Creativity Psychology

Raising an Entrepreneur presents 76 stories from the mothers of some of the most successful entrepreneurs today. Entrepreneurs are the new rock stars - they're the ones who turn their passions into ingenious projects, because they're willing to risk failure to make their dreams come true.

Today, in sales, business, and life, you need every advantage you can get. In Sell More with Science, David Hoffeld, the world’s leading expert on applying science to selling, shares his revolutionary three-part system to experience surefire success at home, at work, and out in the world. Here, Hoffeld utilizes research studies from social psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral economics to reveal actionable insights you can use to grow your sales, achieve more, and stay ahead of the competition.

Our “shadow” is the collection of negative or undesirable traits we keep hidden—the things we don't like about ourselves or are ashamed of, but it also includes our positive, untapped potential. The shadow is often a source of creative inspiration and greater self-acceptance. Befriending the shadow makes fear an ally and enables us to live more authentically. It also automatically improves our interpersonal relationships, because we are freed from the need to project our own negativity onto others, and we become more acutely aware when theirs is projected onto us.

Researchers have found that the accelerated pace of modern office life is taking its toll on productivity, employee engagement, creativity and wellbeing. Faced with a relentless flood of information and distractions, our brains try to process everything at once, increasing our stress, decreasing our effectiveness and negatively impacting our performance.

Amidst the deluge of advice for businesspeople, there lies an overlooked tool, a key to thriving in today's fast-paced, unpredictable environment: improvisation. In Getting to "Yes And" veteran improv performer, university professor, CEO, and consultant Bob Kulhan unpacks a form of mental agility with powers far beyond the entertainment value of comedy troupes.

Life is boring: filled with meetings and traffic, errands and emails. Nothing we'd ever call fun. But what if we've gotten fun wrong? In Play Anything, visionary game designer and philosopher Ian Bogost shows how we can overcome our daily anxiety; transforming the boring, ordinary world around us into one of endless, playful possibilities. The key to this playful mindset lies in discovering the secret truth of fun and games.

In the vein of Neil Strauss’ The Game and Joshua Foer’s Moonwalking with Einstein comes the fascinating story of one man’s colorful, mysterious, and personal journey into the world of magic and his unlikely invitation into an underground secret society of revolutionary magicians from around the world.

Do games hold the secret to better productivity? If you’ve ever found yourself engrossed in Angry Birds, Call of Duty, or a plain old crossword puzzle when you should have been doing something more productive, you know how easily games hold our attention. Hardcore gamers have spent the equivalent of 5.93 million years playing World of Warcraft while the world collectively devotes about 5 million hours per day to Angry Birds. A colossal waste of time? Perhaps. But what if and use it for more creative and valuable pursuits?

Richard is at the end of his financial rope and disappears into the woods behind his home. Where has he gone, and what is required of Felicity before she can find him? Unlock with Richard the secret behind the voice of inspiration and find out for yourself how truly dependable and ingenious your own inner voice can be.

In this specially combined edition with a new foreword, Academy Award–winning producer Brian Grazer and acclaimed author Charles Fishman blend their insights from bestselling books A Curious Mind and Face to Face to transform the art of connecting with and through curiosity. A Curious Mind Expanded invites you to consider your personal journey of human connection.

This book will introduce you to the fundamentals, innovative techniques, and proven strategies that will unleash your inner creativity and elevate you to become a master of creative problem-solving. The scope of creative problem-solving is broad, covering everything from financial and technological challenges in business to personal health and well-being issues.

When BIC, manufacturer of disposable ballpoint pens, wanted to grow, it looked for an idea beyond introducing new sizes and ink colors. Someone suggested lighters.

Remember that time you screwed up simple math or forgot the name of your favorite song? What if someone told you that such embarrassing "brain farts" are actually secret weapons, proof of your superiority to computers and AI? In Scatterbrain, we learn that boredom awakens the muse, distractions spark creativity, and misjudging time creates valuable memories, among other benefits of our faulty minds. Throughout, award-winning neuroscientist Henning Beck's hilarious asides and brain-boosting advice make for a delightful account of the most cutting-edge neuroscience.

It all starts with your brain: How you think, how you feel, how you interact with others, and how well you succeed in realizing your goals and dreams. When your brain works right, so do you. When it’s out of balance, you feel frustrated, or worse. Yet amid all the advice that bombards us daily about how to keep the rest of our body strong and healthy, we hear very little about how to keep the most complex and magnificent organ of all - the human brain - in top working order.

Creativity defines the human experience. It sparks achievement and innovation in art, science, technology, business, sports, and virtually every activity. It has fueled human progress on a global level, but it equally is the source of profound personal satisfaction for individual creators. And yet the origins of creative inspiration and the methods by which great creators tap into it have long been a source of mystery, spoken of in esoteric terms, our rational understanding shrouded in complex jargon. Until now.

Why do we create? Why does humanity, confronted with chaos inside and out, insist on painting, writing, inventing, building, dreaming? And could creativity be the one force that makes existence not only bearable—but meaningful? This book is a journey into the heart of chaos and the human spirit’s response to it. It explores creativity not as luxury or pastime, but as our deepest survival tool, our rebellion against absurdity, and our bridge between order and disorder.

Based on the authors' wildly popular Huffington Post article "18 Things That Creative People Do Differently" (which generated five million views and 500,000 Facebook shares in one week), this well-researched and engaging audiobook uncovers what we know about creativity, and what anyone can do to enhance this essential aspect of their lives and work.

So many of us go through life following scripts we didn’t write for ourselves - scripts designed by our family, shaped by our friends, and influenced by the expectations of the people we meet. Using practical self-help skills rooted in improv principles and depth psychology, we can live more authentic, fulfilled, and empowered lives.

Solitude is the inspirational core for many writers, artists, and thinkers. Alone with our thoughts, we can make discoveries that matter not only to us but to others. To be solitary is not only to draw sustenance from being alone, but to know that our ultimate responsibility is not only to our partner or our own offspring, but to a larger community. Fenton Johnson's lyrical prose and searching sensibility explores what it means to choose to be solitary and celebrates the notion that solitude is a legitimate and dignified calling.

Millions of listeners have embraced art teacher Betty Edwards' Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, from art students and teachers to established artists, corporate trainers, and more - all discovering a bold new way of drawing and problem-solving based on what we see, not what we think we see. In this highly anticipated follow-up, Edwards illuminates another piece of the creativity puzzle, revealing the role our dominant eye plays in how we perceive, create, and are seen by those around us.