This wonderful home project located in Attadale, Australia, was inspired by the 1950s design of a house owned by the actor Gary Cooper. It was built by the prolific architect Quincy Jones in Hollywood Hills, California, USA. It was designed in 2013 by the architectural firm Mountford Architects, and the project, with an area of 530 square meters, was personally undertaken by the architect Ben Mountford. The result is a..
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Improbable Destinies: Fate, Chance, and the Future of Evolution
As a child in the evangelical South during the 1970s, I was taught that “Darwin” was a bad word. My textbook for the creation of life was the opening chapters of Genesis, Yahweh’s six days of exquisite labor and then an extra day to chill. One week. The notion of evolution and its timeline — billions of years — seemed a heresy cooked up by egghead scientists and Satanic secularists. Just four decades and forty miles away from the infamous Scopes trial, I sang “I’m No Kin to the Monkey” along with my peers in Sunday School: I don’t know much about his ancestors / But mine didn’t swing from a tree. Anti-Darwinism remains as American as God, guns, and apple pie: a recent poll revealed that nearly half of adults believe in a divine creation of a universe only a few millennia old.
But since the mapping of the human genome in 2000, we’ve confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt that humans are primates, sharing over 99 percent of our coding DNA with chimpanzees, whose own sequence tracks more closely to ours than to gorillas or orangutans. The genomics revolution has proven that Darwin was a prophet, his legacy still debated by evolutionary biologists across the globe. In his new book, Improbable Destinies: Fate, Chance, and the Future of Evolution, Harvard biologist and zoologist Jonathan B. Losos infuses a sense of whimsy and playfulness into the staggeringly complex problems of evolution, explaining why the evidence must be tested and re-tested, new data introduced, with each generation of scientists.
A lizard specialist, Losos has pursued his fieldwork in mostly tropical archipelagos, where he’s studied anoles and how their scattered populations morph into similar body shapes, with virtually identical nutrition and behavior, depending on the ecological niches they inhabit.
Tahiti, Bermuda, Madeira, Bali. Everyone loves islands but no one has nesiophilia — the inordinate fondness and hungering for islands — more than an evolutionary biologist. Darwin drew much of his inspiration from island stopovers on the fabled voyage of the Beagle . . . Each oceanic island or archipelago is a world unto itself, the evolutionary goings-on there independent of what happened elsewhere. That means that by comparing one island to another, we can get a sense of evolutionary potential and predictability.
The occasional hurricane would wipe out Losos’s slithery subjects, but he gleaned enough data to build an argument: presented with wildly different environments, species usually fill open niches in predictable ways — the concept of convergent evolution. In other words, if you could roll evolution’s dice over and over, you’d get the same (or similar) results each time.
Improbable Destinies takes us on a whirlwind odyssey, from vibrant Caribbean jungles to English grasslands to innovative swimming-pool labs in Seattle, surveying a spectrum of species: guppies, moths, deer mice, bacteria. He recounts myriad experiments that show that Darwin was wrong about one pillar of his theory: evolution doesn’t always move at a glacial pace but rather can be observed within a few generations (or over the course of a biologist’s career): “The resistance of rats to developing cavities, the tendency of fruit flies to fly toward light, and fruit fly tolerance of alcohol fumes . . . pick any trait that varies in a population, impose artificial selection, and you will get an evolutionary response.”
The literary scholar Harold Bloom once asserted that “the meaning of a poem is always another poem,” but his maxim could apply to science writing as well. Behind Improbable Destinies lurk David Quammen’s The Song of the Dodo and Jonathan Wiener’s Pulitzer Prize–winning The Beak of the Finch, but Losos’s major influence is Stephen Jay Gould’s 1989 masterpiece, Wonderful Life, whose detailed analysis of the Burgess Shale’s wealth of Cambrian fossils posits that life on earth could only have evolved the way it has once — rewind the tape and you’ll get different chemistry, different avenues of natural selection, different flora and fauna, and so on. (Gould’s title is an homage to Frank Capra’s 1946 film, which allows James Stewart a glimpse of a notional world in which he’d never been born.) Losos both explicitly and implicitly engages Gould’s ideas; and in a twist that Darwin would have loved, he reaches no firm conclusion. “Start with identical circumstances and you’ll usually — but definitely not always — get a pretty similar outcome.”
