CONQUER FEAR AND WISE UP
“Fears are educated into us, and can, if we wish, be educated out.”
We are thinking about the life that we just left behind, and have entered a space that is isolating, unknown and frightening! For a change, we have to live with ourselves with the 'digital only' interaction. For a change, we have to give up the idea of being rampant consumers and start living with bare essentials. For a change, we have to power and polish our minds to focus on our next creation!

“Don't just be a consumer, be a creator. Somewhere inside you is a masterpiece waiting to be exposed.”

As an exercise to find how this 'thing' called 'creativity' works, we venture out in this audacious journey to demystify creativity. The 4 nuggets that we jot down here is our humble way in trying to harness creativity.

Perhaps you ask, "Harnessing creativity? How very arrogant." After all, Buddha sitting under the Bodhi Tree doing apparently nothing is the grand master of creation that the planet has ever known. Why do we need to put effort in harnessing creativity? The short answer, in a culture obsessed with doing, we simply cannot comprehend the idea of just sitting and doing nothing will make us more creative. Hence, we postulate the 4 ways to flirt with creativity.

In the blogosphere, dominated with '5 Quick Tips', '7 Awesome Ways', '3 Must Haves' we bring you 4 pieces that goes into making creativity happen!
 

Be insanely curious about anything and everything. As Arne Dietrich, Professor of Psychology mentions creativity can be deliberate and cognitive. That means you have to be perpetually on the lookout for information that is new and happening. Every 'bit of information' that is specially not part of your core discipline when combined with other knowledge nurtures the seed of creativity. As Professor Dietrich puts it, deliberate and cognitive creativity comes from the PFC in your brain. The PFC is responsible for focused attention and connecting the dots between information that you have stored in the other parts of the brain.

Image: GobalShop 2019

Look at data and information at innovative ways. Find out how your audience digest information. Pew Research Center survey explores these five broad dimensions of people’s engagement with information and finds that a couple of elements particularly stand out when it comes to their enthusiasm: their level of trust in information sources and their interest in learning, particularly about digital skills.

When the nobel laureate, Professor Muhammad Yunus reversed the circle of "low income, low saving & low investment", into a circle of "low income, injection of credit, investment, more income, more savings, more investment, more income" he put together existing information in new and novel ways being extremely deliberate and cognitive in his creation.
 

“Prisoners who never wrote a word in the days of their freedom will write on any paper they can lay hands on,” says Dorothea Brande in her classic, Becoming A Writer. ”Innumerable books have been begun by patients lying on hospital beds, sentenced to silence and refused reading.” Furiously unplug while you’re incubating your project. Spend time with yourself in solitude. It is the fertilizer for your creative crop. Spend time on yourself doing something festive.

Set an Artist Date for yourself. Visit museums and monasteries, hike through widerness, attend “lectures on the odd, the improbable, or merely interesting… participate in musical performances by traveling Tibetan monks”...or do that which brings you in touch with yourself. This creates a rich tapestry of new images, thoughts and perspectives that gets seeded in your subconscious, to be revealed when you are at emotional crossroads. This gives rise to what Professor Dietrich says deliberate emotional creativity.
Explore these virtual museums and find ways to incubate new ideas.

Image: GobalShop 2019

“Those who do not know the torment of the unknown cannot have the joy of discovery.” The Art of Scientific Investigation, a must read by W.I.B Beveridge In this book, he explores the minds of the most famous scientists of watershed discoveries. His conclusion: serendipity, intuition, and imagination displays the habits of mind that produce good ideas." “[Intuition] is always in response to something.”

When Frederick Kekule's (1829 - 1896) saw the dream of a snake coiled and biting its tail; in an intuitive flash, he realized that the molecular structure was characterized by a ring of carbon atoms. It is important to recognize that Kekule was immersed in the problem of how atoms combine to form molecules, and he was focused on benzene. Intuitive outcomes are prolific when there is a strong emotional focus and intention to solve a specific issue.
 

This "eureka" moment of a sudden flash of knowledge is what Professor Dietrich calls spontaneous and cognitive creativity. It involves the basal ganglia of the brain that operates outside your conscious awareness. "Out of box thinking" requires the conscious brain to stop working. By doing this, your subconscious takes the driver seat and the PFC is activated in connecting information in new and novel ways.

“The painter has the Universe in his mind and hands.”  Leonardo Vinci.
Creative inspiration is mysterious. When the conscious brain and the PFC are resting, it is then possible for spontaneous ideas and creations to happen.
 
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart sums it up very well. ”When I am… completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer — say, traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep; it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly.

“Whence and how they come, I know not; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory…[and] if I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this or that morsel to account…
All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodical and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it, like a fine picture or a beautiful statue, at a glance… What a delight this is I cannot tell! All this inventing, this producing, takes place in a pleasing lively dream.”

Amygdala is the seat of spontaneous and emotional creativity. These spontaneous and emotional creative moments are very powerful, such as an epiphany, or a religious experience. This type of creativity is not cognitive. But often skill (writing, artistic, musical) is needed to create something from the spontaneous and emotional creative idea. As Professor Dietrich mentions, you cannot design for this experience to happen. It is spontaneous!

