The Creative Mind

Who better to go to for career advice than Sir John Hegarty, the co-founder of Bartle Bogle Hegarty, and one of the world’s most awarded creatives?

One way to turn a 10-year career, into 20 or even 50 years, according to Hegarty, is to stay connected. “You have to stay riveted to what is going on around you,“ he says. “And stay positive. Cynicism is the death of creativity.”

Reduced latent inhibition in the brain allows us to treat something as novel, no matter how may times we've seen it - something that experienced meditators seem to do - which may enhance creativity.

In his post Why Daydreamers Are More Creative, cognitive psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman, PhD covers a number of fascinating topics relating to the creative mind, including Latent inhibition.

Like children, many creators have multiple creative interests, and may keep a childlike mindset to become multitalented artists.

“The function of artists is to keep people childlike in a positive way. To keep open to the world.”

Viggo Mortensen continues, “Apart from traveling to different countries, to different communities, to different parts of your city, I think that art is one of the greatest anti-war and anti-poverty weapons.”

Thanks to ARTST TLK for a great interview with Henry Rollins on being a creator who "wants to start conversations" - one of his quotes I really like:...

This is not just about drug use and abuse – there are many forms of self-limiting addictive behavior that can interfere with realizing our creative and other talents. But substance use is one area to start with.

Beethoven reportedly drank wine about as often as he wrote music, and was an alcoholic or at least a problem-drinker.

Making meaning is especially crucial for creative people, and one of the potential consequences of insufficient meaning in our lives and work is depression.

In How to Find Your Element, his 7-session workshop for Big Think Mentor (http://goo.gl/06gYu), creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson tackles the epidemic of dissatisfaction with work and life. In this introduction, he outlines the path to "finding your element" -- the environment and set of activities that will activate your unique abilities, sustain your happiness, and enable you to live your best possible life."

Writer Emerson Csorba comments about Jonah Lehrer’s best-seller: "I was intrigued by his exploration of what supports creativity. I still agree with Lehrer and see evidence of his point that all people have creative potential.

"It seems more and more clear that “Eureka!” moments are the result of smashing already-existing ideas together, and allowing oneself the time for fresh ideas to germinate in one’s mind."

Book: Imagine: How Creativity Works, by Jonah Lehrer http://buff.ly/18SXX7c

50 SHADES OF GREY hires Sam Taylor-Johnson to direct the best-selling book and here are a few of our own works directed by women.

"According to The Directors Guild, less than 5% of all feature films produced in America are directed by women so it’s great to boost up that percentage with this news."

"The writer-filmmaker-performance artist is curating emails from 10 collaborators to create a portrait of who they--and we--are in moments that are both intimate and mundane...her work--be it in prose, on film, or in the email-based art projects that she takes on with some regularity--reflects that there’s something about the way people interact with one another digitally that has her attention."

In his article Is There A Little Rain Man In Each Of Us?, Darold Treffert, MD asks if it is possible “to tap and use those still existent, but less frequently used, capacities and circuits, with some of their savant-like characteristics, in those of us more wedded to left brain capacity and higher level memory?”

"All you can do is sit back and bask in your relevance to the cosmos."

"There is hardly a greater cosmic sage of our age than astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. In this sublime, characteristically eloquent short clip from BigThink, he echoes Ptolemy’s awe as he teases apart the misguided tension between our human ego and the immensity of the universe..."

“For an artist, it is a driven pursuit, whether we acknowledge this or not, that endless search for meaning.” Dianne Albin

Meaning is a key element in how we choose which of our talents to develop and express. Finding and making meaning is especially crucial for creative people.

For many career seekers, “follow your passion” can be a terrifying piece of advice, mainly because the word passion conjures up images of intense, frenzied activity better suited to an Antonio Banderas movie than to most people’s real lives.

"With movies like A Beautiful Mind and Apollo 13 to his credit, Oscar-winning producer Brian Grazer could rest on his laurels. But that's not for him."

"They say that life is tough enough. But I guess I like to make things difficult on myself, because I do that all the time. Every day and on purpose. That’s because I believe in disrupting my comfort zone."

Creativity coach Eric Maisel, PhD is author of more than 30 books including Fearless Creating, The Van Gogh Blues, Coaching the Artist Within and many other titles on developing creativity and leading a creative life.

In his course Your Best Life in the Arts, he provides “real answers to the challenges that confront you” – whether you are “just beginning to write, paint or play an instrument” or have “logged in thousands of hours at your craft.”

"This suggests that the successful propagation of ideas involves the anticipation of pleasure in sharing the idea with other people, as well as thinking about how other minds will respond to the message. How does neural activity relate to these various stages"