Improbable Destinies is a crackling good read, threading rich anecdote into trenchant science. It belongs on the same shelf as I Contain Multitudes, Ed Yong’s gorgeously crafted account of microbes and their critical roles in our bodies; Nick Lane’s dense, groundbreaking work on the origins of life, The Vital Question; and other recent books that grapple with Darwin’s revolution, such as Richard O. Prum’s The Evolution of Beauty and Robert M. Sapolsky’s Behave. Ours is an era of paradigm shifts in science, with a bonanza of literature that captures our world’s breathtaking diversity as well as its dire future. As Losos notes, “The elephant in the room, of course, is global warming . . . one seven-year-long experimental study on worms detected replicated genetic changes associated with warmer soils. I predict that this is just the tip of the melting iceberg and that soon we will detect many physiological, behavioral, and anatomical changes convergently evolved in vulnerable species.”
Given that climate change may be our most daunting challenge — and given that all kinds of species, from worms to fish to germs, will mutate rapidly to accommodate these shifts — books such as Improbable Destinies offer a roadmap for our species, from the African savannahs to inundated coasts. Fortunately for readers, Losos and Yong and Sapolsky are also every inch the prose stylists as the majority of fiction writers promoted with more fanfare. It’s high time to transform the hearts and minds of Americans hostile not only to evolution but the crisis that is already forcing the world’s next cycle of rapid biological change. It’s high time we act — our evolutionary future may pivot on what we do next.
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10 Books on Increasing Your Creativity
You’re reading 10 Books on Increasing Your Creativity, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
Increasing your creativity—or developing any sense of creativity in the first place—seems to be hardest when you need it most. Personally, I’d always thought “creativity” was sort of elusive. I thought creative people, like Pablo Picasso, for instance, were blessed with some sort of magical, innate talent that most of us just don’t have. And this is how I’d rationalize why people like Picasso were so much more creative than I was. But, as it turns out, I was dead wrong (kind of.)
You see, most people think Picasso just sat down in front of a canvas and effortlessly cranked out masterpiece after masterpiece all day long, but that’s not how things went down at all. The way Picasso actually painted was much more in-depth. He’d sit down and start at the corner of the canvas with one single stroke of the brush. Then, he’d expand from there, allowing the brush to let him transfer whatever he was envisioning onto the canvas.
Sometimes, he’d decide to let an idea take his painting elsewhere. Other times, he’d end up painting something totally different than what he initially envisioned. A few times, he’d start the whole damn thing over again. But, almost every single time, he’d end up with something beautiful. How did he create so many million-dollar masterpieces? Was he talented? Heck yeah. Was he “born with it”? Maybe, but people are born with all sorts of talents they neglect to nurture and refine.
And that’s the key: cultivation. Picasso cultivated his talent into mastery. He was dedicated to his craft. In other words, he did it often enough to recognize that if he went off the beaten path halfway through a painting, he could take a different route and still end up with a piece of art.
Bottom line? Creativity is neither magical nor mysterious. Creativity is like a muscle. And if you need help increasing your creativity, then these ten books will show you how to build that muscle up so you can maximize your own creative potential—both personally and professionally. I’ve also listed my own key take-aways from some of these books, as well as my favorite quotes on creativity from each. Hope you enjoy it!
Prefer audio? Listen to the podcast version of this article here
1. “The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield
“Creative work is … a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.”—Steven Pressfield
“The War of Art” will teach you how to break through the blocks every creative runs into from time to time. It certainly did the trick for me. Reading it almost feels like getting a solid kick in the rear from your very wise, very experienced, grandpa. Creatives have to work through the fear of failure, being their own worst critics and a lack of self-confidence. Pressfield also talks about overcoming procrastination and the energy that comes from working on the things you deem to be your true calling.
2. “Flow” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
“Happiness is not something that happens. It is not the result of good fortune or random chance. It is not something that money can buy or power command. It does not depend on outside events, but, rather, on how we interpret them. Happiness, in fact, is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated, and defended privately by each person. People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come.” —Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
(Take another look at the above quote and notice how applicable it is when you replace the word “happiness” with the phrase “increasing your creativity.”)
Ever experience that feeling where you totally lose track of time, you feel absolutely unstoppable and your excellent work just seems to effortlessly stream out of you? That’s called a “flow-state.” And in this book, you’ll learn how to bring it about within your own work.
