going to gloss over some studies that support this counter-intuitive advice. When you contemplate where you currently are versus where you want to be, you perceive a gap between here and there. The internal desire to bridge this divide is what's usually motivates you to close this gap. When we tell someone about a goal we have and that person acknowledges it, any event occurs within us that psychologists call social reality. The fact that the other person acknowledges our goal to something akin to tricking unconscious elements in our brain into believing that we have already completed the goal. In short, this is in part because this event, those with a level of satisfaction that demotivates us. Please allow me to elaborate. When we tell someone about an ambitious, creative goal, would do the cognitive equivalent of making the goal bright and shiny in our mental Theatre. We get excited and emboldened by the new reality that we will bring into our lives. This act releases pleasurable chemicals in our brain. Because it is often the case that when it comes to personal imagined thoughts, our brain can't discern the difference between internal mental imagery and authentic external reality. Here's an example to make my point. And if you really try this, you'll see what I'm striving to explain. Think of the sour fruit that you are well familiar with. I'm going to think of a lemon. But if you are better familiar with another sour fruit, to pick that one. For this example, I'm going to walk you through thoughts about a lemon. And I want you to take notice on how your mouth starts salivating. Okay, I want you to really think about that lemon. You feel the weight of the limit in your hand. What color is this lemon. What does the texture of its skin feel like? Please take a moment and think about this as if you were really holding a lemon in your hand. Now, sit the limit on a cutting board and get a knife with which to cut it into edible size slices. What are you seeing as you slice the fruit into pieces that you will soon be putting into your mouth. Think about that site. Think about the spray of tiny droplets that the slicing knife launched out from the fruit. Now envision yourself picking up one of those pieces and bringing it to your nose. How would you describe that smell? Now? Put that lemon in your mouth and chew. How would you describe that taste? Most people's mouths are noticeably salivating by this stage in the visualization process. If yours is, then you shouldn't. Now better grasp my previous point that there are powerful elements in our brain that can't tell the difference between a vividly perceived personal experience, any real experience. No fruit was put in your mouth, and yet to your mouth is likely wetter than it was before. No great creative goal was yet to accomplish. And yet you'll feel that rush of having completed it when you tell others about it. This counter-intuitive understanding that we should keep our ambitious goals to ourselves, has been studied from multiple different angles. There are a lot of studies that broach this topic. So for the sake of brevity, I'm only going to cover enough to support my point. Some studies examined this phenomenon from the stance of a personal identity goal. The most popular study on this specific issue was done by Gollwitzer. Sure, when Minkowski and see effort at NYU, different groups of people, such as law students, high level psychology students, and other pre-established groups or examined in this study. And this study, pre-established closely matched sections of people were split into two groups. Both groups completed a questionnaire that reinforced their ambition to accomplish a specific goal. One group was emotionally tied to their questionnaire. To the process of the experiment are going over the questionnaire with the test subject. This interaction with the first group was to make the members of the first group feel accountable for their goal. The second group returned their questionnaires with a full understanding that no one would know their identity. The second group was anonymous. In other words, there was no emotional connection between them and their questionnaire. Nothing for which to make them feel accountable to their goal. Those in the anonymous second group were found to spend significantly more time on achieving their goal than the first group. Gollwitzer and his colleagues arrived at the understanding that something happens when we tell others about a goal that is directly related to our personal identity. They concluded from their research that when another person takes notice of your identity goal, that social recognition produces a reward that reduces our efforts. They take away here is that if your goal is related to your personal identity, you should probably keep it to yourself. Most ambitious creative goals are related to our personal identity. For example, many would-be authors fail to complete a writing their book, largely because they told others about their goal to finish writing their book. All right, so now here's another angle to consider. I provide a section in this course that explores in detail the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. In short, intrinsic motivation is tied to an intrinsic reward approach to accomplishing a goal. Intrinsic reward is when you reward yourself internally. Do the likes of experiencing pride and extrinsic reward. When you reward yourself externally, such as purchasing yourself a desired product. Again, intrinsic reward is essential to completing challenging goals. Okay, So researchers in Zelle and Anderson performed a study that revealed that intrinsic motivation decreases when people are watched by others to make sure that they are actively pursuing their goal. Conversely, those tests, subjects that were watched without such pressure, experienced no noticeable drop in their intrinsic motivation. The takeaway here is that when we tell others about our goal, they essentially monitor, are consistent effort to accomplish the goal. This monitoring reduces our intrinsic resources that we require to accomplish a difficult goal. There are many more studies that support the point I'm making. I encourage you to look them up. If you're still not convinced that you should limit who you tell about your goals. My humble advice is that before you make your goal public, first, consider how telling someone about your creative goal will benefit you. The contents of this course exist to not only provide you with the tools and understandings you need to capture creativity, they also exist to help you complete your creative goals. What's your ambitious creative goal? Are you going to tell me in this lesson, we went over an argument that runs contrary to the popular belief that we should share our high goals with others. We discussed the notion of social reality and how the sense of satisfaction that we experience when we share our high goal actually reduces our motivation to complete that goal. The takeaway from this lesson is to seriously consider the pros and cons to sharing your high creative goal with others. If you've personally found that such a tactic has always helped you, then by all means, stick with what works. However, if you want to follow the evidence, then I suggest being why it is you can about your creative pursuits until they are completed. 22. Exercise: In this lecture, I'm going to be making the point that exercise helps with creativity. First of all, studies have been done to determine whether active or lethargic people perform better than the other in creative tasks. These tests found that those who regularly exercise performed better on creative tasks than those who were barely active. This first really shouldn't come as a surprise. Take our ancestral past into consideration. For most of humanity's existence, the ability to sit still for long periods of time was impossible if one wished to survive. We walked long distances. We sprint it from predators in towards pray. We carried large loads to and from. We built and we dug and we fought one another. To exercise, was to live, to live was to exercise. Our distant ancestors would be confused with the idea of a gym membership. In other words, the human mind and body require each other to be strong to work best. And we are an animal that evolve to be very active. I'm not telling you anything here that you don't already know. The point just has to be made that if we are trying to reach our highest creative potential, we have no choice but to regularly make time for exercise. I'm not going to discuss what types of exercise you should be doing and for how long you should exercise. Everyone is different. And that information should be specifically tailored to you as an individual. All I'm saying is that exercise does have a role to play and creativity. Exercise doesn't only help with creativity and problem-solving after the fact. You don't just exercise in the morning so that you can mentally perform better in the afternoon and in the evening. It is also often the case that you can become more creative while you are performing light exercise. Studies have been done that show that our creativity improves while we're in the process of walking. Stanford especially has been putting out studies demonstrating this reality. For example, one Stanford study found that walking increased 81% of participants creativity on a Guilford alternate uses test, which is essentially a creativity test. It helps to walk and think. You'd be surprised how many major companies and corporations have serious meetings while walking. It also just helps to walk. Even without thinking. Often ideas and solutions will just pop into your head while you're in the middle of a light exercise. Speaking personally, I can't begin to tell you how many insights, discoveries, ideas, and epiphanies I've had while walking. Even when I wasn't thinking about these matters of concern. It's likely you've had such experiences as well. Maybe this is somehow related to the fact that exercise boosts memory. Exercise certainly does play a role in our neurochemistry and body chemistry as a whole. So there's that to, for example, exercise releases endorphins, which are essentially chemicals that make us feel good. That releases such chemicals provides us with a sense of achievement, which in turn is not only empowering, it also boosts our overall sense of well-being. Puts another way. We are usually far more susceptible to stress in sleeping problems when we don't regularly exercise. And to this point, there are lectures where I discussed the vital role that sleep plays in our creative ability. So the fact that exercise helps us sleep better is reason enough to schedule in regular exercise. I don't want to make it sound like you need to be super fit in order to be creative. Your exercise goals are a personal matter. I'm just stating that exercise does have a role to play and creativity. In this lesson, we went over how exercise helps with the creative process. For example, we explored evidence that exercise has been repeatedly found to noticeably boost creative performance. Personally, I'd like to give emphasis to the beneficial role of just walking. Walking not only boosts memory and the overall sense of well-being, it also encourages those surprise eureka moments that greatly aid us on our creative journey. 23. Nature: In this lecture, I'm going to be discussing the role that nature can play in being creative. Many of us have grown accustomed to living our life outside of nature. The majority of us enjoy the conveniences provided by our concrete and steel environment. Such prolonged exposure to an animate surroundings helps many of us to forget. Now we are not only a part of nature, we are nature. It is often the case that in order to tap into our most creative States, we must first encourage our genuine self to come out to play. It is common for our genuine self to become suppressed by our inanimate surroundings. By the need to stay alert, by the need to conform, and by the many distractions that relentlessly demand our attention. We are nature and we are in our natural setting when we are in nature. Now, while I'm going to be encouraging you to make time to go into nature. I'm referring to the natural environments where you rightfully feel safe. A major reason why we constructed our inanimate surroundings was to escape the hostel in an uncomfortable realities of the natural world. So please use your common sense when utilizing nature as a creativity enhancing tool. All right, so let's get into some of the science. First of all, it needs to be said that to be truly immersed in nature requires us to be unconnected from our technological tools. Are smart phones, for instance, can diminish the many benefits that nature can bestow upon our creativity. Numerous studies have been done that reinforce the argument that being constantly connected to the Internet degrades our ability to focus and be creative. For example, when we exert effort, we release a chemical in our brain called noradrenalin. I cover this neurotransmitter in greater detail within the brain section of this course. In short, when we have enough of this chemical in our system, there's a specific part in our brain that makes us stop checking our phones alerts here and there isn't a problem because that only results in a small release of noradrenalin. However, consider that drops of water can fill a large bucket. When we keep checking our phone, we essentially deplete our energy reserves for the day. Thus far, I've yet to find any problem with listening to music while we were out in nature. The data seems to suggest that it's that immediate pull to look something up online or respond to a text or email, or jump on an alert, or other such tendencies that make us cognitively fatigued. So if you are as attached to technology as I am, then I suggest reducing your exposure to technology as much as you can stand it while you are trying to extract the benefits. Being out in nature provides. The science behind this is actually much denser. And I don't want this to be a lecture about phone use. So the point is that a great deal of our cognitive ability is freed up to think creatively when we are out in nature without our devices pulling on our senses. For example, studies have been done on hikers to determine if they were more creative while he had access to their phone or after they had gone deep into nature and spent four days without it. This research determined that they were 50 percent better at solving problems creatively after they had returned from a genuine natural experience. The thing is, as I deeply discussed in another lecture, there are different modes to thinking creatively. One of these modes is called the default mode. Network is often referred to as the imagination network. Again, I get into all of this in another lecture. So I'm not going to bog you down by thoroughly explaining it twice. In short. However, the default mode network is involved in mental simulation and memory. It is usually associated with daydreaming. It's a mode that makes it easy for us to connect fault and conceptual dots that would otherwise be way too far apart to connect. What are natural environment is safe, comfortable, pure, and expansive. Our brain is encouraged to remain within the default mode. Now, hiking off into the wilderness is an extreme natural experience. And there have been studies that show that even having access to a potted plant and a window view of nature offers a boost and creativity, not as much as spinning time, truly immersed in nature however. But exposure to nature in any form does seem to boost creativity. But I'm trying to make the point that it is usually better to seek out as much of a safe, natural experience as possible. So I'm going to continue exploring this subject from the fuller natural experience perspective, as opposed to just having a potted plant to look at. In the lecture where I delve into tactics that help us reach a state of calm. I discussed the science behind how panoramic vision evokes the sense of relaxation. When we walk through the woods, the trees passing through our peripheral vision invites this state of calm. When we look far into the distance as we would from the top of a mountain or across an ocean or over the plains. We again utilize our panoramic vision. Such a view not only in stills calmness, it also inspires expansive thinking. And I'll get to expansive thinking in a moment. In terms of creativity, this nature induce calmness is referred to in the scientific community as soft fascination. Soft fascination is highly conducive to a creative state of mind. Soft fascination occurs when we just sit and watch the ebb and flow of the natural world. Such as how the wind makes us think and feel as it caresses our skin and dances with the fallen leaves. This is opposed to hard fascination, where our senses remind us that we must remain alert. For example, the shrill screeching of the sirens, the relentless sounds emanating from our phone. The breaking news that demand in emotional reaction, the social norms to which we must immediately conform to, and such other things that one does it usually experience within a genuine natural setting. So there's salt fascination and there's expansive thinking. There have been studies done that the sense of smallness that comes from looking at something greater than oneself results in expansive thinking. This type of thinking shifts our perspective to one that encouraged us to break free from our habitual thoughts and thought patterns. For example, you've likely experienced this if you've ever been far away from light pollution and had an open view of the Milky Way galaxy. The thoughts that you will have while witnessing such a view are different than the thoughts you will have when you're stuck in a cramped office space. There have been a range of studies done that support the age old wisdom that nature helps us with inspiration, memory, energy, our ability to concentrate, and mental health. I encourage you to seek out these studies. If you are still skeptical of nature's beneficial qualities, it shouldn't be controversial to say that time in nature helps with a broad-based aspects of creativity, such as the stages of idea development that are associated with calmness, brainstorming, and subconscious help like what a solution or relevant idea pops into our heads seemingly out of nowhere. I'm hoping that you've spent enough time in nature to feel the ease that occurs in such situations and already realized that I'm not telling you anything you haven't already learned from personal experience. What might seem a little less obvious is that nature may help us with the less broad aspects of creativity as well. Such as when we actually narrow and combine our ideas to formulate a cohesive idea. There are some researchers who have made the evidence-based argument that time in nature boost our creativity by more than just improving our associative abilities, such as making brainstorming more productive. Some studies have made the point that time in nature boosts our ability to concentrate as well. But the key point that is argued is that it's not just that time in nature boosts our ability to extract great benefit from mind-wandering. And that our time in nature boosts our ability to concentrate. It's not that we can do these two forms of thinking better because of our time within nature. The key is that which happens to our creative ability when these two boosted abilities symbiotically work together. This would be remarkable if true, because it means that nature can provide us with a problem-solving and creative ability that we are unable to attain from any other setting. In summary, time in nature can provide us with the opportunity to reach a state of serenity. This serene state might allow us to perform certain difficult cognitive tasks with far greater ease. Full disclosure. We don't yet know for certain why nature boost our creativity. I have my beliefs. The scientists don't all agree with one another. So they have theirs. And I'm sure you have your own. But even though everyone doesn't agree on the how and the why, there is a general consensus that nature does indeed boost our creativity. So this lecture could have been a few sentences long. Spend as much time in nature as you safely can. Embrace the experience while you are in nature. And while you were in there, allow the creative juices to start flowing. Simple as that. In this lesson, we went over the perspective that nature can be used as a creativity enhancing tool. Nature can only benefit us when we're in nature, not only physically, but mentally as well. This means that nature's ability to boost our creative ability is severely impaired. If we take our technology with us when we venture into nature, nature boosts our creative ability in a variety of ways, such as it encourages us to remain in the default mode. It also stimulates mental states that are well aligned with creativity, such as calmness and soft fascination. Time it nature has been found to improve our general health. Which it should be obvious that a healthy brain and body is better capable of creative fault. 