Creativity Psychology

Although each instance of creativity is singular and specific, Kyna Leski tells us, the creative process is universal. Artists, architects, poets, inventors, scientists, and others all navigate the same stages of the process in order to discover something that does not yet exist. All of us must work our way through the empty page, the blank screen, writer's block, confusion, chaos, and doubt.

As Jamie Holmes shows in Nonsense, being confused is unpleasant, so we tend to shutter our minds as we grasp for meaning and stability, especially in stressful circumstances. We’re hard-wired to resolve contradictions quickly and extinguish anomalies. This can be useful, of course. When a tiger is chasing you, you can’t be indecisive. But as Nonsense reveals, our need for closure has its own dangers. It makes us stick to our first answer, which is not always the best, and it makes us search for meaning in the wrong places.

Iyengar provides essential tools to spark creative thinking and help us make our most meaningful choices. She draws from recent advances in neuro- and cognitive sciences to give listeners a set of practical steps for coming up with powerful new ideas. Think Bigger offers an innovative evidence-backed method for generating big ideas that Iyengar and her team of researchers developed and refined over the last decade.

"Your story is your life," says Loehr. As human beings, we continually tell ourselves stories: of success or failure; of power or victimhood; stories that endure for an hour, or a day, or an entire lifetime. We have stories about our work, our families and relationships, our health; about what we want and what we're capable of achieving.

An engaging guide to the art of forest bathing, inspired by the Japanese practice of shinrin-yoku, for anyone who wants to explore the transformative power of nature in promoting health and happiness.

For far too long we have relegated the erotic to the bedroom, when in reality it is a fundamental energy that helps us connect more deeply with ourselves, each other, the earth, and the creative potential within us. We also live in a world that equates our productivity with our worth, leaving us feeling overtaxed, exhausted, burned out, and completely disconnected from ourselves and others. In Turned On, artist and musician Brie Stoner redefines the erotic, stating that it is more than just human intimacy.

In a world increasingly ruled by numbers and algorithms, award-winning journalist Chris Jones makes a compelling case for a more personal approach to analytical thinking​. The Eye Test is a necessary course correction, a call for a more balanced, personal approach to problem-solving. Award-winning journalist Chris Jones makes the case for the human element - for what smart, practiced, devoted people can bring to situations that have proved resistant to analytics.

This book is about using psychological concepts for political activism. It is intended for politicos of all stripes, left or right; green, black, or white; Christian, Jew, or Muslim; male or female; fundamentalist or pacifist. It is primarily informed by the work of Dr. Carl G. Jung, who many regard as the greatest psychologist of the 20th century. The sole purpose of this book is to show by example how to "change the frame" so that political issues can be understood in a new way, in a new context, and beyond the same old tired rhetoric that we see on our cable television channels.

Bestselling author Leonard Shlain explores the life, art, and mind of Leonardo da Vinci, seeking to explain his singularity by looking at his achievements in art, science, psychology, and military strategy (yes), and then employing state of the art left-right brain scientific research to explain his universal genius. Shlain shows that no other person in human history has excelled in so many different areas as Da Vinci and he peels back the layers to explore the how and the why.

Are you ready to learn the vital keys that will enable you to build profound emotional intelligence, create trust, and establish immediate rapport? Are you prepared to gain a negotiation advantage in every possible situation and win? Do you want to know how to avoid being the gullible victim of schemes and avoid being the victim of unscrupulous individuals? Then this book is for you! Reading People and Psychology is full of intriguing psychological secrets that positively influence emotional response and encourage idea acceptance.

Neuro-linguistic programming is a behavioral science that uses proven techniques to help you in real life. It uses outstanding methods for changing the negative way of thinking into a positive one. Neuro-linguistic programming is relating three things together; thinking, language, and behavior or emotions. Its applications cover many aspects of everyday life.

The intersection of motherhood and creative life is explored in these writings on mothering that turn the spotlight from the child to the mother herself. Here, in memoirs, testimonials, diaries, essays, and fiction, mothers describe firsthand the changes brought to their lives by pregnancy, childbirth, and mothering.

The powerful techniques described in this book are designed to help you tap into and direct the creative force we all have within us. By doing so, you can more easily achieve your business and personal goals and gain tremendous rewards and satisfaction in every area of your life.

The creative mode in your brain is like a butterfly. It's beautiful and erratic, hard to catch, and highly valued as a result. If you want to capture it, you need a net. Enter the executive mode, the task-oriented network in your brain that helps you tie your shoes, run a meeting, or pitch a client. To succeed, you need both modes to work together - your inner butterfly to be active and free, but your inner net to be ready to spring at the right time and create that "aha!" moment. But is there any way to trigger these insights, beyond dumb luck?

This book accompanies the album Written in Sleep by The Gathering Pool—an experimental project exploring the mysterious space between consciousness and creation. This book dives into the very phenomenon that inspired the music.

One of the things this book will teach you is that there is no single path to creativity. You have something in common with Einstein, Michelangelo, Steve Jobs, Stephen Spielberg, and any famous thinker, inventor, or artist that ever lived. Not everyone can be an Einstein, a Michelangelo, a Jobs, or a Spielberg, but tapping into that innate creativity is something everyone can do.

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.

A design process presents a series of steps, but in real life, it rarely plays out this neatly. Navigating Ambiguity underscores how the creative process isn’t formulaic. This book shows you how to surrender control by being adaptable, curious, and unbiased as well as resourceful, tenacious, and courageous.

The everyday moments of creative work can be rife with fear and fraught with risk. Bringing ideas into reality takes courage! In Drawing on Courage, designer, entrepreneur, and d.school teaching fellow Ashish Goel examines what it takes to be courageous. Speaking on real-world situations with humor and insight, Goel explains the four stages of every courage journey: fear, values, action, and change. And he helps you develop the skills you need to master each stage (even if it scares you).

This audiobook is for highly sensitive people who have felt out of place in the modern world. It provides a narrative that describes how they fit into a lineage of creatives throughout history. Jacob Nordby offers a bold new definition of success in the modern era. "The only success now is living and creating a work-of-art life: unique, rich with meaning, naked of anything we don't care about, and ruthless about carving out something absolutely real from a world that has gorged itself on fakeness and become critically ill from it."