3. “Lateral Thinking” by Edward de Bono
“Lateral thinking is like the reverse gear in a car. One would never try to drive along in reverse gear the whole time. On the other hand one needs to have it and to know how to use it for maneuverability and to get out of a blind alley.”—Edward de Bono
For some people, the concept of increasing your creativity is sort of like hitting the lottery: There’s a fat chance it’ll happen today, but maybe next time. In “Lateral Thinking,” author Edward de Bono shows us how to align our thinking in a way that actually helps us become more creative. While everyone else is trying to dig the same hole in the same place, this book shows you how to dig a new hole somewhere different.
4. “Steal Like an Artist” by Austin Kleon
“You don’t want to look like your heroes, you want to see like your heroes.”—Austin Kleon
This is a book about permission. It’s about the permission to stop hiding behind your own shadow, the permission to start creating something that actually matters and the permission to stand on the shoulders of giants who came before you and take advantage of their great ideas. The idea isn’t to “steal” other people’s work. (So, don’t do that; stealing is bad.) Just take bits and pieces from other people’s work and make something of your own out of that. If you use people’s stuff to make something of your own, then let them know about it. It’s usually (but not always) flattering.
5. “The Creative Habit” by Twyla Tharp
”If art is the bridge between what you see in your mind and what the world sees, then skill is how you build that bridge.” —Twyla Tharp
Twyla Tharp is one of the world’s greatest choreographers. In “The Creative Habit,” she tells us that creativity is exactly that—a habit…If we want to go from creating ordinary work to creating extraordinary work, then we need to develop the habits that’ll help us make that a reality.
6. “The Talent Code” by Daniel Coyle
“Every human skill, whether it’s playing baseball or playing Bach, is created by chains of nerve fibers carrying a tiny electrical impulse— basically, a signal traveling through a circuit. Myelin’s vital role is to wrap those nerve fibers the same way that rubber insulation wraps a copper wire, making the signal stronger and faster by preventing the electrical impulses from leaking out. When we fire our circuits in the right way— when we practice swinging that bat or playing that note— our myelin responds by wrapping layers of insulation around that neural circuit, each new layer adding a bit more skill and speed. The thicker the myelin gets, the better it insulates, and the faster and more accurate our movements and thoughts become.”—Daniel Coyle
In “The Talent Code,” Daniel Coyle, a journalist and reporter, brings us a scientific approach to creativity. In the book, Coyle tells us about a neural insulator called “myelin,” which some neurologists consider to be the key to acquiring skills of every kind… And of course, if you want to level-up your creative output, you’ve gotta level-up your skills. Bottom line? More myelin = creative excellence… Creative excellence in sports. In business. In art. In everything. And if you want to achieve creative excellence, too, then you’ve got to be growing myelin on a regular basis. The best way to do it? 10X the amount of practice you put into becoming the best at what you do. If you’re in sales, call 10X the amount of people you normally do, and you’ll naturally get better and more creative as a result. If you’re a writer, 10X the amount of words you write per day and you’ll naturally get better and more creative as a result. Set goals that are just beyond your reach so that you’ve got no choice to level-up your skills in order to achieve them. That’s how you build more myelin.
7. “Creativity” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
“Creativity is a central source of meaning in our lives for several reasons… First, most of the things that are interesting, important, and human are the results of creativity. We share 98 percent of our genetic makeup with chimpanzees… Without creativity, it would be difficult indeed to distinguish humans from apes.”—Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
In “Creativity,” Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi schools us on how to leverage flow-states to increase our creativity. In the book, he discusses what he learned after interviewing 91 creative professionals from a wide array of professional endeavors, from astronauts to writers, philosophers and everyone in-between. Here are a few big ideas from the book: Creative people have a thirst to constantly continue learning about their subjects of interest; they never get sick of practicing the fundamentals, and they know how to connect seemingly unrelated ideas together to create something totally new.
8. “Daily Rituals” by Mason Currey
“Inspiration is for amateurs .… The rest of us just show up and get to work.”—from “Daily Rituals” by Mason Currey
In this creativity book, the author profiles 250 of the most creative people of modern history. Freud. Orwell. Benjamin Franklin. Maya Angelou. Ayn Rand. All these people had creative habits that helped them gain their notoriety. And in this book, Mason Currey details those elements of their daily lives, from when they wake, to how they work, to the foods they eat. Everything’s covered. This is an awesome coffee table book. Pick it up whenever you need some of the world’s greatest thinkers to inspire you towards increasing your creativity.