24. Colors: In this quick lecture, I'm going to be introducing you to the notion that color may have an impact on our creativity. Researchers have been interested in the idea that color can impact our emotions and mental ability for quite some time. Thus far, it seems to be true that while it is often the case that exposure to certain colors can sway us, there isn't a hard rule as to what colors evoke, would that all of us, in other words, we are all different. And if colors influences, those colors may influence us differently. That's being said, there are some consistencies that have emerged from all these years of research into the subject. It is often the case that the color is blue. Green tend to enhance our performance on cognitive tasks. Researchers speculate that the reason for this is because we associate blue with the sky, the ocean, and with expansive thinking in general. And we associate green with signs of growth. In most of these studies, heavily exposed to the color green boosted the test subjects creative ability. For example, individuals replaced in rooms with walls painted a certain color. They were by enlarge, the most creative in the green rooms. However, exposure to a certain color does not necessarily have to be as extreme as being engulfed by the single color. There are studies that support the idea that looking at something green like a plant just prior to engaging in a creative task will boost one's creative capability. Again, it must be made clear that there is no one size fits all rule with color influencing our mood, faults in capabilities. If color influences us personally, our reaction to a certain color may impact us differently than it does most others. The point of this lecture is to bring this topic to your attention. If you experiment on yourself and find that color does indeed have an effect on you as it does for many people. Then the next step is to experiment to see what colors influence you in the desired manner. For example, if you are working on a word processor during your creative task, then consider changing the background color of the page to the desired color. If you are working in a room, then throw sheets with the desired color over the furniture. Personally, I think it's worth experimenting with. Typically warm colors, such as yellow and red, will evoke a certain category of mood shifts within us. While cold colors, such as blue and green, will evoke a different type of mood shift within us. Since I assume your goal is to boost your creativity, then I suggest starting with a color green. In this lesson, we explored the notion of using color to sway our moods and cognitive ability. We covered that there is no hard and fast rule as to what colors will impact us. We must personally experiment with colors to see how they influence us. Lastly, it is often the case that the color green promotes creative thought. 25. EMDR: In this lecture, I'm going to be discussing how looking left to right for half a minute may give you a quick boost in your creativity. In the brain section of this course, I discussed how our eyeballs are actually a part of the brain. It's more accurate to consider your eyes is being brain than thinking of your eyes is being attached to your brain. I also discuss in the brain section of this course that we are able to be creative because of the communication that takes place between the different regions of the brain. In the lecture about to reaching a state of calm, I discuss a technique called eye movement, desensitization and reprocessing therapy. There I cover how specific eye movements sways our state of mind and abilities. So if what I'm about to say confuses you, please visit these lectures for a detailed explanation. The reason I'm referring you to those other lectures is because there's a technique involving bilateral eye movement that has been found to noticeably boost creativity for nine minutes within a large portion of the population. Listening to those aforementioned lectures will help you better understand the science behind this tactic. If you use a dominant hand, you aren't by any means ambidextrous. In other words, the following tactic might help you with creativity. Looking left to right while keeping your head stationary has been found to boost cognitive abilities in areas involving originality, flexibility, verbal creativity, and convergent thinking. The scientific community believes that this tactic works because it forces the simultaneous activation of both brain hemispheres, which in turn increases the brain's interhemispheric interaction. People who have two dominant hands already have the increased interhemispheric interaction that this tactic produces. So it only has a chance of working on those that have one dominant hand. It's easy to test this tactic to see if it works for you. First, pick two common household items, a spoon and a paperclip, for example. Sit down with that item and for thirty-seconds, write down as many possible uses of that spoon. You can eat with it. You can use it as a catapult. You can use it as a clay sculpting tool. You can melt it down and mold it into something else. The point is to think of as many uses as you can. So this is just a shortlist as an example. Then perform the steps I'm about to describe and see if you come up with more ideas with a second household item. All right, so all you do to perform this tactic is to keep your head still and look left for 2.5th and then write for 2.5th and repeat this for thirty-seconds. There are many resources online that can walk you through this. Just look up emdr therapy. Again. If this tactic works for you, it will only work for seven to nine minutes. In this lesson, we covered how to use your eyes to temporarily increase your creative ability. Properly looking from left to right has been shown to improve creativity and a large portion of the population, you can perform the creativity tests of conceiving of all possible uses for an object to see if this approach benefits you personally. 26. Workspace: In this lecture, I'm going to be discussing how the workspace can influence creativity. First, it has to be said that this is not a one size fits all subject. Some writers, for example, need to work in a fully controlled setting that is free of distractions. Other writers require the hustle and bustle of a coffee shop type setting before they can unleash their creativity. So the key to keep in mind with all I'm going to say is that individual preference is a big factor here. The next point is a great example of this. I'm sure you're already familiar with the teachings that we should keep our workspace as clean as possible. Messy desk, messy mind. Well, turns out that when it comes to creativity, a messy workspace has been shown in studies to actually boost creativity in the majority of people. Now, when I say messy, I don't mean unsanitary. Rather, what I'm saying is that an ordered work environment promotes normal, conventional type thought. While a disordered environment fosters creativity in many people, much of creativity requires the ability to think in a type of disordered way. In other words, brainstorming, free-thinking, daydreaming, divergent thinking at large, or a big part of the creative process. As Einstein famously said, If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, then what are we to think of an empty desk? Mini, extraordinarily successful, creative people throughout history have kept a messy desk. So to get back to my original point, we are all different. While some people will thrive in a cluttered workspace environment during certain stages of the creative process, other people's creative ability will decline while in such an environment. A lot of this difference has to do with the emotional state that such as setting pushes us to have. Some people can be in a hoarding type situation and feel creatively inspired. Other people had their anxiety go way up in such an uncapped place. Most people thrive in a setting with a personalized balance of order and chaos are perfectly achieved. The point is not that we are all different. It's that are physical workspace has the capacity to greatly enhance or reduce our creative ability. Due to its major ability to sway us. We should tinker with our workspace to get it how it works best with us personally. Now that I've acknowledged that we are all different, I'm going to discuss some workspace elements that seem to boost creativity in most people. Many successful creatives advocate for a space that is 100% dedicated to performing creative work. Ideally, this space possesses a door that can be closed to essentially block out the world. Being able to hang a do not disturb sign on the door knob often provides two essential elements. First, the knowledge that you'll be free to work without distraction greatly assists and unlocking your brain from restriction based thinking. Think of it this way. If creativity, we're an entity in actual muse, The Muse would be seen as this timid, delicate thing. It's not unusual for the muse to inspire you with a surprise visit now and then you'll get excited with a new idea that has just been whispered into your ear. But right before you've heard the Muses last word, just before you've articulated that idea in your head. A distraction arises out of the blue. Just like that. The Muse is scared away. When you're in a space that is 100% dedicated to creative work and you've locked the world out by closing that door and hanging that do not disturb sign. You are inviting the muse to not only come and help you with your work, but to also stick around for awhile. A second way that closing a door helps with creativity is that it functions as a signal to your brain that it is time to get to work. In short, a dedicated space where they do not disturb sign on the outside usually helps to provide you with both the freedom and a focus that the creative process usually demands. The next thing to consider with your workspace is lighting. The research is pretty clear with its findings that real sunlight is better for creativity than artificial light. Depending on the view. Working near a window often helps with creativity. Most of us have to do our creative work when the sun isn't out or are windows view isn't really inspirational. So we have no choice but to turn to artificial light. Well, in such a case, dim artificial light works much better than bright artificial light. The studies found that bright overhead fluorescent lighting is the worst lighting situation for creativity. Lighting effect on creativity in general, cognitive performance has been scientifically studied for many years. There's a whole host of neurological and other physiological changes that occur depending on what type of light we are exposed to and what time of day we are exposed to that light. Without digressing into those dense details, suffice it to say that you should pay attention to the lighting in your creative space. If you have no good window with which to work with, they consider those artificial bulbs that are specifically designed to mimic actual sunlight. Something else to consider experimenting with our bulbs that illuminate a specific color. This course has an entire lecture dedicated to the role that culture plays on influencing our creativity. In that lecture, I discussed how certain colors help us with our creative ability. While exposure to other colors hinder us. Again, this is a personalized issue, but getting different color bulbs and seeing how such a light helps or hinders you is worth testing. And seeing. The last thing to consider in regards to your workspace or your other senses. We've covered site. I have a lecture on sound. So I'd like to end by addressing touch and smell. As far as touches concerned, I recommend creating as comfortable and environment as possible. Soft, smooth, ergonomic comfort that you can just sink into is ideal in most cases. For example, my workspace is literally constructed around a recliner that I find to be very comfortable. I use an ergonomic Keyboard and I'm always on the lookout for ways to make the station better for my particular tastes. My workspace is inviting to me. When I'm in it. I don't feel the desire to leave. So that's touch. Tend to the desires of your body. Then there's smell. Smell has been found to trigger memories more effectively than the other senses. Information related to smell takes a direct route to the limbic system. This region of the brain includes the hypothalamus and the amygdala and are closely associated with memory and emotion. In other words, certain smells can sway our moods, our emotions, and our capabilities much more heavily than you probably suspect. If a certain fragrance resonates with us particularly well. We are likely to experience a noticeable shift within our state of mind. The takeaway here is that you should consider what smell you're exposed to within your workspace. If you've always enjoyed a certain fragrance, they consider keeping that smell near you while you're engaged in creative thinking. In summary, the majority of successful creatives make the argument that you need a sanctuary within which to do your best work. Carve out this space to meet your needs and desires as best you can. Fill it with items that offer inspiration rather than overwhelm. Find your perfect blend of chaos and order in this setting and surround yourself with the light, the colors, and the fragrance is the best, give rise to your creative spirit. We are all different. So your ideal workspace will need to be tailored to match your own desires. But keep in mind your workspace has the potential of greatly helping you or greatly hindering you. So 10 to your workspace with care. 27. Music: In this lecture, I'm going to be discussing music's role in the creative process. For a very long time, it was widely believed that music enhances creative thought. Well, relatively recent studies have put this common longstanding belief into question. Within these burying Studies, test subjects were instructed to perform tests that are designed to gauge a person's creative ability. These study participants were exposed to different types of music while taking these creativity tests. For example, the studies that were performed in the United Kingdom had participants listened to music that was either familiar or unfamiliar, strictly instrumental or vocal. These participants performed worse on these insights based creativity tests. No matter what the music genre was, they all performed better on these tests. While in a completely quiet setting. Similar studies have been run in other countries and they arrived at results that music has the ability to impair creative capability. Now, as I'll address more closely at the close of this lecture, there are various stages of creativity and there are differences that take place within individuals in relation to the effect that music has on the person. For example, numerous studies have found that listening to lyric list music that evokes a happy feeling within the listener will drastically increase the ability to perform divergent thinking. Divergent thinking in greater detail within another lecture. For now, just understand that divergent thinking is a vital part of the creative process that allows us to consider all options. In other words, music that is not distracting, that makes the listener happy, will increase the ability to think more flexibly. Such music has been found to stimulate the brain's default mode network, which is another aspect of creativity that I cover in great detail within this course. It essentially boosts our ability to be imaginative and short. So, to get back to my original point, the studies that found that working in silence is better for creativity than working with music were studies that analyzed the performance on tests that did not focus on divergent thinking. Even one of the developers of this creativity test made the point. Such a test requires focused attention. This specific type of attention requires the brain to perform in a manner that it wouldn't during other parts of the creative process. In other words, the studies that found that music only hurts creativity. We're not using tests that required the participant to produce original fault, such as the thought that is found when the brain is utilizing the default mode network in divergent thinking. Based on these studies alone, I believe that the takeaway here is that music is only helpful to the creative process at certain stages of the creative process and not helpful at other stages of the creative process. These researchers suggest that lyric music that makes the person happy should be used during the early stages of the creative process. While silence should be used at the points where intense focus is required. So that's the science to date. Now I'm going to share my own thoughts on the matter. I have spent many years striving to figure out ways to boost my creativity. While in this personal pursuit, I've made discoveries as to what helps and what impairs my creativity. This personal experience makes me biased against these scientific studies. For one, the music that the study participants listen to were pre-selected by the researchers. And they were shared with only the music genre in mind. Classical music, music with words, familiar songs, unfamiliar songs, etc. In other words, the researchers did not have the participants bring their own music. I believe that our individuality must be considered when determining what music is and isn't beneficial to the creative process. Again, the music that was used in the study were selected by the researchers based upon the criteria of the music, genre and mood. Based on this tight restriction. It makes perfect sense to me why they got the results that they did. I have been using music as a creativity enhancing device for many years. During all these years of self-experimentation, I've made discoveries that might help you. Specificity is key when it comes to music's effectiveness with me. Just listening to a song because of its mood and genre as the researchers did, is not nearly as effective enough. While there are indeed genres that contain music that might help with the creative process, there are other genres that flat out won't help with the creative process. However, it has been my experience that only particular songs within these helpful genres actually work for me. A researcher may not be able to tell the difference between two songs because they are in the same genre, are composed to evoke the same mood and otherwise sound very similar. But because of my personal tastes, one song will drastically boost my creativity, while the other similar song will actually reduce my creativity. Also, unlike the research findings where music is found to only help with the divergent thinking aspect of the creative process. I have found music to boost my creativity at every stage of the process. Again, though, the key here is specificity. Hyper specific songs boost my ability so much that I dedicate a great deal of my free time carefully sifting through songs so as to pre-select music to listen to during my next creative endeavor. This is a time consuming process that I have found to be totally worth the effort. Usually the best songs are the songs that have the following qualities. I like them. They are new to me. They have no lyrics, and they provide a melody that is aligned with the emotional state that is a most agreement with the demands of that day's creative work. For example, listening to sad music elicits a creative response that happy music does not, and vice versa. Listening to music, the conjures up deep dark emotion is very helpful for certain parts of the creative process, but such music will hurt my productivity for other stages of the creative process. My point is that I believe that my personal findings are actually in basic agreement with the scientific research. They say that know music is best during certain stages of the creative process. What I'm saying is that only the absolutely right music is helpful at any stages in the creative process. Keep in mind even many of the researchers at MIT that are individual personality is a major unknown variable. And these findings, I included this topic in this course because I believe it is a tactic worth exploring. I've refined my strategy for using music so much over the years that I noticed how my creative ability plummets on the sound going into my ears is not quite right. And speaking of sound, if you're in the mood to experiment with yourself with auditory devices, then you should be aware of your background. Noise. Studies have found that having a soft ambient white noise in the background is much better for creativity than having loud abrasive background noises. Also, if finding the right music isn't your thing, then he can try listening to sounds that are based around a particular brain wave frequency. In case you don't already know, a brain operates on various brainwave states, depending mostly upon where we are currently in our day. This is a whole can of worms to get into. So I'll just skip to the point. Researchers have found that different brainwave states are better for creativity than others. Again, the creative process is composed of different stages, and each stage usually requires a different state of mind to perform well. These researchers have found that the Alpha and Theta brainwave states are usually the best. For most of the creative stages. Alpha waves are usually unlined with mental resourcefulness, the ability to perform mental coordination, and usually occurs when an individual is both relaxed and alert. Theta waves are usually aligned with creativity, relaxation, memory, and emotions. They are the most active when we are engaged in sleep and daydreaming. You can find audios on the Internet that are designed to move your brain into these brainwave states. Just a little something else to go into your creativity toolbox. In summary, listening to something while you work on your creative project can either massively help you or work against you. Some researchers suggest that you listen to happy lyric list music while you were engaged in the brainstorming part of the creative process and quiet or low ambient noise for the other stages. My personal experience asks you to consider going on a deliberate quest to seek out songs that are perfectly aligned with your days creative goals. I agree with the researchers that having the wrong music will be destructive to the creative process. So if you are going to use music as a creativity boosting device, you have to do it, right? If you are still in doubt about this whole using music thing. Remember Einstein's quote, the theory of relativity occurred to me by intuition. And music is that driving force behind this intuition. In this lesson, we covered the role that music plays in the creative process. My experience is that only the absolutely correct music used at the appropriate time will benefit the creative process. Music usually only enhances creativity if it is used correctly. Otherwise, music is likely to impair the creative process. In closing, if it is possible, you should strive to access music that is completely free from advertisements. It has been my experience that an unexpected advertisement will cause a violent disruption to the flow state. 