"Each man comes into this world with a specific destiny: he has something to fulfill, some message has to be delivered, some work has to be completed. You are not here accidentally, you are here meaningfully. There is a purpose behind you. The whole intends to do something through you." osho
Your ideas and your thoughts will open up new worlds.
Use the panic and pause of these turbulent times to create!
 
Happy Creating!
Reach out if you are in need of inspiration.
Social isolation might be the trending keyword, but, your mind need not suffer the pangs of separation. 

100 WAYS TO TAME FEAR AND ANSWER THE CALL OF YOUR INNER CREATOR

1. Rise above negative thoughts by consciously choosing positive thoughts
2. Rise above imagined bad situation by removing the label “bad”
3. Rise above failure by realising failure isn’t final – try again, try it in a different way
4. Rise above good & bad labels by dropping labels.
5. Rise above problems by seeking solutions.
6. Rise above interesting to meaningful
7. Rise above every day analysis of 'why this' to solution finding and sharing exploration
8. Rise above past & embrace the present
9. Rise above criticism and extract the good from any feedback
10. Rise above mistakes & cherish the journey
11. Rise above can’t, drop the “t” and explore can
12. Rise above individual expectations to common goals & unity
13. Rise above excess & explore to do with less.
14. Rise above being trapped in thought & learn to free your mind
15. Rise above sense fulfilment & explore your senses to the full
16. Rise above outer thrills & seek inner calm
17.  Rise above “if only”, cherish “as is” & create “what if”
18. Rise above negative self-talk & practice positive inner dialogue
19. Rise above a noisy self-defeating mind & sense the gaps
20. Rise above hearing & actually listen
21. Rise above anger and seek solutions
22. Rise above “should” and experiment with “could”
23. Rise above blaming & start aiming
24. Rise above the need of certainty & embrace uncertainty
25. Rise above reactivity & unlock your pro-activity.

26.
Rise above complexity & incorporate simplicity

27.
Rise above time bound & consider the timeless

28. Rise above homogeneity & embrace diversity
29. Rise above imperfections & accept individuality & uniqueness
30. Rise above approval seeking, and be you – THE REAL YOU
31. Rise above hypotheses to workable and practical
32. Rise above “What can I get?” to consider “What can I give?”
33. Rise above rushing & embrace the moment fully
34. Rise above the job of delivery & exceed expectations


35. Rise above comfort to gratitude
36. Rise above the known & journey to the unknown
37. Rise above impermanence & embrace & celebrate every moment
38. Rise above material possessions & enjoy health, value, love and REAL MEANING
39. Rise above quantity & appreciate quality
40. Rise above rigid & fixed to flexibility, versatility & finesse
41. Rise above jargon & create user-friendly, transparent & direct interaction
42. Rise above efficient to exceptional
43. Rise above pleasure seeking to pleasure giving
44. Rise above individual vision to providing overall provision
45. Rise above reckoning to reasoning
46. Rise above insightful to delightful
47. Rise above one tracked to multi-dimensional

48. Rise above short-term satisfaction to long-term contentment
49. Rise above brilliant to outstanding
50. Rise above the ordinary & reach for the extraordinary

51. Rise above the picture & the thousand words to float and dream in space of nothingness.


52. Rise above the walls & move beyond the boundaries
53. Rise above the year & consider 100 years from now
54. Rise above control & sense the freedom of letting go
55. Rise above the commotion & pause
56. Rise above ground level and soar in the open skies
57. Rise above other-investigation to self-investigation
58. Rise above logic to imagination
59. Rise above finality to flexibility
60. Rise above needing to reach a goal to enjoying the journey.
61. Rise above yesterday to today
62. Rise above specialness to uniqueness
63. Rise above words to the wordless
64. Rise above frustration with creation



65. Rise above needing to helping
66. Rise above “Why?” to “Why ask why?”
67. Rise above the need to be perfect and enjoy imperfection
68. Rise above yardsticks & create a new measure
69. Rise above repetition to expedition
70. Rise above doubt by recognizing doubt is thought

71. Rise above bad habits by replacing with good habits
72. Rise above discounts to enhancements
73. Rise above short-lived to legacy
74. Rise above the muddle & restart from clarity
75. Rise above rules & consider new options
76. Rise above petty problems by considering the vastness of the universe
77. Rise above differences to embrace similarities
78. Rise above temporary imbalance and celebrate universal harmony
79. Rise above scepticism & bathe in potential
80. Rise above problem seeing to problem solving
81.Rise above momentary illusion & permit yourself to dream
82. Rise above disbelief & entertain wonderment
83. Rise above knowing & embrace new learning
84. Rise above seriousness & entertain a fantasy
85. Rise above the commonplace to the rare
86. Rise above the already learned & welcome curiosity
87. Rise above winning & enjoy taking part
88. Rise above insults & focus on the millions of good things
89. Rise above certainty & explore fascination



90. Rise above what you can’t do & focus on what you can do
91. Rise above need to choice
92. Rise above longstanding rules & invent new rules
93. Rise above the drama of the moment to a year from now
94. Rise above imagined superiority of humans & embrace the planet
95. Rise above conditional love to unconditional love
96. Rise above what’s wrong & focus on what’s right
97. Rise above the planet & contemplate the universe
98. Rise above barriers of confinement to the potential of infinity
99. Rise above what you think & explore what you feel
100. Rise above for an aerial view