9. “Creativity, Inc.” By Ed Catmull
“It isn’t enough merely to be open to ideas from others. Engaging the collective brainpower of the people you work with is an active, ongoing process. As a manager, you must coax ideas out of your staff and constantly push them to contribute.”—Ed Catmull
This book is about the intersection of where creativity meets commerce. It was written by the co-founder of Pixar, Ed Catmull. The key creativity take-away I walked away with after reading this book was about igniting higher levels of creativity within an organization. I learned that I could inspire my employees to become more creative by fostering an environment that was actually conducive to creativity.
10. “The Originals” by Adam Grant
“Our companies, communities, and countries don’t necessarily suffer from a shortage of novel ideas. They’re constrained by a shortage of people who excel at choosing the right novel ideas.”—Adam Grant
The actionable insight from this book for me was this: increasing your creativity requires increasing your output. Regardless of what type of work you do, the key to creative genius lays in creating constantly and consistently and in very high quantity. It’s all about volume–those who create the most work increase the odds of creating the best work. Maya Angelou wrote 165 poems, Picasso created over 5,800 works, and 12,000 drawings. Einstein wrote 248 publications. Bottom line? High output —> high creativity.
Time to start increasing your creativity.
Now that you’ve got this list of the 10 best books on increasing your creativity — there’s only one question left… Which one do you read first? Should you go out and get all of them immediately? Should you read them all at once? Or should you take a lifetime to read them? So many options. So little time. Ultimately, it’s totally your decision what you do with this list and how you apply it to your life and career. But if I may, here’s what I would suggest you consider as you get started:
- Subscribe to a book summary site, like FlashBooks to get the key-takeaways from the books on this list.
- If you’d prefer to read an entire book, I would highly suggest that you read just ONE book at a time. Sometimes, when we see something new and exciting, we have tendency to want to do/learn/read it all at once… and as we all know, this is nearly impossible to do without stressing ourselves out. So, choose a book. And then commit to reading it from start to finish.
You’ve read 10 Books on Increasing Your Creativity, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
10 Books on Increasing Your Creativity
You’re reading 10 Books on Increasing Your Creativity, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
Increasing your creativity—or developing any sense of creativity in the first place—seems to be hardest when you need it most. Personally, I’d always thought “creativity” was sort of elusive. I thought creative people, like Pablo Picasso, for instance, were blessed with some sort of magical, innate talent that most of us just don’t have. And this is how I’d rationalize why people like Picasso were so much more creative than I was. But, as it turns out, I was dead wrong (kind of.)
You see, most people think Picasso just sat down in front of a canvas and effortlessly cranked out masterpiece after masterpiece all day long, but that’s not how things went down at all. The way Picasso actually painted was much more in-depth. He’d sit down and start at the corner of the canvas with one single stroke of the brush. Then, he’d expand from there, allowing the brush to let him transfer whatever he was envisioning onto the canvas.
Sometimes, he’d decide to let an idea take his painting elsewhere. Other times, he’d end up painting something totally different than what he initially envisioned. A few times, he’d start the whole damn thing over again. But, almost every single time, he’d end up with something beautiful. How did he create so many million-dollar masterpieces? Was he talented? Heck yeah. Was he “born with it”? Maybe, but people are born with all sorts of talents they neglect to nurture and refine.
And that’s the key: cultivation. Picasso cultivated his talent into mastery. He was dedicated to his craft. In other words, he did it often enough to recognize that if he went off the beaten path halfway through a painting, he could take a different route and still end up with a piece of art.
Bottom line? Creativity is neither magical nor mysterious. Creativity is like a muscle. And if you need help increasing your creativity, then these ten books will show you how to build that muscle up so you can maximize your own creative potential—both personally and professionally. I’ve also listed my own key take-aways from some of these books, as well as my favorite quotes on creativity from each. Hope you enjoy it!
Prefer audio? Listen to the podcast version of this article here
1. “The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield
“Creative work is … a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.”—Steven Pressfield
“The War of Art” will teach you how to break through the blocks every creative runs into from time to time. It certainly did the trick for me. Reading it almost feels like getting a solid kick in the rear from your very wise, very experienced, grandpa. Creatives have to work through the fear of failure, being their own worst critics and a lack of self-confidence. Pressfield also talks about overcoming procrastination and the energy that comes from working on the things you deem to be your true calling.