28. Artificial Intelligence: In this lecture, I'm going to delve into the subject of artificial intelligence. My original goal with this course was to create something that would be relevant no matter when it was enjoyed. Well, this lecture is existence is not aligned with that goal because the field of artificial intelligence is an area that is rapidly changing and changing in such a way that it is difficult to accurately determine where it will take our species. For example, imagine if you dropped our smart phones off in the 1980s, I would suspect that access to such a radical jump and technology would have broad sweeping effects. The thing that is difficult for our human brain to fully grasp is the concept of exponential growth. And in case you don't know, exponential growth is defined as growth whose rates becomes ever more rapid in proportion to the growing total number or size. The closest many of us come to grasping this concept is by looking at a graph that depicts a linear curve that rapidly shoots upwards. A common graphical analogy for exponential growth is the time when the line passes the elbow of the hockey stick. The problem is that even this amazing sharp upward bend in a graph fails to fully capture the magnificence of exponential growth. But again, human brain really struggles to fully capture the accurate and comprehensive portrayal of exponential growth. Artificial intelligence development is no longer in its infancy stage. When artificial intelligence tackle something that is within its area of reach, its progress is exponential. In other words, artificial intelligence will have the potential to initiate a drastically greater shift in our society that dropping off our latest and greatest smartphones in the 1980s would cause. Just so you can get your bearings, I'm going to describe to you the power of our current artificial intelligence so that you can better grasp its potential in our future. Again, it has to be said that this lecture may not age well. For this reason, I considered not including this topic in this course, but my ultimate goal is to provide you with tools in awareness that will allow you to achieve your creative goals. Artificial intelligence, or AI, for short, is already a powerhouse and its role in our life is only going to increase. Therefore, I have no choice but to include this topic if I am to have a chance in achieving my ultimate goal. All right, with that disclaimer, Let's begin. The real genius of AI is most clearly revealed within situations where the rules are clearly defined. This is to say that human intelligence is no match for artificial intelligence in areas with clear and concrete rules. Games are an example of this. Games come with a rule book and borders are clearly defined. Therefore, as a route to hopefully giving you some bearings as to AI's potential. I'm going to discuss its advancement and extremely popular Eastern game called Go and extremely popular game called Chess. Humans have been diligently studying these games since their creation. These games have helped to reveal the geniuses of our species, but not even our hyper rare super geniuses have a chance at beating AI at these games. All right, so though is again, that has so many possible move combinations that a computer cannot brute force it, meaning it can't win by recalculating all possible future moves. Therefore, the software has no choice but to genuinely learn how to play the game. In 2016, the 18 time world Go champion Lee Sedol, engaged in a highly publicized five game match against a version of AI called Alpha Go. Lucy Doe lost four of these five games. And if you watch the documentary, it looks to me like the only reason why he won that single game is because the software wasn't ready. The next year, AlphaGo beat the current Go world champion. Shortly after that, AlphaGo competed with a newer version of artificial intelligence called Alpha 0. Alpha 0 was entirely self-taught, meaning that the only thing it had access to were the rules of the game and the ability to play the game against itself. In other words, it can only learn from the knowledge that originated from within itself. The game Go has been studied for thousands of years. Despite all of that diligent study, no human being will ever defeat Alpha 0. And I go match AlphaGo, the program that had defeated the best of our species, lost all of the 100 matches it played against Alpha 0. Now, there's a similar story with chess. You've probably heard the names Bobby Fischer Kasparov, and Magnus Carlsen. Well, there's a program called Stock Fish that is far higher in its ability than these three chess masters. Stock Fish operates by brute forcing the chess game at an amazing pace. Stock Fish is really incredible, but it's remarkable ability to crunch numbers is still no match for machine learning. Within four hours of studying only itself alphas euro was deemed a better player than Stock Fish. After nine hours of internal training, Alpha's 0 absolutely. Crushed Stock Fish. In less than half a day, this program was able to soundly defeat the program that can easily beat our best chess masters. This is a creativity course and there's a creative message behind these AI victories. One of the definitions of creativity is doing something that is both novel and useful. When these human game masters were playing against these programs, they all agreed that it felt like they were playing against something like an alien. It was making brilliant moves that no human being would have ever considered. Thousands of years of studying the game and a nine hours this AI could teach us more about the game that we could ever hope to learn. Sounds novel and useful to me. But keep in mind, true creativity does not take place within a rule bounded environment. Contemporary versions of AI thrive and settings where there are rule books involved. There are no hard rule books for creativity. So AI can't replace we creatives yet. I'm going to give one last example of AI is amazing ability because it needs to be shown that AIs brilliance is not only bound to the gaming world. In 2020, AI was able to create an accurate 3D model of a protein from its amino acid sequence. I'm not going to delve into the biological aspects of this accomplishment. Suffice it to say that when set to the task, AI accomplish something they biologists have been wrestling with for decades. This specific accomplishment by AI is a Nobel Prize level achievement that has experts agree that it is a game changer. So you should now be able to see that AI's role in our future is only going to increase. As at the time of this writing, it is commonly believed by AI experts that the last jobs to be replaced by AI are fields that require a high degree of dexterity, such as being a plumber and electrician. Jobs that require the human touch, such as nurses, and jobs that require high degree of creativity. Only time will tell if this belief is accurate. We humans like to believe that our jobs are irreplaceable. We fully understand the complex nature of our profession. In this understanding makes it difficult for us to believe that a machine can do our work just as well as we can. However, it appears evident that AI will one day be able to perform our job better than us. And even if some of us managed to remain slightly better than AI and skill, it will still overtake us in its ability to work without ever needing to rest. When many people think of machines replacing human work, the first jobs that come to mind are jobs that are commonly referred to as blue collar jobs. This perception is not entirely inaccurate. Ai is predicted to take nearly all driving related jobs from workers in the future, as well as Lake linked to other mass employment opportunities such as call center workers. The thing is, however, AI is also projected to lay claim to so-called white-collar jobs as well. Several trials had been run that show that AI is already able to outperform human attorneys and medical doctors. In 2018, the World Economic Forum made the prediction that well over half of current employees will require extensive retraining by 2022 due to the introduction of AI to things with this 0.1. In many ways, the advancement of AI is outpacing its predicted rate of improvement. And second, due to the global pandemic of 2020, many wealthy firms have dumped tremendous sums of money into artificial intelligence research and development. In other words, given today's trajectory, it is highly likely that profound changes on the horizon, perhaps even far more drastic than the World Economic Forum predicted back in 2018. There are those like Elon Musk that believe that it is only a matter of time before AI and automation will be able to perform absolutely every task better than a human. Such people have taken the time to fully conceptualize the concept of exponential growth as it relates to artificial intelligence in quantum computing. And as a result, for C, that profound change is coming. Specialists are already working on combinations of automation and AI to make machines capable of replacing even those three fields that I previously mentioned or the perceived safest. In other words, it is far from impossible for machines to one day outperform us in creativity. As of right now, scientists are trying to get AI to become functionally creative by focusing on two of three approaches drastically simplified. There are three ways in which AI can be used to create original ideas. One is to produce novel combinations. A second is exploring the potential of conceptual spaces, and the third is making transformations. These scientists are focusing their attention on the first two techniques. At this time. The third technique, making transformations is out of their reach. From such approaches, they've gotten AI to write stories, create visual art, and music. At this point, most of the AI's creative efforts would not be considered to be an excellent quality or even of good-quality by professional standards. However, its efforts to be original or not terrible. Ai can already mimic artistic masterpieces to a high degree of satisfaction. But this is mimicking, not original creation. Now in the brain section of this course, I delve into the manner in which our brain operates when we're being creative. Brief, creativity is a whole brain process where different regions of the brain communicate with each other in a manner that allows us to reorganize and repurpose ideas and concepts into something brand new. We are even able to extract creativity from the seemingly chaotic thought that occurs while we're sleeping. Classical computers do not operate this way. Such computers use transistors that are connected with one another in order to form chains. This makes such computers very good at storing enormous amounts of information and running pre-programmed processes very quickly. In other words, the wiring for such computers and the wiring from our brain operate in two very different ways. The manner in which our brain is wired gives us an advantage in being creative. That's being said, scientists are working on new computing techniques and new processing techniques such as artificial neural networks that will potentially make next generation computers and programs capable of thinking creatively. For example, as of this writing, artificial intelligence takes the form of narrow AI. In short, narrow AI is a program that can only do one thing. This form of artificial intelligence is ultimately driven by rules. A great deal of our ability to be creative stems from our ability to experience empathy, sympathy, beyond the bounds of rules. Current technology does not yet have such an ability. There's no universally agreed upon clear cut definition of creativity. But many agree that creativity is the act of creating something that is both novel and useful. Even narrow, AI can create things that are novel, but these new creations are not useful in their entirety and in and of themselves. In other words, the rule bound version of contemporary AI is unable to be creative as many would define it. However, for lack of a better word, AI is evolving. One day it might reach this stage when it is referred to as artificial general intelligence. This much more advanced form of AI is predicted to give rise to a form of AI called the singularity. You see artificial general intelligence will be able to examine its own code and then make improvements upon that code. This will make the AI better. And from this improved position, it will again examine and improve its own code. After enough generations of such code improvement passes, the AI will transform into something unpredictable. This is why this version of AI is called the singularity. The center of a black hole is referred to as the singularity. And we have no idea what happens at the center of a black hole. Now, unless some amazing breakthrough occurs, it is predicted that it will take a while for sex significantly advanced technology to arise. What I want to talk to you about in the next lecture is what we creative should do. In the meantime. 29. Artificial Intelligence: as a Companion Tool : In this lecture, I'm going to be discussing the notion of using artificial intelligence as a companion tool for our creative efforts. We creatives can perceive AI as a tool, as an assistant to our creativity. For a long time, we create a separate alone in our individual creative efforts. It's just been us and the blank canvas. This doesn't need to be the case anymore. First, consider this. Who is more effective at their job? A person doing construction with a hammer and a Hansel, or person doing construction with a nail gun and a table saw. Well, the AI driven tools that are starting to come online for week creatives will graduate us from doing the equivalent of using simple hand tools to using specialized power tools. Now, before I continue on, I feel that it's important to say that this course provides many strategies to improve your creative techniques. You might be asking, why should I go to the hard work of learning and practicing these techniques if AI can help me skip them. Well, I'm going to answer this by using the same reasoning for why we don't give a table salt is someone who doesn't know how to use it and has no interest in learning how to use it. Ai will be a tool for week creatives. And no matter how powerful a tool it is, it is only as capable as a person who wields it. For example, we must go through the struggle of learning how to write well, even though programs now exist that can properly check our grammar. Grammar checking tools can drastically help our writing, but it can't create a literary piece as we wish it to be created. In other words, please let this lecture encourage you, not discourage you from pushing yourself towards your creative goals. We creatives can perceive AI as a tool to aid in our creative efforts. Ai will assist in our creative efforts in a variety of ways. One way is that it will save us time on performing the necessary tasks that aren't fun and take a long time to complete. Another way is that it can offer us inspirational ideas and new ways of perceiving the topic at hand. Another way is that it will revise and offer suggestions on ways to improve our creative works. Another way is that AI will have created other domains within which to be creative. This list could go on and on. I mean, think of it this way. What type of music would Mozart and Beethoven have made if they possessed the same tools that todays musicians have at their disposal. Contemplate that for a second and then realize the shift I'm speaking of can be a greater Shift 4 we creatives than getting Mozart access to electronic instruments. On our lesser skill, consider the process of writing a book. If we are preparing to write a piece of fiction that requires a ton of preliminary research. We will be able to hand this researching phase off to AI instead of spending countless hours with our nose buried in books. If we are trying to create a painting on a particular subject, AI will be able to offer as a hundreds of pre-rendered solutions of which to become inspired by. If we've come up with a creative business idea, AI will help us determine if such an idea is economically viable. And if it is, AI can help us effectively market the final product. All right, The point I'm driving at is that we shouldn't perceive such technology is challenging our creativity. But rather we should perceive such tools as the liberating ability to re-imagine the creative process. Once we creative skin already do today, we will be able to do better and faster tomorrow. But more than this, in the future, we will be able to open up creative avenues that we today don't even realize exist. For example, try explaining the popularity of mobile applications to someone from the 17th century. There wasn't time in human history when cavemen first drew on walls. What I'm suggesting is that we creatives are about to take an even greater leap forward than even that which occurred during that historical moment. I don't know the specific fields and what you want to apply your creativity. So I'm not going to discuss the AI tools that currently exists for we creatives and the tools that are projected to soon arrive. What I recommend is to regularly perform a search to see what new AI driven tools are available to you. I say regularly perform a search because new tools are frequently becoming available and you don't want to miss one that will help you. With AI. At our side, we will no longer be alone with that blank canvas. That daunting first blank page. We will have an ally, a companion that will augment our creativity. While AI seems destined to permanently replaced many people's careers, it is currently projected to assist in enhance our ability to be creative. Change is coming. Somewhat argue it is already here. We creatives can either embrace this change and catch the wave that will carry us to our goal, or we can deny it, resist it, and fail to capture the elusive gifts of our time. In this lesson, we discussed the notion that artificial intelligence should be regarded as a tool for week creatives. The theme of this lesson was to push you. Ai is growth as a motivating factor for you to continue pursuing your creative development. While one cannot say for certain rights now, it is highly likely that AI will not only offer new and exciting tools for week creatives, and will also provide new mediums for which to explore our creativity. For example, imagine utilizing your creativity in a virtual world, such as what is found in the movie Ready Player One, we creatives should consider AI to be a tool and a facilitator of opportunity. 30. The Body: In this lecture, I'm going to be discussing some ways that you can use your body to increase your creativity. There are lectures in this course that deeply explore the mind body connection in matters of creative ability. So to save you time, I'm not going to repeat myself by delving into those detailed explanations here. Rather, I'm just going to list awesome tactics so that you can gain insights into some things that you can do with your body to potentially boost your creativity. One thing to try is lying down. There's a wealth of research that supports the belief that we are more effective at thinking of creative solutions when we're lying down as opposed to when we are sitting upright. Speaking personally, I implemented this knowledge by constructing a home workstation that is constructed around a recliner. My monitor is attached to a hinge that allows me to get in and out of my workstation with ease. You may want to consider building a setup like this if your situation allows, another thing to try with your body is to make yourself laugh. There's a lot of good neurological things that take place when you are engaged in hearty laughter. I'm not going to digress into the vast amount of science behind this. So it can be said in summary, that laughter encourages creative risk taking. It promotes divergent thinking. It spawns playfulness and curiosity. It allows us to work longer without tiring. And a humorous state of mind has been found to help with creative problem-solving. There are lectures in this course, we'll explore in detail how each of these qualities are necessary for effective creativity. Yet another thing to try with your body is to work with your hands. When you work with your hands, you're making your brain simultaneously gather information from your senses. This inundation of information upon your senses has been found to boost your creative thinking. Consider building something or cooking a hands-on meal or other do-it-yourself projects that you would enjoy. Another thing to do is to go for a stroll or take a shower. Such acts will act as our mind and body in such a way that solutions to creative problems will often seemingly just pop into our head. Again, I go into the science behind this in another lecture. Now, while it's vital to the creative process to actually get to work, it's helpful to physically relax while pursuing a deadline. Moving slowly, breathing in a manner that suits you, and otherwise making your body behave as it would if you are in a relaxed state, will likely boost your creative ability. Much of creativity relies on varying brain activity that isn't necessary for other intellectual pursuits. A relaxed body results in a relaxed mind. A relaxed mind will be better capable of producing creative solutions. Then I stressed mind. Also, I agree with the perspective that much of creativity is the ability to connect ideas. They're seemingly far apart from one another. The deliberate and stressed concentration that many intellectual pursuits require, such as working in a laboratory, is often not ideal for creative idea generation. When you are physically relaxed, your mind is given permission to wander. This freedom of thought often allows us to make connections that are rigid mind and body won't allow us to uncover. Again, as I discuss in another lecture, much of creativity is what takes place in areas of our brain that we have little to no conscious control over. We can set the groundwork to invite these beneficial qualities by doing such things as sleeping as we should, eating as we should, exercising as we should, and so on. But the actual neurological events I'm referring to are essentially subroutines that take place whether we wanted them to or not. When we pay attention to our body, we lay the groundwork for these beneficial neurological events to occur. It shouldn't come as a shock that getting our body in alignment with creativity, it will boost our creative ability. For example, is difficult to be highly creative when your body is in a state of severe discomfort. Consider adjusting your body if you find yourself struggling during some creative endeavor. In this lesson, we discussed the notion that you can use your body to improve your creative ability. We went over such elements as reclining your body, laughing, working with your hands, taking a walk or a shower, and doing breath work. The takeaway from this lesson is that your body can improve or hinder your creative ability. I strongly recommend giving attention to your body during your efforts to nurture your creativity. 