2. “Flow” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
“Happiness is not something that happens. It is not the result of good fortune or random chance. It is not something that money can buy or power command. It does not depend on outside events, but, rather, on how we interpret them. Happiness, in fact, is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated, and defended privately by each person. People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come.” —Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
(Take another look at the above quote and notice how applicable it is when you replace the word “happiness” with the phrase “increasing your creativity.”)
Ever experience that feeling where you totally lose track of time, you feel absolutely unstoppable and your excellent work just seems to effortlessly stream out of you? That’s called a “flow-state.” And in this book, you’ll learn how to bring it about within your own work.
3. “Lateral Thinking” by Edward de Bono
“Lateral thinking is like the reverse gear in a car. One would never try to drive along in reverse gear the whole time. On the other hand one needs to have it and to know how to use it for maneuverability and to get out of a blind alley.”—Edward de Bono
For some people, the concept of increasing your creativity is sort of like hitting the lottery: There’s a fat chance it’ll happen today, but maybe next time. In “Lateral Thinking,” author Edward de Bono shows us how to align our thinking in a way that actually helps us become more creative. While everyone else is trying to dig the same hole in the same place, this book shows you how to dig a new hole somewhere different.
4. “Steal Like an Artist” by Austin Kleon
“You don’t want to look like your heroes, you want to see like your heroes.”—Austin Kleon
This is a book about permission. It’s about the permission to stop hiding behind your own shadow, the permission to start creating something that actually matters and the permission to stand on the shoulders of giants who came before you and take advantage of their great ideas. The idea isn’t to “steal” other people’s work. (So, don’t do that; stealing is bad.) Just take bits and pieces from other people’s work and make something of your own out of that. If you use people’s stuff to make something of your own, then let them know about it. It’s usually (but not always) flattering.
5. “The Creative Habit” by Twyla Tharp
”If art is the bridge between what you see in your mind and what the world sees, then skill is how you build that bridge.” —Twyla Tharp
Twyla Tharp is one of the world’s greatest choreographers. In “The Creative Habit,” she tells us that creativity is exactly that—a habit…If we want to go from creating ordinary work to creating extraordinary work, then we need to develop the habits that’ll help us make that a reality.
6. “The Talent Code” by Daniel Coyle
“Every human skill, whether it’s playing baseball or playing Bach, is created by chains of nerve fibers carrying a tiny electrical impulse— basically, a signal traveling through a circuit. Myelin’s vital role is to wrap those nerve fibers the same way that rubber insulation wraps a copper wire, making the signal stronger and faster by preventing the electrical impulses from leaking out. When we fire our circuits in the right way— when we practice swinging that bat or playing that note— our myelin responds by wrapping layers of insulation around that neural circuit, each new layer adding a bit more skill and speed. The thicker the myelin gets, the better it insulates, and the faster and more accurate our movements and thoughts become.”—Daniel Coyle
In “The Talent Code,” Daniel Coyle, a journalist and reporter, brings us a scientific approach to creativity. In the book, Coyle tells us about a neural insulator called “myelin,” which some neurologists consider to be the key to acquiring skills of every kind… And of course, if you want to level-up your creative output, you’ve gotta level-up your skills. Bottom line? More myelin = creative excellence… Creative excellence in sports. In business. In art. In everything. And if you want to achieve creative excellence, too, then you’ve got to be growing myelin on a regular basis. The best way to do it? 10X the amount of practice you put into becoming the best at what you do. If you’re in sales, call 10X the amount of people you normally do, and you’ll naturally get better and more creative as a result. If you’re a writer, 10X the amount of words you write per day and you’ll naturally get better and more creative as a result. Set goals that are just beyond your reach so that you’ve got no choice to level-up your skills in order to achieve them. That’s how you build more myelin.
7. “Creativity” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
“Creativity is a central source of meaning in our lives for several reasons… First, most of the things that are interesting, important, and human are the results of creativity. We share 98 percent of our genetic makeup with chimpanzees… Without creativity, it would be difficult indeed to distinguish humans from apes.”—Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
In “Creativity,” Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi schools us on how to leverage flow-states to increase our creativity. In the book, he discusses what he learned after interviewing 91 creative professionals from a wide array of professional endeavors, from astronauts to writers, philosophers and everyone in-between. Here are a few big ideas from the book: Creative people have a thirst to constantly continue learning about their subjects of interest; they never get sick of practicing the fundamentals, and they know how to connect seemingly unrelated ideas together to create something totally new.