31. NLP - Introduction: In this lecture, I'm going to be giving a general introduction into the field of neuro linguistic programming. In the next two lectures, I'll be discussing to neuro linguistic programming techniques that should help you with achieving your creative goals. Neuro linguistic programming, or NLP, for short, is a field that contains teachings that are rooted more in anecdotal grounds then scientific grounds. However, there are also elements within the field that are supported by scientific evidence. In fact, this field has made discoveries that are now utilized within the scientific community, such as visual accessing cues. I personally use NLP a lot. I find it beneficial. I'm bringing this field to your attention because of how much it has helped me and others. This is a large field of study. So I'm just going to cover the core elements that I believe will be the most beneficial to you in achieving your creative goals. Just a quick history to help you get your bearings. Nlp was originally developed by Richard Bundler and John Grindr. Handler has a background in computer programming. Hints, the programming word in the name. This flowchart model mindset that early programmers lived by helped him to approach the human experience from an angle that psychoanalysts at the time did not. In addition to this, he spent time with people in the real-world who are producing remarkable results in the field, do their unique ability to deliberately manipulates an individual's human experience. Such people could cure phobias, heel psychological wounds, and even drastically increase human performance. Again, the flowchart to background helped the founders to break apart the successful processes down into step by step measures. This approach resulted in a process termed modelling, which is essentially finding out what exactly another person is doing to get the results you desire, diligently copying their methods. Now, modelling isn't as simple as following someone's visible routine, such as their schedule. There are various elements to modeling that exist beyond the surface. For example, before a high performer begins working on their speciality, they first hold their body in a certain way. They deliberately shift their feelings, their thoughts, their general state of mind, and being into an ideal slot. It is often the case that such specialists don't even realize that they're doing it. But they are. Nlp teaches us to take notice of those shifts that take place within the master so that we can integrate them into ourselves. In other words, there's more going on with high-performers doing well, then their ability to be efficient with time. They know how to access certain states of mind when they need them as well. Perhaps the clearest examples of this are professional golfers and professional gymnasts. If you look closely, you can see the magnificent control that they have over their mind just before they make their brilliant maneuver. In this lesson, we covered the basics to understanding neuro linguistic programming. The main takeaway from this lesson, concept of modelling. This is a term that refers to the act of closely copying a person whose results you'd like to personally duplicate. Modelling involves copying the thoughts, habits, and bodily movements of that role model. In the next lecture, we'll get into a specific modeling technique that is designed to be greatly beneficial to the creative process. 32. NLP - The Disney Method: I'm now going to discuss the NLP modeling strategy called the Disney method. As you probably know, Walt Disney was a very creative person. Therefore, a model of his approach to being creative was formed. Disney implemented the use of three distinct roles during his creative process. These roles were personas of sorts that took the form of the dreamer, the realist, and the critic. Each of these roles possesses a certain orientation in relation to the creative process. Disney would move back and forth between these roles until the creative idea was clear and actionable. So allow me to discuss the nature of these different roles. The first role is called the dreamer. This persona is bound by nothing. The dreamer is limitless. While engaged in dreamer mode, Disney would embrace all things associated with brainstorming, fantasizing, basically boundless thinking. We're even impossibilities are toyed with. The second roll is called the realist. The realist is practical. The realist will sift through the dreamers ideas and choose what, if any, of the ideas are worth further exploration. In other words, the realist contemplates if and how any of the dreamers ideas could be brought into the real-world. By way of consequence of this process, actual structure begins to take shape from this creative idea. The third role is called the critic. While in the critic mode is when the creative idea is heavily scrutinized. The ideas, soundness is diligently examined. The idea is approached with the objective of finding flaws, problems, weakness, and other elements that will make the idea not work. Now, before I begin, let me be clear. When using this method, you approach the creative process while practicing the objectives of only that particular role. When dreamer mode, you do not criticize. When you are in critic mode, you did not fantasize. All right, so now that we've covered the various hats that you'll be wearing when practicing this Disney method. Let's get into the actual modelling practice. The first thing to do is to identify what it is. You will be trying to figure out clarity is power here. The more specific you get, the better. The next thing to do is to take notice of your current state of mind. Are you angry, tired, hungry? Is there something that is bugging you? Taking notice of your current state of mind will help you to determine what you need to do to move into a neutral state of mind. For example, if you have some bodily need, 10 to that. If you have something that you can't get off your mind, then 10 to that, or put it behind you. If at least temporarily. The next step is to move yourself into a neutral state of mind. After this, you put on your dreamer hat. With your specific goal in mind. You ponder, write down, shout out, and otherwise get out any and all ideas that occur to you that are relevant to the task at hand. You want to stay in this mode for as long as, as necessary to generate an over abundance of ideas. Remember, you are boundless. While you're in this mode. They'll free to think of solutions that you already know to be impossible. After you've accumulated enough ideas to work with, you transition into the realist mode. While engaged in this state of mind, you contemplate how any of the ideas that the dreamer produced could be brought into reality. Ask yourself questions such as, what resources would I need to fulfill this creative idea? What steps, what I need to take to make this idea a reality. After the realist has crafted enough material to work with, you put on your critic hat. While in this mode, you strive to discover flaws in your strategy. In other words, beats the idea up by hitting it with such questions as, what obstacles with this idea encounter? What elements need improving? What don't I like about this idea? This mode is both necessary and potentially the most venomous in the creative process. The critic has the potential of knocking the wind out of the creative. But if the creative can find the will to continue, the critic can play a key role in creating an original idea that is strong enough to withstand the assaults of the world. Now, after you've gone through this process of moving from dreamer to Realist to critic. You then assess yourself. Ask yourself such questions as, what are their roles that I felt better at than others? Where there are roles that I felt could use improvement. In other words. Can improve your ability to perform a certain role better. If you first take notice that there is room for improvement. For example, if while and dreamer mode, you felt as if your ideas were too predictable, then you'd need to put forth extra effort next time to think outside the box. Then take this idea or ideas through that three-step process over and over again until you have an actionable idea. For example, depending on the creative endeavor, you go to the process until you have an idea worth pursuing. And then you go through this process until you have an actionable strategy worth pursuing. Then you just have to implement this strategy. When unexpected complications arrive that make you feel stuck. You re-engage this three-step process until you figured out a way around the roadblock. Keep in mind that your situation may mandate that you proceed with this process in random order. You may need to alternate between dreamer mode, in realist mode, a bunch of times before you're ready to take on the critic mode. Like all of the advice provided in this course, you are going to need to tailor it to meet your personal needs, beliefs and goals. Something else to consider is our natural circadian rhythm. There are times in a day when we are naturally more adept at adopting one roll over another. For example, many writers grab a pen and paper the very moment they wake up from the night's sleep. For many, this narrow window of time is when the dreamer mode is naturally the most capable. Later in the day, many people feel bitter and pessimistic. So the critic mode is far more articulate in its scrutiny. Remember, you must honor the various roles for this model to work. If you allow the critic to arrive too early, then your creativity will likely halt. If you're dreamer isn't encouraged, then you'll get stuck rehashing old ideas. If you neglect the realist. That even if your idea is remarkable, it will likely be an actionable. Using a proper might help. Consider getting three literal hats to put on your head when using this model, I suggest using a silly hat where your dreamer mode. Oh, and incidentally, this strategy works for group projects as well. In this lesson, we went over the Disney modeling method, as well as the role of our natural circadian rhythm. Just a recap of the Disney method involves the creative alternating between three different persona's, the dreamer, the realist. In a critic. I'm going to use a clay sculpting analogy to recap this. The dreamers job is to gather as much clay as it can with which to work with. The realists job is to discard the bits of clay that won't help with the sculpture, as well as track to give this sculpture shape. The critics job is to recognize what parts of the sculpture are and aren't working and what areas could use improvement. This process continues. However, in this sculpting analogy, the critic persona may decide that better on top of a sculpted horse. Therefore, the dreamer will be brought back into the cycle. And the additional clay required to craft the improvement would be gathered by the dreamer. Then the realist would use what was needed and discard the rest. And in the critic would decide it, the sculpture is finished or not. If it can be improved, then the critic would return all of the creative power back to the dreamer. And so it repeats until the creative work is complete. 33. NLP - Anchoring: In this lecture, I'm going to be discussing the neuro linguistic programming technique called anchoring. Many of the NLP techniques and much of its ideology is based around the concept of anchoring. In NLP terms, anchoring refers to the process of tying and internal response with a particular internal or external trigger. There are all types of anchors. There are auditory anchors, visual anchors. Indeed, all sensory anchors, including fault anchors in LP, teach us how to take deliberate notice of these anchors and manipulate them according to our desires. It's may help to think of Pavlov's dogs to better understand this concept of an anchor. You know, Pavlov, the guy that made his dog salivate by just ringing a bell. The dogs came to associate mealtime with the sound of a bell. The ringing of this bell in this situation was an anchor. Pavlov could force his dogs to salivate just by firing that anchor. No food was necessary to make them salivate. Nlp makes the argument that we have spent a lifetime making anchors, even without our knowledge when we are feeling a certain way. And while we are feeling this way, we keep encountering the same stimulus, a bond, a connection, an anchor is formed between this feeling and the external or internal stimulus. For example, pretend you're an athlete and your childhood, and every time he did something helpful for the team, some team member would come over to you and pat you on the back. During these times, you are feeling happy, proud, and capable because you had just had a big success. And then a teammate would patch you on the back while you're feeling this way. This pat on the back is setting an anchor. Which means if someone came along and patted on the back in the same way as it was padded on the field during those special moments, you would experience the same joy, pride, and capability that you did when the anchor was set. Again, according to NLP, we set anchors whether we are aware of it or not. Whether we want an anchor set or not. A portion of NLP therapy is a process of deliberately moving negative anchors from our life. Say, for example, you have many tragic encounters in your life during the points in time when you are feeling the most down, someone would gently pat you on the back. Every time you are feeling down and discouraged. A friend or family member padded you on the back, end in the same place, and in the same way. They would be doing this so as to comfort you, to reassure you to offer their support or condolences? Well, if someone were to pat you on the back in the same way, you would quickly fall into a sad and discouraged mentality despite how you were feeling before. I'm hoping that this is clear enough because I'm going to proceed forward with the belief that you fully grasp what an anchor is. Now, back to using anchoring to boost creativity. There are many states of mind that our ideal components to being our most creative self. This course discusses many approaches to enhancing our creativity in certain states of mind are ideal for some of these approaches and not ideal for others. For example, in the recently discussed Disney modeling method, a silly, playful, fearless mentality is best for the dreamer mode, but a serious articulate questioning mentality is best for the critic mode. Well, NLP teaches that you can use an anchor to access the sought-after states of mind. You do this by putting yourself or finding yourself within the desired state of mind and then set an anchor. The more powerful the state of mind, your n, When you set the anchor, the more powerful the anchor will be when you fire it off later. You can also strengthen an anchor by reinforcing it. Meaning that you set the same anchor every time you are feeling and thinking in the desired way, the result will be a more powerful anchor. There are all types of anchors. Some people who practice this technique use a certain sound, others a smell. It has been my experience that physical anchors are more reliable than other anchors. Mostly because of how convenient it is to set and reinforce them. For example, every time I feel myself experiencing the ultra rare in highly sought-after state of flow. The state of mind when we are our most creative. The state of mind that even scientists recognize exists, but barely understands. Every time I stumble into this magnificent state of mind, I make the effort to tug on my left ear lobe. You see two points here. One, you can either strengthen and anchor or you can weaken in Angkor by anchoring the state of mind within myself. Every time I experience it. Make the anchor powerful enough to launch me into the state of flow when I absolutely need it to. However, if I keep tugging on my ear lobe while I'm not currently experiencing flow, I'll diminish its power until it's unhelpful. That's why it's my ear lobe. Because it's such a strange place so my body that it won't be accidentally anchored to something else. Tugging on my left ear lobe is an anchor for flow and only flow. This may sound very weird to you. It sounds weird to me telling you about it. All I can say is try it yourself with some common sought-after emotion. Tug on your right ear lobe every time you find yourself laughing. If you make this anchor strong enough, you can make yourself happy later with just a tug on the ear. So again, this course discusses the subject of seeking out desired states of mind for the different stages and approaches to creativity. Now that this anchoring technique is on your radar, you can use this tactic to both 0s and enhance the process of accessing these desired states of mind. In closing, I just want to mention that anchors can be stacked as well. You can have a pre-built anchor for joy, another pre-built anchor for bravery, another one for pride. And you can then fire each of these Eggers off in succession. And as a result, and accumulated advantage, you get then anchor this stacked boost by making what is called a stacked anchor. In this lesson, we covered the neuro linguistic programming concept of anchoring. We went over how our thoughts, moods, and abilities can be shifted by exposure to hyper specific sensory and vaulting anchors. After we explored the concept and the role of such anchors, we examined a possible ways to use anchors to improve our creativity. This is done primarily by first heavily reinforcing an anchor, by repeatedly anchoring a salt after a mental state each time we encounter that state of mind. The key here is that the anchor only reflex what it was, not, what we want it to be. For example, an anchor based off of a few trickles will not be able to move us like an anchor based off of dozens of hearty laughter sessions. The more powerful the mood you're in when you set the anchor, the more powerful the anchor will be when you fire it. Remember, anchors can be on top of each other. If you set the anchors up properly, you can then pair a happy anchor with an excited anchor, with a curious anchor and so on. I realized all of this sounds very strange. And I admit that I was very skeptical of this technique at first. But I've run a series of tests or myself and founded this anchoring technique, at least works well on me. As odd as it is, you may want to consider giving it a try. Could it hurt, right? 34. Course Project: In this lecture, I'm going to be explaining one of the course projects for this course. Whenever you set out on a journey, you have a final destination in mind. You start with a beginning point where you are currently located and an ending point where you want to get to. My assumption is that you're taking this course to become more creative. Therefore, becoming more creative is the final destination in this analogy. However, before you set out on your journey, you must first determine where you are starting from. Within the context of developing creativity. This starting point is figuring out what your creative ability currently is. Therefore, in this lecture, I'm going to discuss the test you can perform to determine how creative you are today. While in a commonplace object can be used in this test, I'm going to suggest using common items like a paperclip, a shoe, or a plastic cup. Get this item so that you can look at it and hold it in your hands. The next step is to get some way of recording your ideas. A pen and paper will work, but a voice recorder is best. If you have a smartphone, there are many voice recorder apps available that you can use. You're going to need the following to complete this test. The common item as a distraction free environment as you can manage a way of recording your ideas and a stopwatch or an alarm clock. All right, so the next step is to fully grasp the assignment. Your goal is to come up with as many uses for the particular commonplace object as possible. For example, if the commonplace object was at metal fork, you would spend the limited amount of time listing as many uses for that fork. You could say you could use the fork to eat with. You could use the fork to serve food with. While you should list such uses in your list. Such answers or not to creative. Ideally, you want to think divergently during this test. You have two minutes to think of as many uses for the Fork. In this example, you start a timer for two minutes and begin at which time you could say such things as Ben the fort to create a hook. Use it to stake up young plants. Use it as a clay sculpting tool. Comb your hair with STR, something with, use it as a pitchfork accessory for a farmer doll. Use it as a trident accessory for Poseidon doll. Use it as a catapult during a food fight. Bang it against something to create a musical beat. Attach it to a kite to attract lightning. Pick stuff out of your teeth, use it as a bookmark. Scratch an itch with price, something open with. And if you begin to run out of ideas, you can go so far as to say, melt it down and cast it into something else. The uses are practically limitless. But what isn't limitless is the time constraint. So in this test, you are sitting in a distraction free environment with your voice recorder, your item, and an alarm clock. You set an alarm for two minutes and begin naming as many uses for that commonplace item as you can. The more uses that you can name, the further you are in your creative development journey. If you find yourself really struggling with this test, That's actually a really good thing. Such a result prepares you for the challenging and rewarding journey ahead. This is a good thing. Self-awareness is vital to this journey. For example, if you begin a walking journey when thinking that you only have to walk a couple of miles, you will probably not where your best issues. You want to bring much water, if any at all. And you probably won't stretch before you begin. However, when you find out that this walk isn't two miles after all, rather it's 20 miles. You'll find yourself incapable of completing the trek about halfway through. Now on the flip side, if you begin your walk already knowing that you are embarking on a 20 mile walk, then you'll prepare for the journey differently. You'll stretch first, you'll pack food and water. You may even package sheets and pillow in case you feel the need to take a nap along the way. Most importantly, however, you'll be psychologically prepared for the many steps ahead. As I began with stating, in order to get to where you want to go, you must first determine where you are. That is the purpose of this test. 35. The Brain: Introduction: In this lecture, I'm going to begin our lengthy module regarding the brain. The brain weighs around three pounds and contains 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion connections. It is common knowledge that the brain is the command center for how you feel, think, and what you do. As you are probably already aware, the brain is divided into two hemispheres or halves that are connected via the corpus collosum. There are regions of the brain that seem to specialize in various forms of function and thought. These varying regions of the brain are connected by nerve fibers. Drastically simplified. The brain is composed of white matter and gray matter. The corpus collosum is the largest collection of white matter. The gray matter is the part you are probably already familiar with. The processing regions of the brain are composed of gray matter. The white matter is the webbing beneath the outer gray matter is composed of myelin covered bundles of axons that connect billions of neurons in transport the electrical signals to and from the varying regions of the brain. This course is going to give special emphasis to the white matter. Because the white matter is where the connections are made. In short, the better our connections, the better our creativity. We now know that the secret to the brain, so magnificent performance is found in the connections. For example, many of the aspects of the brain that handled logic, language, and math equations are processed in the left brain. However, it is because of the left brain's ability to communicate with a right-brain that a person achieves a full understanding. For instance, the left brain is credited for handling language. However, it is the right brain that allows a person to grasp tone and context. The left brain is credited for handling mathematical equations. However, the right-brain permits for estimations and comparisons. More to the point. It was once thought that because of the locations of the specialized regions of the brain, that creativity was a fully right-brain achievement. Functional magnetic resonance imaging of the brain. We now know that creativity is a process that involves the brain working together as a whole. In other words, creativity is only possible because of both the right and the left hemispheres. Therefore, connections play a major role in creativity. Put in simplistic terms, you don't just use one part of your brain at a time as what was previously thought. The brain is covered in this course because valuable tools for creativity emerged from the fuller understanding of the brain. 36. Convergent and Divergent Thinking: In this lecture, I'm going to explore the difference between convergent and divergent thinking as explained in another lecture, due to modern brain imaging technologies, we now know that creativity is a whole brain process and analogy might help here. The brain can be likened to an orchestra. In orchestras composed of the woodwinds, the brass that percussions in the strings. Such are the various regions of the brain. Individually, they have their unique sounds, their own special magic, if you will. But it's when these varying melodies or harmoniously pulled together that a majestic symphony is created. There are regions in the left-brain that, generally speaking, serve a different role in the cerebral orchestra than the sections and the right brain. In other words, creativity is both an analytical and an imaginative process. Now to the point of this lecture, creativity is extremely closely associated with problem-solving. For example, the questions why and what if are often directly linked to create a thought. There are two methods of thoughts that are utilized when seeking out a creative solution. These two methods of thought are called convergent and divergent thinking. Convergent thinking has a very important role to play in the creative process. This specific type of thinking is logical, deductive, analytical, and geared towards finding a single correct answer. For example, convergent thinking is what you lean on during a multiple choice examination. This is the manner of thinking that employs rigid judgment, analysis and logic. Convergent thinking serves a role in the creative process when it forces a decision to be made. It's the manner of thinking people use to whittle their broad ideas down to the single best idea. It's the manner of thinking that is relied upon the most when structuring the action plan for implementing a creative solution. Divergent thinking is the form of thinking that is most heavily utilized for creative thought. This type of thinking involves examining matters from a broad perspective where many different possible solutions are considered in contemplated. Just to summarize, convergent thinking is thinking in narrow and narrowing terms. Divergent thinking is thinking in abstract and broad terms. Examples of divergent thinking are experimenting with hypotheticals, employing random thought, brainstorming, exploring alternatives. Say, for example, that you are writing a piece of fiction. There is no one way to write a story. Your characters, your plot, your setting can be anything, do anything. The practically limitless possibilities that exist in story crafting requires divergent thinking to formulate the ideas on what your story could be. Remember though, divergent and convergent thinking both play a role in the creative process. In this story crafting example, you would use divergent thinking to generate all the story possibilities. Didn't use convergent thinking to narrow all these possibilities down to eventually reach the best way to tell your tail. 37. Three Thinking Networks: In this lecture, I'm going to discuss the three thinking networks that are involved in creative thought. These three networks, or the executive attention network, the default mode network, and the salience network. The executive attention network is involved in the regulation of responses, thoughts, and emotions. It allows for the concentration on a particular task. Neurologically speaking, it involves the communication between the outer regions of the prefrontal cortex and the areas in the back of the parietal lobe. This area of the prefrontal cortex is responsible for complex behavior and decision-making. This area in the parietal lobe and to create spatial sensory information such as navigation and touch. The next network is the default network, and it is also referred to as the imagination network. This network is being utilized during efforts that require a membrane personal past experiences and with thinking about the future and when imagining alternative scenarios. This is the network that is most vital to daydreaming and brainstorming. It allows us to empathize with others and guide us during social encounters. The default network is also referred to as the imagination network because it is often viewed as the origin of creative thought. This is because it is the network that isn't control are performing mental simulations, fantasizing. In other words, before I continue, I need to reiterate a point that is made in numerous lectures in this brain module. Being creative is a process that involves multiple regions of the brain. In other words, the default network allows for spontaneity and mental simulations, which is absolutely essential to the creative process. However, this network cannot alone provide beneficial creativity. It is its relationship with the sharpening and focusing ability of the executive attention network that makes create a thought possible. The salience network monitors the internal stream of consciousness, external events and stimuli. It detects any aspect of stimulus that stands out amongst the others. In this same light. The salience network makes the determination as to what internal and, or external information is most adept at solving the matter of concern. The salience network plays a vital role of monitoring which the networks is most adept for processing ideas in a given moment, as well as for switching to the different networks when it deems it necessary. In simplistic terms, among its functions is playing a vital role of time. The executive attention network and imagination networks together in a way that generates the best results. An example of the creative process might help imagine that you're a piano player and you are creating a new song. When you begin, your default network will have increased activity. During this time, you are using the default network to evoke emotional reactivity and sensory processing so as to create an original musical piece. When the time comes that you've achieved a basic melody, you're salience network will engage the executive attention network so that you can create a working memory of your new creation and concentrate on narrowing the music into a more finalized form. In other words, you couldn't finalize your song without the cooperation of all three of these networks. In this lecture, we see further evidence that the creative process involves the collaborative use of various regions of the brain. An element that is key to the creative process is the connection between these different sections of the brain. This point is vital to the theme of this course. The better the connections between these three networks, the more creative a person is. This is wonderful news because in the neuroplasticity lectures, I discussed how you can create and reinforce new connections in the brain. In other words, everyone that has a healthy brain has the potential of being creative. All that is required is to rigorously follow the guidance that this course provides. In this lesson, we covered the executive attention network, the default mode network, and the salience network. The key takeaway from this lesson isn't necessarily the science behind these three networks and how they interact with one another to produce effective creativity. Rather, the takeaway should be the fuller understanding that creativity is a whole brain process. If we are to excel in the realm of creativity, we need to honor the diverse and interconnected mental processes that occur to produce our creativity. 38. Neuroplasticity: Introduction: In this lecture, I'm going to offer an explanation of what neuroplasticity is and why it exists. In simplistic terms, amongst other duties, the brain is striving to accomplish to feats during wakefulness. The first is to pass as much as it can to reflexive behavior. The second is to determine duration, path, and outcome for all the tasks that you encounter. Okay, So before I move on, I need to break these two mental feats down for you because understanding these elements are necessary to fully grasping what neuroplasticity is it, why it exists? The first feat that I'm going to discuss is the brain's desire to achieve efficiency by pushing as much as it can to reflexive behavior. When you want to walk, you just walk. You don't put long deliberate thought to each and every step. When you want to drink a glass of water, you grab a glass, fill it with water, and drink it. You don't first figure out what a glass is, how to pick it up, how to fill it, how to drink it, so on. However, the first time you tried to walk, you did have to think about every single step. The first time you got yourself something to drink. You did have to consider each stage of the process. What was once difficult is now so effortless. Don't even notice it. This is what the brain does so as to conserve valuable mental energy. This is a key point to remember for later. The brain's goal is to conserve valuable energy. Okay, Onto the next feet. During waking states, the brain is striving to determine duration, path, and outcome for all the tasks that you encounter. This is to say that the brain wants to know how long something is going to last. What path do I take and what's going to happen if I follow this duration and path. This process is a large metabolic load. In other words, this duration path outcome process requires a great deal of mental energy. Once again, the key point, the brain's goal is to conserve valuable energy. Now, onto neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is the brain's ability to change itself. More specifically, it is the brain's ability to form and reorganize synaptic connections. Your brain, his information messengers called neurons. The synapse is the point of communication between one neuron and a neighboring neuron. Synapses and neurons are a vital component of neural pathways. When you learn something new, your brain forms new neural pathways. Through repeated action, the brain comes to confirm that the new connections are worth preserving and reinforcing. For example, if you're learning to ride a bicycle and don't fall over, the brain recognizes that the active neural connections are effective. So it preserves and reinforces those connections. If you do fall over while learning to ride a bike, the brain realizes that some of that neural pathways need tweaking or even removal. When the brain acknowledges that new neural connections are worth preserving and reinforcing, the brain then reinforces the neurons involved with a substance called myelin. For the sake of simplifying this subject, Consider these neural connections to be like electronic wiring, such as what you'll find in modern devices. These new neural connections resemble exposed wires. Sure, electrical current is passing through the exposed wires well enough to power the device. But the electrical current moves slowly and otherwise inefficiently. In this comparison, the myelin sheath is similar to the rubber that surrounds the wires in our devices. It protects and accelerates the brain's connections. By insulating the neurons with myelin, we are able to perform the learned behavior much faster and with far fewer errors. For example, we don't have to think about each step as we did as a toddler. We can now spread without the fear of falling down. In simplistic terms, the brain wants to be able to just do things, pick up a glass of water, talk, walk, do things, and not have to put much energy into doing those things. Our brain is heavily geared towards neuroplasticity during our childhood. This is how children are able to learn new things far faster than adults. As we age, the ability for us to learn new things becomes more difficult. Not because we can't learn new things, but rather because our brain resists changing, our neural pathways are comfortable just the way they are. And in order to learn new things, especially that which runs contrary to how we've done things in the past, requires us to weaken those long established connections and build up new connections practically from scratch. I get into the process of how we can deliberately force this change to happen in another lecture. For now, understand that the brain's desire is just to wire up and then work. Again though, the brain can rewire itself. And in short, this re-wiring process represents neuroplasticity. Just to summarize, the brain wants to be efficient. The brain wants to create efficiency. It wants to pass as much as it can to reflexive behavior as possible. It wants to diminish the energy bert, during the duration path and outcome analysis. The brain wants to conserve energy. The process of learning something new or doing something new requires the brain to expend a great deal of energy. The brain doesn't like to burning of large quantities of energy that occurs when learning or doing something it doesn't already had the neural pathways for. So it initiates the process to rewire and insulate new neural connections to streamlined and new area of effort. The new wiring allows you to accomplish the new task without expending much energy. This is the brain performing neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is what allows you to go from stumbling to walking, to running, from spilling to effortlessly drinking from the class. Neuroplasticity is a real thing confirmed by science. And you can utilize this innate ability at any age. By the time you reach 25, the brain deems itself sufficiently wired up in evolutionary terms. By this stage in life, you're fully capable of protecting yourself, producing offspring, and raising that offspring. After you've reached 25 years old. You often have to deliberately force neuroplasticity to happen because the brain is no longer geared towards embracing neuroplasticity as it was during your youth. In this lesson, we went over what neuroplasticity is and why it exists. We covered that the brain strives to push as much as it can to reflexive behavior, largely because of the energy costs that are associated with the duration path outcome process. 39. The Hormones Involved with Neuroplasticity: In this lecture, I'm going to begin discussing the chemical aspects of neuroplasticity. Before I get started, I need to state some disclaimers. In order to successfully explained the science of neuroplasticity, I'm going to have to discuss the techniques that are used to implement neuroplasticity. This is because neuroplasticity is a process, not a single event. While I will be discussing how to use neuroplasticity in these chemically focused lectures. By way of offering an explanation. I don't want you to get overwhelmed because it isn't essential that you fully understand the science of neuroplasticity for you to be able to practice it. For this reason, I've included a lecture in this course that simply provides the steps to follow in order to practice neuroplasticity. Also, in the previous lecture, I discussed what neuroplasticity is and why it exists. So there's going to be some repetition here by way of providing clarity. Okay, that being said, let's resume our discussion on the science behind neuroplasticity. Early in life, the brain is designed to learn when a person is younger than 25 years old. In addition to doing all of the other necessary things to keep a person alive, the brain wants to learn things that are specific to its environment. To learn the rules of its environment. For example, at a very young age, the brain studies its environment so as to learn such things as objects fall down, not up. Got when mom leaves the room, she will come back when I cry out loud. The brain learns these rules and contingencies and passes these rules and contingencies off to reflexive parts of the nervous system. The brain strives to move as much as it can't reflexive habits because it doesn't like expanding the massive amount of energy that is consumed through the function called serial processing. Which is if a, then B, if B, then C, and so on. Serial processing is a lot of work and it requires areas of the brain that are metabolic, really costly to utilize. This is the reason why it is actually sort of painful to learn new and challenging things. The brain doesn't like the strain and energy consumption. So for better or worse, it creates new neural pathways to push as much as it can towards reflexive behavior. Just to be clear, this process occurs with everything mentally related, not just when you're trying to learn a new skill. For example, if an individual experiences a bad event, the event creates a sensation that is unpleasant. The nervous system will initiate a process to keep us from experiencing that event again. And it doesn't matter if this event is good or bad for us. For example, we only have to touch a hot stove, wants to learn to never do it again. Touching a hot stove is bad for us. If our first public speaking experience is uncomfortable, we will never want to do it. Again. Public speaking is not necessarily bad for us. If we have a pleasant experience, We get rewarded with special enjoyable chemicals. The release of these chemicals increases our desire to move towards this pleasant experience. Again. In the previous lecture, I discussed the manner in which neurons synapses, myelin, and neural pathways in general play in the neuroplasticity process. In this lecture, I'm going to be delving into the chemicals that are involved in the neuroplasticity process. I'm going to do my best to simplify all of this, but despite my best efforts, it can still get rather dense. Just remember, you don't necessarily need to fully grasp all of this. I'm providing these lectures because a section covering neuroplasticity would be incomplete without it. To begin with, I'm going to list the main hormones that are involved with the neuroplasticity process. The main ones are dopamine, norepinephrine, also known as noradrenalin, oxytocin, serotonin, and acetycholine. While all of these hormones play a role in the neuroplasticity process. I'm going to be focusing on the hormones dopamine, noradrenaline, serotonin, and acetylcholine. My goal is to deliver this information to you without overwhelming you. And I think understanding just these four provides a sufficient understanding of the chemicals involved in the neuroplasticity process. All right, so now I'm going to give a mini lecture on dopamine. Dopamine is a frequently misunderstood molecule. Dopamine is often associated with the wonderful feeling that comes from something pleasurable. It is often associated with reward. While it is evoked through play, humor, interacting with positive experiences on social media. And when you do such things as enjoying a really great song, there's actually a better way of perceiving it. Dopamine is released anytime a person thinks he or she is on the correct path. Dopamine helps us to think about things differently, to approach things differently. Dopamine is released anytime we experienced something that we really like. But it's released only under very specific conditions. It is released when we believe we are on the path to obtain something we are pursuing. Its nature's way of informing the neurons that are active while pursuing the objective that they need to be supported. In reinforced. In other words, your brain recognizes that you are moving towards a goal. It sees that you are successfully moving in the right direction. To achieve this goal, the brain wants you to achieve your goal. Therefore, it wants to encourage the neural pathways that are involved in successfully moving you towards your goal. In other words, the nervous system uses dopamine as a way of saying whatever you are just doing. Do more of that. Puts another way. Dopamine is the motivation hormone. Put yet another way. You actually get more dopamine while engaged in the pursuit of your goal than you do when you actually achieve your final objective. Don't think of it as what is released at the finish line. Rather think of dopamine as the jet engine that moves you towards the finish line. Also on top of all of this is the vital point that dopamine release is subjective, meaning that it's released is dictated by the values you have. It's released when you figure out a keyword or a crossword puzzle that you want to finish. It is released when you improve your relationship with a person you want to be close to. It's released when you want to get popular and social media and you get likes on a posting. In other words, it responds to your conscious values, which means you can well not control it, but you can deliberately steer it's released so as to help you achieve your goals. The next chemical is nor adrenalin. Noradrenalin is essentially brain-based adrenaline. It's the hormone that gets you going. Nor adrenalin is secreted in the brainstem. When we decide that we are going to really dig into learning something, it's released brings about a state of alertness. Prior to noradrenalin release. Our attention resembles diffuse light. In case you don't already know, diffuse light is light that is scattered. For example, diffuse light arises when direct light is scattered naturally, such as when it passes through clouds. In this analogy of comparing our thinking to light, nor adrenaline transforms are diffuse light thinking into something resembling a flashlight beam. It focuses our attention on a specific duration path out to come analysis. Again, noradrenalin is the hormone that gets you going. You probably already know what adrenaline is in the role it plays with whole body effort. Such as the occurrence of hysterical strength when a mother picks up a car to save a child, this chemical gets you going. The body possesses a mechanism that monitors its release. This mechanism exists primarily to protect the body from overexertion. Certain cells, called glial cells, pay special attention to how much nor adrenaline is coming into the body. When the quantity reaches a high enough level, the glial cells alert the brain and the brain says, that's it. No more. You've likely experienced this with adrenalin. You are lifting weights or running up a hill or otherwise doing something strenuous and you've just stopped. Many studies have been done that demonstrate that it is often the case that the muscles and organs are still capable of continuing. And yet the person feels that they cannot go on this need to stop. And the inability to continue is because of the glial cells raising the alarm. Now, the release of dopamine has been found to suppress the glial cells alarm system, meaning that dopamine will allow you to continue on for much longer than usual. You've likely experienced this with noradrenalin when you are with a group of people and struggling to complete a project of some sort. You feel like you need to call it quits when someone cracks a joke, which causes you to laugh and otherwise experienced levity, this laughter releases dopamine, which is why you are able to return to the task at hand with renewed vigor. This power of dopamine can also be seen with non cerebral stress. There are countless examples of physically exhausted athletes demonstrating practically limitless amounts of energy when the final whistle is blown and they are declared the champions of some coveted sports event. They've pushed their bodies to the absolute limit prior to officially winning, that could barely stand. But as soon as they are declared the winner, they are seeing jumping up and down. And they are able to do this largely because of dopamine. Try to keep all of this in mind because it is actually very relevant to fully understanding neuroplasticity. Okay, now another chemical that you should know about is acetylcholine. This chemical narrows a person's focus in the thought being light analogy nor a journal and brought our usual diffuse light to a more focused flashlight beam light. In this analogy, the light that results from acetylcholine release resembles at a laser beam. Acetylcholine allows us to focus on a specific thing. It's what allows us to notice when something has changed. You need both acetylcholine and noradrenalin for neuroplasticity to happen. I'm going to get to their role soon before I provide an explanation, I have one more vital chemical to cover. Serotonin is a reward molecule that, like dopamine, is often released in the brain based upon subjective experiences. It tells us that we have enough resources is what allows us to feel safe and secure. For example, it's what causes that antidepressant effect when you're playing with your cat or dog, when you've had a pleasant experience with your friends and family. In other words, while dobutamine is largely focused on what is occurring outside the boundaries of our skin, our pursuit of things. For instance, serotonin is largely focused on what is occurring inside the boundaries of our skin. Serotonin is an extremely powerful chemical because if it isn't released enough, then the beneficial aspects of dopamine are drastically reduced. In other words, you need dopamine to move forward in life. You need serotonin before dopamine can help you. Alright, so now that I've explained with a four main neuroplasticity chemicals are I'm going to explain how each of the chemicals are used in the neuroplasticity process. Chemically speaking, neuroplasticity begins with the release of noradrenalin and acetylcholine. After a person reaches the age of 25, the brain no longer likes to regularly release acetylcholine. And you need acetylcholine to be released for neuroplasticity to occur. Fortunately, at any age you can force the release of acetylcholine, do deliberate and concentrated focus. This is not a comfortable process. Thinking hard about picking up a new skill is not enough. You have to push your brain to the point where you feel frustration, agitation, and overall discomfort. For example, you are forcing the release of acetylcholine during times when your brain actually feels tired and campaign while you are struggling to learn something new. It's very similar with the release of noradrenalin. Your deliberate, focused and engaged mental struggle releases these essential chemicals. Earlier I discussed how these chemicals play a major role in making your ability to focus on the new task possible, as well as making it possible for your brain to notice changes. Both elements are essential to the neuroplasticity process. Without focus, you cannot initiate the neuroplasticity process. Without the ability to mark differences, no change can occur in the brain. This is a vital point to understand. Hard thinking that brings about strong states of agitation, Frustration, and fatigue causes acetylcholine to mark the precise neurons and synapses that are involved in the new behavior and mark those neurons for later change. This process of forcing the release of acetylcholine and noradrenaline will often cause that allele cells to detect the uncomfortable quantities of these chemicals and will force you to stop. As discussed earlier, you can trick your system into allowing you to continue by taking periodic breaks where you will force the release of dopamine. Again, dopamine functions as a counter to this glial cell system. For example, say that you want to learn something new. What you do is determine exactly what it is specifically that you want to learn. It helps to have clarity of purpose. The next step is to engage in the process of learning the new skill, even beyond the point where it becomes deeply uncomfortable. You want to stop, you're experiencing frustration, agitation, and even fatigue. And yet Continue. You want to continue on as if there's an urgent need to finish. Then when you truly reach the point that you can no longer continue, you do something that causes you to intensely laugh. Watch a comedy special from your favorite comedian or spend time with humerus friends or otherwise engage in an activity that forces a strong sense of levity. Again, such behavior releases dopamine, which in turn tricks that glial cells into believing that you still have room for more acetylcholine and noradrenaline release. Here, you reengage your deliberate focus on the new skill you are trying to learn. You do these sessions for as long as you can stand it. Remember, dopamine is the reward hormone. It's what keeps you moving towards achieving your goal. If you skip these pleasurable breaks, you discourage yourself from continuing on with this difficult learning process. We rarely forget the events that are associated with dopamine release. For example, I'm sure you can recall your most pleasurable experiences. It may help to better understand this by taking the act of play into consideration. Think of it this way. Children's natural brain plasticity aside. One of the reasons that children learn so quickly is that a great deal of their learning takes place while playing. Play releases dopamine, which encourages continuous learning. In short, as an adult, three things happen when you reward your strenuous efforts. First, you are likely to continue engaging in the difficult activity. Second, the dopamine released during the rewarding process allows you to continue by suppressing the glial cells shut-off valve. And third, it helps with the memory process because dopamine helps us to remember. Dopamine also plays a role in marking neurons and synapses for future change. The main point to walk away with here is that the more you engage in a comfortable deliberate thought, the more neurons and synapses are marked for future change. And again, neuroplasticity is the brain's ability to change itself. All right, so now that I've covered neuroplasticity is chemical process that occurs while we are awake and alert. I'm now going to discuss the resting phase of the neuroplasticity process. The next step is where the magic happens. Many people believe that long-term learning takes place while you are reading the words in the text. Or if you are trying to get good at a video game, you are learning while you're playing the game, or while you are practicing a musical instrument, etc. Neurologically speaking, real lasting learning takes place when you are experiencing deep rest. Drastically simplified. Engaging neuroplasticity is a two-step process. Extreme effort, followed up by extreme rest. As far as rest is concerned. The best rest for neuroplasticity is slow wave sleep, such as delta wave sleep. But deep relaxation will work well too. For example, many people who deliberately force neuroplasticity regularly practice a specialized form of relaxation called Yoga Nidra. As discussed in a previous lecture, your brain performs a duration path outcome analysis while you are a wake. This duration path outcome analysis prevents you from doing long-term sustainable learning. This duration path outcome analysis largely occurs within the forebrain. This region of the brain essentially shuts off when you go to sleep or enter a deep state of relaxation. This is why you don't freak out in your dreams when you see inexplicable things. For example, seeing a flying house might make perfect sense in a dream because you are no longer performing the duration path outcome analysis. The brain is free to shift functions during states of deep relaxation and slow-wave sleep. It is during this time when the neurons and synapses that were marked for change during the waking states actually take a more lasting change. In other words, it is during states of extreme rest when the actual long-term learning takes place. It may help to better understand this by taking the opposite into consideration. Sleep deprivation, essentially unhinged as the brain. You've likely experienced something like this if you've ever gone for a prolonged period of time without sleep. Another reason you require deep rest is that such a state is necessary for the proper release of serotonin. As discussed earlier, serotonin is absolutely essential to the neuroplasticity process. Serotonin is actually a major chemical that you can see playing an enormous role in the functioning of many of Earth's organisms. I don't want to digress, but it's worth pointing out that maintaining a healthy level of serotonin is necessary to being a fully functioning organism. The serotonin system is benefited when you sleep and rest, when you should. Back to neuroplasticity though, sleep is an optional for a fully functional brain. And this is especially true when striving to learn a new skill. You simply cannot properly practice deliberate neuroplasticity without scheduling in regular periods of profound rest and relaxation. Again, the simple formula for neuroplasticity is extreme effort followed by extreme rest. Put another way, maximum stimulus followed by maximum recovery. 40. Neuroplasticity: Simplified: In this lecture, I'm going to be going over the neuroplasticity process in more simplistic terms. All right, so right off the bat, if you want to practice neuroplasticity, here are the steps to follow. Step one, be specific about what it is exactly that you want to learn. Then get the materials together to learn that thing. Step two, put forth as much effort as you can into learning that thing. You want to approach the learning process as if urgency is a factor. You also want to stick with the study or practice until the mental discomfort becomes intolerable. Step three, do something that allows you to experience levity. Ideally, you want to find something that evokes strong and prolonged Laughter. If you can find a way to incorporate play into the learning process, do that. Step 4, after your levity break, get back to work trying to learn that new thing. Step 5, repeat steps 34 as many times as you can without injuring yourself. Step six, put 100% of your efforts into deep rest. Step seven, repeat the steps until you've obtained your new skill. Step 3 in this abbreviated learning process is to experience levity. You do this so as to release dopamine. If you find that it is too difficult to force a sense of levity, then in such a situation, this step can be replaced with a 20 minute nap, while deep rest is best. Taking napping breaks has been shown to improve the neuroplasticity process. Napping is far better than nothing. While on the subject of sleep, slow-wave or delta wave sleep is best because of not only for the reasons outlined in the prior lectures, but also because it is during this time that cerebral spinal fluid washes through the brain and actually cleans up the neurochemical debris that had accumulated during the waking states. I'm going to offer an analogy here by way of example, if learning a new skill was a vacuum cleaner than sleeping cleans that vacuums filter it in clogs the host is, it plucks the hair in such from the brush. In this analogy, if you're going to suck up a new skill, you need a clean vacuum. And deep sleep is how you do that. It's been shown in studies that the more we make learning a new skill urgent and important, the faster we will learn it. For example, in the laboratory, mammals that were deprived of food. Unless they master a new skill, we're able to master that new skill far faster than if such profound pressure wasn't applied. In other words, the brain requires incentive for neuroplasticity to occur. Neuroplasticity is a process that can occur at any age. Our brain fights change after we reach a certain age. To get technical for a moment. This is because when we get older, the space between the neurons tend to fill with this stuff called extracellular matrix, which is like pouring concrete between the neurons. This stuff makes it harder for neurons to move around and otherwise rearrange themselves. However, there have been many studies that show that extracellular matrix can be reduced so that you can learn new things. And the way you do this is to actively pursue some strong goal. The more important you treat the goal, The faster than neuroplasticity is going to happen. In other words, our adult brain resists change. But it still has the ability to change and even to change in ways that would likely amaze you. The older we are, the harder we have to push our brain to change. Going about the learning process as if what we're learning is a matter of great urgency and of great importance. Signals to the brain that it has no choice but to create new neural pathways for the new skill. The brain wants to conserve energy. And if it sees that it is going to keep losing a lot of energy from having to perform this new task. It will create new neural pathways to prevent future energy loss. Children are naturally good at neuroplasticity for a range of reasons. One, they haven't gone through the myelination process yet. Again, myelination reduces change but accelerates the electrical signal. For example, a brain that hasn't undergone myelination can learn more things more easily, but a myelinated brain can do the fewer things it already knows far faster and with far fewer errors. And just as a reminder, myelin was the rubber that covers the wires in that brain resembles electrical wiring analogy that was made in a prior lecture. Two, children are good at neuroplasticity because they're neurons essentially have more space to move. When we are young, our brain is striving to make sense of its reality. Wants to establish operating algorithms, if you will, that can be used in adult life. In other words, during our youth, the brain is wholeheartedly embracing the neuroplasticity process. It doesn't need to be coerced or forced to make it happen. Three, children tend to play when they learn. Combining learning with playing drastically accelerates the learning process. After the age of 25, the brain assumes that it knows enough to preserve its host, produce offspring, and effectively tend to that offspring. In evolutionary terms. This is good enough for our brain. After around 25 years old. The brain's inclination is to conserve energy, which means it resists changing unless it is absolutely necessary. The steps that this lecture began with informs the brain that it is absolutely necessary that it now change. Thank you very much for sticking with me throughout these dense neuroplasticity lectures. In the next lecture, I'm going to explain what neuroplasticity has to do with developing creativity. In this lesson, we went over the basic steps to follow to effectively undergo the neuroplasticity process. In short, these steps are to identify the subject to learn, put forth a maximum effort to learn that thing. The inexperience, levity. Think back to work, then rest, then repeat this process for as long as is necessary. We also covered how the sense of urgency and importance accelerates the process. And how a child's brain is different than a mature brain. 41. Neuroplasticity and Developing Creativity: In this lecture, I'm going to provide the connection between neuroplasticity and developing creativity. In the lecture where I discussed the brain in general, I mentioned that this course will focus on the tissue that allows for different regions of the brain to communicate with each other. This tissue is known as white matter. This lecture will deliver on the promise of focusing on the communication aspect of the brain. Studies done primarily through the use of magnetic resonance imaging neuroimaging technique called diffusion tensor imaging, have shown that those people who are considered to be highly creative have robust connectivity between the left and the right brain hemispheres. Again, place we call the prior lectures where I go into detail about how creativity is not a right brain activity, but rather, creativity is the ability for the brain to access the brain as a whole. In other words, creativity is both a right and a left brain event. Again, studies reveal that highly creative people have more white matter. And now here's one of the keys to this lecture. Studies have proven that neuroplasticity has the ability to increase the amount of white matter in our brain. The studies that arguably best link that connection between developing creativity and practicing neuroplasticity. We're done through the specific focus on divergent thinking. For this, please recall or revisit the lecture where I discussed convergent and divergent thinking in detail. In short, divergent thinking is a way of approaching a problem. It involves thinking in broad terms where a person comes up with multiple alternative or creative solutions to a single problem. Divergent thinking is also known as lateral thinking. The broad spectrum approach to lateral thinking requires many different regions of the brain to become active and communicate with the other regions of the brain. In other words, the process of lateral thinking requires many regions of the brain to simultaneously function. There's a different way to explain this. Arthur Koestler once stated that creative activity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual. In divergent thinking, one part of the brain is functioning as the teacher and the other part of the brain is functioning as the student. The result of this crosstalk is arguably called creative activity. Another way to see this connection between divergent thinking and creativity is to examine children. During our youth, we have yet to develop our convergent thinking ability. Our first inclination as a child is to think divergently. It is also easy to see that most, if not all children are highly creative. They can conjure up entire storylines. Entire universe is from the inanimate objects that litter. They're playroom floor that can pick up a crayon and become one with the creative process. Children are divergent thinkers and most children are naturally creative. This should help you see the connection between divergent thinking and creativity. I'm going to get technical for a minute here. Comprehensive studies were done after selecting creative people. Specific MRIs were used in collaboration with artificial intelligence to create 3D visual constructions of these people's brains. Scientists use this technique to measure the subjective creativity in terms of neural synapses and simultaneous firing of neurons. It is through this monitoring technique that they found that when a creative person practice neuroplasticity, this practice of neuroplasticity further enhanced these neuronal connections. In simpler terms. Advanced brain imaging research determine that practicing neuroplasticity was able to make creative people even more creative. Put yet another way, it was discovered that creativity is a skill, not some rare gift. It's a skill. And like any skill, the more you practice it, the better you get at it. Also to return back to divergent thinking, you should be able to see that there's a strong connection between divergent thinking and creativity. This should help you to view creativity as a skill because divergent thinking is not only trainable, it is a type of thinking that we are all born to do. This implies that creativity is an ability that is accessible to practically everyone. This lecture should hopefully convince you that this is indeed the case. If not, let me be clear. Creativity is a whole brain process where different regions of the brain communicate with each other. This cross communication is facilitated via connections between different regions of the brain. These connections are not locked in place. A process called neuroplasticity can allow any person at any age to form and strengthen new connections. Ehr Go, creativity can be achieved by anyone. Now, I'm not saying that it is necessarily easy. Neuroplasticity is not a pleasant process, but countless studies have proven that it does indeed exist and that it can be deliberately utilized by anyone that properly performs the necessary steps. Okay, so here's the thing. This course offers mini-lectures on how to practice, develop, or otherwise approach creativity and creative goals. In order to use neuroplasticity to further your creative goals. You take one of these approaches discussed in this course and apply the neuroplasticity steps until such an approach becomes easy for you, then you move on to another creative approach. By continuing with this process, you will capture creativity. In this lesson, I explained the connection between neuroplasticity and developing creativity. In short, this relationship pulse largely upon the argument that the more and better connections we have in our brain, the better our creativity. And the link between divergent thinking and creativity. The takeaway from this lesson is that every healthy brain is capable of achieving creativity. All that is required is enough effort and rest. 42. Creativity is a Process of Small Incremental Steps: In this lecture, I'm going to discuss that respective than argues that creativity is a process of small, incremental steps. The following approach to proceeding creativity isn't agreed to by everyone, but there is enough scientific data to support this perception of creativity to warrant its inclusion in this course. Okay, So all of the following begins with the belief that our thoughts are geared towards reducing uncertainty and increasing certainty. To Petra grasp this, it helps to first understand that our brain is geared towards achieving efficiency. It wants to streamline our reflexes are beliefs and in broad terms, the manner in which we approach life and living. Let me simplify this. Imagine if every single literal step you took require deliberate thought and consideration. Left foot, is the ground secure? Right foot? Focus on my balance. Left foot. Is that a whole? No. Okay. Right to fudge. Am I going to slip, and so on. In other words, your brain made walking inefficient act. So you don't have to think about every single step. You just walk. The act of effortlessly walking is grounded in hundreds of assumptions. The ground isn't going to give way. Your legs won't break, your ankles, won't lock up. These assumptions keep you alive by allowing you to both move at speed and turn your focus to matters of greater importance. Your brain knows that you need to walk. So it encouraged the adoption of a hundreds of assumptions so that you can walk without consuming much mental energy. Keyword here, assumptions. Assumptions keep us alive. However, they can also get in the way. This is because assumptions are not always true or relevant. Sometimes things change. For example, if our ancestors lived off of the assumption that the weather was always stable, they would have perished when the weather was no longer what it once was. Or say that for generations their habitat was free from life threatening entities, such as large cats or parasites or an invading tribe. Then along comes a brand new threat. Our ancestors were forced to revisit their assumptions to remain alive. This process is actually a neurological event. In other words, while our brain strives to achieve efficiency by depending upon assumptions in routine, it is also designed to change when it deems it absolutely necessary. Absolutely necessary. In other words, while it can change, it strongly resists change. Put another way, our brain evolved to evolve. It's adapted to adapt. Again though, after a certain age, it fights shifting because its primary goal is to achieve efficiency. Remember what I said before, our thoughts are geared towards reducing uncertainty and increasing certainty. This preliminary point needs to be made very clear. Assumptions plays an enormous role in not only how we operate, but also in shaping the type of person that we are. A good example of. This is a term called confirmation bias. This is what we do when we seek out evidence that confirms what we already believe to be accurate and true, we resist evidence that disagrees with us and we embrace perspectives that are already aligned with our beliefs, our assumptions. In other words, we demonstrate our confirmation bias in many ways. One of the most visible ways occurs when a politician that we once agreed with radically shifts his or her arguments. We had agreed with that politician at first. Politician changed, and now we dislike that politician. It doesn't matter to us that the politician has been exposed to new information that justified a radical shift in view. All that matters to us is that our confirmation bias is no longer being reinforced. In other words, our assumptions play a huge role in establishing who we are as a person. Our assumptions run so deep that they actually formulates our beliefs. Such a tendency is not a flaw in the human species. In order to operate this powerful brain of ours, we require efficiency. The opposite of confirmation bias is to be open to everything, anything all the time. Such an approach to life actually immobilize us, do an action. If we can simultaneously believe everything, then we can commit to nothing. And as a result, we become frozen through an action. So this tendency exists to serve us. And while it often impedes our growth, it usually keeps us safe. It usually keeps us moving, even if what we're doing is wrong. Here's the catch and the point of this lecture. This perspective to understand creativity begins with a premise that creativity starts by Questioning our assumptions due to the points previously made. You should see that creativity is difficult for many, because honestly Questioning our assumptions can be a violent and painful act against ourselves. Recall confirmation bias. We defend our beliefs. We are our beliefs. And creativity begins with the realization that maybe I'm wrong. Again, this can be a painful act because our thoughts are geared towards reducing certainty and increasing certainty. To begin by questioning that was your search enough will likely feel like a violation of the self. And according to this approach to understanding creativity, such an uncomfortable process is necessary. Creativity often begins by seeing things differently. It tends to start with open questions such as why and what if. Prior to answering these questions, you must first realize that you are approaching these questions with a certain set of assumptions. In other words, you have a bias. And in order to genuinely approach these questions, you must first recognize that you have a bias. From there, you determine what your biases are. This process is unpleasant because again, rooted in this process is the realization that you possibly even probably have incorrect assumptions. We've spent our entire life discovering and see mentoring our assumptions. We've put forth a great deal of effort seeking out evidence that our assumptions are correct. Just as we've put forth a great deal of effort avoiding perspectives that challenge our assumptions. Again, confirmation bias. To do this is to be human. So the first step is to identify the assumptions as it relates to the creative endeavor. This can actually be a rather arduous part of the process because most of us don't stop to consider our assumptions. Or even that we have assumptions. We have our beliefs. But many of us don't stop to recognize these beliefs as beliefs in our mind. They are simply the way things are. Which to be blunt, is not always accurate. For example, how long was it believed that Earth was the center of the universe? People were so certain of this belief that they did mean things to those that thought otherwise. They made harsh decisions based upon this belief that they were so search enough. And yet we now know that this belief was fundamentally flawed. Identify your assumptions and then tried to examine them with brand new eyes as if you were discovering them for the first time. How did they limit you? How did they restrict what you believe to be possible? For example, some of our ancestors may have believed that the earth is flat. This assumption limited that person. The idea of circumnavigating the globe was impossible. If they question this assumption that maybe they could not only create ideas around global travel, but also reach a more accurate understanding as to why the sun appears to rise and set. Questioning assumptions can change everything. But it begins with the excruciating process of acknowledging that maybe some of our assumptions are flawed. Okay, Onto the next step. The reason you identify and question your assumptions is to create a foundation in perspective. This approach to understanding creativity is based on the belief that the brain can only ever make small steps. For example, we don't just one day try to learn quantum mechanics and the next day become a master in the field. When we want to be on the other side of the room, we don't teleport from one side of the room to the other. Rather, we take steps to reach the opposing side. This perspective of Creativity argues that our brain takes incremental steps for our ideas as well. You begin with a thought, and this thought gives rise to a new thought that could only have occurred because of the previous thought. Stepping stones to idea creation. In other words, this brings us back to our assumptions. In terms of ideas. The steps we take, the directions of these steps are rooted in our assumptions. Our assumptions established what is termed the space of possibility. In other words, if our assumptions are that things must be done this way, then our answer to the why and what if questions will fall within that confining box? If our assumptions dictate that something is impossible, that our answer will confirm that it is. Again, this approach to understanding creativity makes the argument that our brain only ever makes small steps. This means that an outsider will perceive a highly creative act differently than the person that performed the highly creative act. The person that accomplished into highly creative act arrived at that highly creative solution by journeying through a long series of single steps that the outsider is unaware of. The creator began the process with a different set of assumptions than the outsider. Those different set of assumptions permitted to create or to embark on a journey that would be impossible for the outsider who is operating from a set of assumptions that would it permits such a creative act. In other words, the highly creative act appears to be a bridge too far for the outsider to ever be able to accomplish themselves. To the outsider, the arrival at the highly creative act was not a series of small steps, but rather a teleportation to the other side of the room. However, there was no miraculous movement. The creator was simply operating from a set of assumptions that made the small steps towards the solution possible. For example, despite the common belief that the earth is flat, I'm making myself assume that the earth is round. So I build an ocean where the vessel assemble, accrue and set out on a journey as if the earth is round. When I circled the globe, it will appear to the outsider that I have made a leap too far, but no great leap was made. I began with a different assumption. And I allow this new assumption to result in a long series of small steps that allow me to circle the globe. In other words, to creators different assumptions creates a different space of possibility. A space where many more possibilities present themselves. Perhaps a better way of understanding the space of possibility is to compare a single person with two different life experiences. In one life, this hypothetical person only ever lived in one culture. This person read all of the native books and communed with all of the different types of native people. The other version of this person regularly traveled the globe and strive to develop an intimate understanding as to how different cultures interact with life and living from their default position. Which version of this person do you think would be operating from a broader space of possibility? There's a lot in this lecture, but the point is simple and optimistic. According to this perspective on creativity, anyone can be creative. Only two things need to happen. Reassess your assumptions as it pertains to your creative goal and embark on a small step journey to develop a creative solution. 43. Endurance: In this lecture, I'm going to be giving introduction to the subject of endurance. I'm including the subject of endurance in this course because it is often the case that creative endeavors require long term effort that isn't externally rewarded until the completion of that creative endeavor. In other words, we aren't to be awarded for the process just for the final result. Take writing a book, for example. The world will only offer a reward for the published a product. The world does not care about the hundreds of difficult hours it took to create the book. Such a situation is often the case for large-scale creative endeavors. Even if it isn't, even if you are paid on an hourly basis for your creativity. This endurance model can still help you. Being creative is not a simple thing. If being created was easy, it wouldn't be revered as the amazing thing that it is. Being created for a prolonged period of time could be straining, draining, frustrating, unrewarding, an unkind. It is often the case that the most famous creatives attained their high fame. Not because of their high degree of creativity, but rather because they were relentless with their creativity, tenacity, endurance, the ability to tolerate the high attrition of the field. These are the qualities that allow creatives to survive and thrive. So why am I providing this section on endurance? I'm doing so because I don't just want you to have the tools for being creative. I want you to actually be creative to set high creative goals for yourself and continue pursuing those goals despite the obstacles that will certainly arise. 44. Dopamine: In this lecture, I'm going to be discussing dopamine as it specifically relates to endurance. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that is released in the brain. I covered dopamine in great detail within the neuroplasticity lectures. So there will be some repetition between these lectures. For example, if someone is trying to become popular on social media, that person's brain will release dopamine whenever that person's postings gets likes, or receives other forms of positive feedback. Many people focus on this pleasant feeling that comes with dopamine release. And this focus commonly results in a misunderstanding of what the hormone actually does. There's a better way of proceeding dopamine that focusing on this quick we experience via our smartphone, dopamine is a part of a very ancient system that runs extremely deep into how we function as a human organism. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that plays a vital role in keeping us focused on our goals and motivating us to attain those goals. I'll give some examples to better illustrate and please stay with me because understanding this will help you to complete your creative goals. Imagine that you are standing on one side of the room and looking at a piece of artwork hanging on the wall on the opposite side of the room. You make the decision that you want to remove the artwork from the wall. All right. So you are on one side of the room and your goal is to reach the other side of the room. Setting this goal releases dopamine. Dopamine likes forward movement. Therefore, it rewards you when you make a goal, you look across the room and you see that the path is clear. The room is empty except for the artwork that you want to remove. Seeing that the path is clear between you and your objective releases dopamine. You've done the duration path outcome analysis and determined that you will soon succeed in your goal. You take a step towards the opposite wall and your brain releases dopamine. It does this because you are now actively pursuing your goal. You've taken ten steps and are about to reach the opposite wall. The brain releases dopamine because you're close to achieving your goal. You take the painting off the wall and the brain doesn't release as much dopamine as you are expecting. Again, this is because dopamine is related to the process of achieving our goals. It doesn't exist to fill us with joy when we no longer have a goal of which to pursue. For example, our goal may be to become popular on social media. 10 lags, a 100 likes, a 1000 likes. These will result in dopamine release. But say that we are already extremely famous. Know dopamine release will occur when we receive a thousand likes. Now, back to the walking across the room example. You are on one side of the room and you want to remove a piece of artwork that is hanging on the opposite wall. In this example, the room is not empty. Standing between you as a range of obstacles. There are chairs, tables, broken glass on the floor, cardboard boxes filled with fragile stuff. This time, you get dopamine released when you set the goal to remove the painting. But as soon as you begin a duration path outcome analysis, you start to feel negative. This is because you don't want obstacles between you and your goal. This negativity could be strong enough to make you stop. After all, you don't want to risk stepping on broken glass when trying to remove a painting. Or you can decide to continue despite this negativity. So you make a plan as to how to cross the room. When you feel like you've developed a plan that can work, your brain releases dopamine. You have a goal, and you've taken a step towards attaining this goal. The next step is that you set about implementing this plan. The completion of each leg of this journey can release dopamine. Again, despite all the dodging, jumping, crawling, hopping that was used across the room, you'll usually experienced more dopamine during the process than the moments shortly after you've actually pulled the artwork from the wall. Now, the problem with this example is that it's too simplistic. But I think it serves an effective metaphor for life and the creative process. You see there will almost always be obstacles between where you are and where you want to go. Sometimes we set forth a brilliant plan that will get us from point a to point B. And then something happens that Rex this well-thought out plan. This is an experience that I can pretty much promise you will encounter when pursuing your high creative goals. And this is especially true with long-term creative goals. People are messy, the world is messy, life is messy. Even the best plants have hiccups. But as illustrated before, you can use the dopamine system to help you achieve your goals. If you continue to operate from a plan. You see even the most robotic of us are emotional creatures. If we are to succeed, we have no choice but to incorporate our emotions into the process. The obstacles you can front will evoke anger, frustration, sadness, fear, indeed, all the dark feelings. But in the same light, overcoming these obstacles can evoke all of the positive feelings that we possess. The question is, are we able to enter and overcome the obstacles that stand between us and our goal? And this returns us to the matter at hand. Dopamine, properly used. Dopamine can be a powerful ally and overcoming the obstacles that you will encounter. A key point to understand is that dopamine release can be subjectively controlled, meaning that we can encourage its release. I'm not going to repeat the entire section that I included in the neuroplasticity lectures where I discuss how the glial cells will shut us down and how dopamine can diminish the glial cells ability to stop us. That discussion is very relevant to endurance. So please return to that lecture if you need a reminder for that information. The points I'm going to continue with as having already been established is that dopamine release will provide endurance by hashing that part of your body that tells you to stop. So dopamine is highly relevant to endurance in that sense, but that's not really what I want to focus on here. What I want to focus on is how you can and should force the release of dopamine by internally rewarding yourself for each leg of the journey. Three keywords that I just said in a previous sentence are internally rewarding yourself. I'm going to discuss this in detail in the next lecture. But for now, just understand that when you deliberately reward your small successes, you're likely to achieve your greater goal. Back to that filled room with the artwork on the wall example, after committing to the decision to cross the room and remove the artwork, you have two choices as to how to react to the process of crossing the room. One choice is the option that most of us select. This is the choice to grunt and moan with the passing of every obstacle we enter. I had to push the heavy cardboard boxes out of the way. I had to climb over the table. I had to carefully dodge the broken glass. We complete this small annoying task, and we not only focus on the agitation that completing such a task caused us, we also focus on the mini frustrating tasks that still exist between us and our final objective. We even begin to question if completing the final goal is even worth the effort. This is one way to cross the room. Obviously, this is a method that can work because most of us approach life this way. We simply brute force the completion of our goals. However, there is another choice, and there's other choice utilizes the power of the subjective release of dopamine to achieve goals. Nearly every creative endeavor is composed of milestones and obstacles. To jump to the chase through deliberate thought, you can attach dopamine release to the accomplishment of the milestones into the overcoming of obstacles. If you take the time to celebrate your achievement, no matter how seemingly small your internal cheer will result in the release of dopamine. Now, I'm not trying to approach this subject of endurance from some feel-good motivational speaker type stance. So when I say that you can use positive self-talk as a form of celebrating the achievements that are moving you closer to attaining your goal. I'm not encouraging you to lie to yourself. It's one thing to perform. Positive self-talk from a manifestation type approach where you repeat a mantra that you want to be true, but you know it isn't true. I'm a billionaire. I'm a trillion air, I'm a quadrillion air. Current, neurological studies don't reinforce the notion that such positive self-talk works. In the long run. Scientists don't detect dopamine being released when you knowingly lie to yourself in such a way. The positive self-talk that has been shown in a laboratory to work is to envelop yourself in self pride for your achievement. This is an internal activity that requires you to stop and devote all of your attention to look when I just did, I am one real step closer to achieving my goal. I'm going to succeed because that step is behind me. I did a good job accomplishing that previous step. Now, obviously, you approach this step of internally rewarding yourself in a manner that is best suited for you personally. The point is that dopamine is an externally focused hormone. And just by way of orientation, serotonin is a primarily internally focused hormone. You reward yourself on the inside of the body for what you accomplished on the outside of the body. In other words, again, dopamine loves it when you have a goal and you are actively pursuing that goal. Dopamine release is subjective, which means that you can encourage its release when you stop to give recognition to the fact that you are moving closer to achieving your goal. The released dopamine will provide fuel that will make achieving your goal easier. In scientific terms, this regular positive self-talk accomplishes three important feats. It releases dopamine, the brain circuits that are associated with building subjective rewards. And dopamine gets stronger, which makes this process both easier and more effective. And lastly, it hinders adrenalin and noradrenalin is ability to make you stop in your tracks. In this lesson, we went over dopamine being a neurotransmitter that plays a key role in keeping us focused on our goals and motivating us to attain these goals. We discussed how dopamine release can be subjectively controlled, meaning that you can use your thumb to make dopamine more effective. We also covered how dopamine helps us by reducing the glial cells ability to force us to stop. Still not fully clear. That's fine, because in the next lecture, we're going to explore this topic differently. You'll understand this by the end of the next lecture. 45. Dopamine: Part 2: I'm getting the sense that this information isn't coming off as clearly as I'd like. So I'm going to offer some more examples to clarify this point. I really want you to get this because I believe that you've fully understanding it will help you achieve your high creative goals. If you think that you already understand it well enough, then skip to the next lecture. If not, stay with me through the remainder of this lecture. This dopamine system that I'm trying to convince you to actively and deliberately utilize is an ancient system that runs deep down into the most primal parts of our brain. So let's simplify this even more. Picture. A wild animal out in the wilderness. This animal is very thirsty. In fact, it is so thirsty that it barely has the strength to move its legs. Every step is a massive effort. Now, by way of a premise for this example, you need to understand that many wild animals can smell water. For instance, elephants can smell water from miles away. Okay, So this deeply dehydrate a wild animal is using all of its strength to move forward. Then lo and behold, this animal smells water in the air. The animal's brain is aware that it has a goal to find water. And then the animals joyful recognition that it smells water in the air, causes the brain to release dopamine. This dopamine functions as a new source of fuel for the staggering animal. This dopamine moves the animal from stumbling to running towards the water. This same process can be applied to a starving animal catching a width of a food source. This process I'm discussing where dopamine can function as a brain-based full body fuel source is the same thing I discussed in a previous lecture, where the exhausted professional athletes go from struggling to stand prior to the Games conclusion, to enthusiastically jumping and dancing after they had been declared that champions. Dopamine can help you achieve your creative goals. All right, one last example. Just for good measure, I'm going to discuss the popular expression, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single-step. Many have found this expression helpful because it helps us to get started on some great endeavor. The problem with this Lao-Tzu translated quote is that it implies that each step on this long journey is the same. This is a problem because if each step in the journey was predictable and equal, then everyone would both pursue and accomplish their great goals. All who have endeavored in some long, difficult task intimately knows not every single step is the same. Some days the trick is sublimely easy. While other legs of the journey seemed difficult enough to justify quitting. This journey of 1000 miles, quote, is very helpful for explaining the role that WE CAN play in goal accomplishment. It's the journey, not the destination that is the focus of this quote. Dopamine is a journey oriented hormone. We can use. Dopamine is a powerful aid when we focus on the journey and not the final destination. This is to say that obviously you need to keep your final destination in mind. You need orientation and a point B to arrive at. But what I'm saying here is that when you perform intrinsic reward for each milestone in the journey, you will release dopamine. This release of dopamine can play an enormous role in accomplishing that 1000 mile journey. By way of analogy, say that your journey involves crossing Great Plains, climbing mountains, crossing rivers and lakes, and so on. You basically have two choices after completing each of these milestones. One choice will provide you with a chemical that will make it easier to overcome the next obstacle. Another choice will make you want to stop, turn back, or und der, turmoil. Focusing your attention on the joy of what you've just done will allow you to go farther in this truck. It will make the difficult journey easier, maybe even fun. I encourage you to be proud of yourself for your hard earned successes, especially if the successes are only parts of a greater goal. You see, here's the thing. You're going to release dopamine anyway, during the process of completing a goal, as I've spelled out, you can multiply and magnify the beneficial qualities of this released through deliberate practice. But the dopamine system is ancient and dopamine will be released whether you follow the prescribed steps or not. The issue that many people become disenchanted with during the process of completing high goals occurs when they're single driving factor is the final result. You see the brain releases dopamine at each step of the journey. And in order for most of us to feel that the difficult journey is worthwhile. That final hit of dopamine, that dopamine that occurs when we finally do arrive at our final destination, must be higher than all of the accumulated dopamine releases that we experienced. Along the way. This isn't usually the case. What usually happens is what is referred to in the scientific community as the dopamine reward prediction error. When we depend solely upon the completion of the entire goal as the end-all be-all motivating factor. We are usually hit with a sensation resembling postpartum depression. So if we are only driven by our focus on a destination and not upon the journey itself. We may succeed. We may reach that destination. But when we become disappointed that the final dump of dopamine is less than expected, we often make the decision to never subject ourselves to another 1000 mile journey. All right, hopefully you are now perfectly clear on the role that dopamine can play in the subject of endurance. 46. Sleep: In this lecture, I'm going to describe the importance of sleep and how sleep helps us to be creative. First off, it must be said that an exhausted brain and body really struggles to be creative. As you are probably already aware, sleep is one of those things in life that we simply cannot do without. And the neuroplasticity lectures, I discussed the role of sleep as it relates specifically to neuroplasticity. So to reduce redundancy, I'll barely be touching on the points made in those lectures. Within this lecture. Nothing is more effective for resetting the brain and body than sleep. In fact, currently, scientists are unable to find a single major organ or process in the brain that isn't optimally enhanced by sleep and detrimentally impaired when we don't get enough sleep. Not only do we do much of our healing while you're asleep, it is also during sleep that debris is cleaned from our brain. More technically, during sleep, cerebral spinal fluid washes in and out of our brain like ocean waves. And this process removes the days accumulated metabolic trash. It should be obvious that arrested body in an essentially clean brain will allow us to be more creative when we are awake. The importance of being well-rested could perhaps be best understood by recognizing what happens with the extreme opposite. That if sleep deprivation, staying awake for 24 hours to produce such symptoms as drowsiness, anger, irritability, increased susceptibility to stress, decreased alertness, fatigue, tremors, brain fog, impaired concentration, reduce coordination, and an increased risk of making mistakes. After 36 hours without sleep, we may experience an impaired memory, difficulty learning something new, an increase in severity in the previous list of symptoms, and difficulty processing social cues. After 48 hours, all of the other symptoms ramp up even more and we may even begin to hallucinate. After 72 hours, we will experience hallucinations, delusions, depersonalization, and disordered thinking. After 96 hours, we are pretty much unable to accurately interpret reality. Just one hour of sleep loss requires four days to fully recover. Studies were done in 19921998 to determine what affect sleep deprivation had on creative performance. As you would suspect, there was a reduction in creative ability and the level of reduction was correlated with the amount of lost sleep. It helps to perceive creativity as a whole brain process. Sleep deprivation and hinges the brain, which makes it especially difficult for different regions of the brain to accurately communicate with each other. When we sleep, our brain continues working, but many of its functions change. For example, it is during sleep that our brain organizes our short and long-term memories. Some of this organization appears to us as dreams. In short, we need a healthy amount of sleep to properly function and to be creative during our waking states. The really neat thing is that sleep doesn't just benefit our creativity by allowing us to perform well during our waking states. It is also during sleep that we have many of our creative thoughts, breakthroughs and discoveries. During sleep, our brain thinks much more intuitively and visually. There had been many famous creators that promise that the idea for their invention, discovery, or popular artistic creation came to them while they were sleeping. There's a long list of such ideas. But just to name a few of them. There's the sewing machine, the concept of DNA, the Google search engine, the theory of relativity. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the periodic table, the structure of the atom, the terminator, analytical geometry, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Darwin's theory of evolution. A whole host of songs and books that you would know. The list goes on and on. According to the originators, these ideas would have never existed if it weren't for a special night's sleep. As it relates to creativity, one of the amazing things about sleep is that it helps us with problem-solving. I'm sure you're familiar with the expression, let me sleep on it or you should sleep on that first. This statement is usually spoken during a time when we have an important decision to make or when we need to figure out something that is otherwise unclear. Just because we are asleep, doesn't mean that our brain isn't thinking. In fact, it often thinks very hard, but the manner in which it thinks is very different from how it functions while we are awake. I go over this in detail during the neuroplasticity lectures. In short, the duration path outcome analysis that our brain engages in while we are awake ceases. Being freed from this duration path. Algorithm analysis allows us to approach a topic from perspectives that are nearly impossible to perform while we are awake. There had been a laboratory studies that point to dreams specifically as an effective mechanism for problem-solving. These numerous studies essentially proved that dreams greatly assist us in solving problems. There was one such study that I found particularly interesting. This lecture is already getting pretty long. So for the sake of brevity, I'm just going to refer you to the Harvard study done by Dr. D. Adrift buret. You can find it on the Internet if you search for the title, the Committee of sleep, a study of dream incubation for problem-solving. This study reinforces the sleep creativity hack that I include at the end of this lecture. Earlier in this lecture, I mentioned that the sleeping brain still thinks, it just thinks differently. Here's a little science behind that statement. When we are awake, our thoughts are geared to be orderly. But when we are asleep, our thoughts become fragmented. This fragmentation causes what is referred to as binding errors. This is when the fragmented bits of thinking information are incorrectly reassembled. This error, and reassembly actually forces the brain to analyze an issue in a way that is nearly impossible for a waking brain to do. This is one of the geniuses of sleep. When trying to solve a problem are sleeping brain allows us to venture into unexplored options and avenues. These are options and avenues that we would never think to consider while we are awake. One to go on for hours and hours discussing the value and role of sleep in our life, in our ability to be creative. The goal of this lecture is to mention the most vital elements of sleep as it relates to creativity. Just as you don't really need to know the specific scientific details of neuroplasticity in order to practice it. You also don't necessarily need to know the signs of sleep in order to reap the benefits from it, you just need to know the best steps to take to fully benefit from sleep. Obviously, you need a healthy amount of sleep each night. For most people, this is eight hours of sleep for every 24 hour period. You probably already know all about that type of stuff. But what you might not know is the sleep heck of asking yourself a question prior to falling asleep. Personally speaking, I've used the following tactic a lot in my life. I use it constantly when I'm engaged in a creative project. Here's the process. It starts with identifying the problem. What is it exactly that you are trying to find an answer or a solution for? After identifying the problem, you spend some time crafting that matter of concern into as clear and concise a question as you can. The fewer the words, the better. For example, it is not uncommon for fiction writers to accidentally write themselves into a wall, which is to reach a point in the story where they feel stuck. In this example, a writer in such a situation would craft a question that is directly relevant to the matter at hand. How does author defeat the dragon? For instance? Notice that this question is six words long. The trick is that whatever your question is, you keep repeating it to yourself as you are fading into sleep. Now, here's a key point in this process. You do not try to answer this question. Doing so will keep you from falling asleep and otherwise, trying to answer this question would actually be counterproductive to this process. What you're doing with this step of repeatedly asking yourself this specific question is to hammer the question into your subconscious mind. In other words, you are giving your sleeping brain and instruction on what it should be working on while it is engaged in a different manner of thinking that was described earlier. During that time when it doesn't perform duration path outcome analysis, et cetera. Another reason for making this question as direct in, as concise as possible is that you need to be able to remember it during those moments in the night. When you briefly wake up. During those moments, you return this question to your sleeping brain by repeating this question again and again until you go back to sleep. Again, you're not trying to answer this question. You are asking it so that you're sleeping brain will answer it. Or at least offer some new perspective or insight that will greatly aid you. Depending on the problem in question. It is not uncommon for such a process to deliver results within a week of performing this act. Personally speaking, unless the problem is particularly difficult, I usually get something truly helpful from a single night sleep when using this technique. The gist of this lecture is to say that if you want to further develop your creativity, he must give proper attention to your sleep. Sleep is an optional. In this lesson, we explored how sleep helps us by allowing us to heal clean air system and avoid the many problems that arise when we are sleep deprived. We also went over how sleep benefits our creativity by helping us solve problems and think about things differently. Lastly, we talked about the sleeping hack of asking yourself short specific questions just prior to going to sleep. 47. Conclusion: You should now be able to see that creativity isn't this rare, elusive thing, that only the gifted among us have access to. Creativity is an amazing resource that has been in your possession since the day you were born. You've just needed the keys that this course provided you with to unlock this treasure that has been hitting with a new this entire time. I don't only want to congratulate you on completing this course on creativity. I also want to sincerely thank you for making the decision to unleash your creative powers. The world is eagerly waiting for the gifts that only your creativity can bestow. You now have the tools, strategies, and insights necessary to achieve your maximum creative potential. Now, I asked you to put these elements into practice and go achieve your creative goals. A sensation beyond bliss awaits you. Go and claim it. Good luck. And I close now with the warmest of thank yous.