8. “Daily Rituals” by Mason Currey
“Inspiration is for amateurs .… The rest of us just show up and get to work.”—from “Daily Rituals” by Mason Currey
In this creativity book, the author profiles 250 of the most creative people of modern history. Freud. Orwell. Benjamin Franklin. Maya Angelou. Ayn Rand. All these people had creative habits that helped them gain their notoriety. And in this book, Mason Currey details those elements of their daily lives, from when they wake, to how they work, to the foods they eat. Everything’s covered. This is an awesome coffee table book. Pick it up whenever you need some of the world’s greatest thinkers to inspire you towards increasing your creativity.
9. “Creativity, Inc.” By Ed Catmull
“It isn’t enough merely to be open to ideas from others. Engaging the collective brainpower of the people you work with is an active, ongoing process. As a manager, you must coax ideas out of your staff and constantly push them to contribute.”—Ed Catmull
This book is about the intersection of where creativity meets commerce. It was written by the co-founder of Pixar, Ed Catmull. The key creativity take-away I walked away with after reading this book was about igniting higher levels of creativity within an organization. I learned that I could inspire my employees to become more creative by fostering an environment that was actually conducive to creativity.
10. “The Originals” by Adam Grant
“Our companies, communities, and countries don’t necessarily suffer from a shortage of novel ideas. They’re constrained by a shortage of people who excel at choosing the right novel ideas.”—Adam Grant
The actionable insight from this book for me was this: increasing your creativity requires increasing your output. Regardless of what type of work you do, the key to creative genius lays in creating constantly and consistently and in very high quantity. It’s all about volume–those who create the most work increase the odds of creating the best work. Maya Angelou wrote 165 poems, Picasso created over 5,800 works, and 12,000 drawings. Einstein wrote 248 publications. Bottom line? High output —> high creativity.
Time to start increasing your creativity.
Now that you’ve got this list of the 10 best books on increasing your creativity — there’s only one question left… Which one do you read first? Should you go out and get all of them immediately? Should you read them all at once? Or should you take a lifetime to read them? So many options. So little time. Ultimately, it’s totally your decision what you do with this list and how you apply it to your life and career. But if I may, here’s what I would suggest you consider as you get started:
- Subscribe to a book summary site, like FlashBooks to get the key-takeaways from the books on this list.
- If you’d prefer to read an entire book, I would highly suggest that you read just ONE book at a time. Sometimes, when we see something new and exciting, we have tendency to want to do/learn/read it all at once… and as we all know, this is nearly impossible to do without stressing ourselves out. So, choose a book. And then commit to reading it from start to finish.
You’ve read 10 Books on Increasing Your Creativity, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
There’s more to Badlands National Park than gorgeous scenery….
There’s more to Badlands National Park than gorgeous scenery. You can see bison and bighorn sheep roaming the grasslands near colorful, jagged rock formations. Rich fossil beds reveal the remains of ancient mammals like saber-toothed cats and rhinos. 244,000 acres of South Dakota badlands will make this one of your favorite national parks. Photo by Shawn Stackhouse (http://ift.tt/18oFfjl).
My Battle Against Depression As a Child and What I Wish I Would’ve Known
You’re reading My Battle Against Depression As a Child and What I Wish I Would’ve Known, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
I was nine years old when my life completely changed.
I had always been a happy kid, but anxious. Being an only child with overprotective parents ensured that when I had to face the world on my own I had no idea about what to do. Every social interaction was awkward, every word-exchange a gamble, almost scripted, and not very well. Having to go to school was dreadful; I tried to make myself as invisible as possible, but even then, I got noticed, bullied and harassed. I hated the whole experience, and knowing that I would have to continue going through it for many more years would almost put me in a relentless panic.
One Monday morning I woke up and the fear had been replaced with emptiness; a sad void that stemmed from my heart and protruded to my limbs, rendering my useless. The colors of the world had disappeared, and everything was in black and white now. I had the constant sensation of falling into a bottomless abyss, not knowing when I would reach the bottom, if there even was one.
My mom failed at getting me out of bed that morning. She could tell that something had changed, something serious. In the midst of things, I’d lost my purpose to enjoy, to look forward, to live, to breathe. All there was left to do was lay in bed and stay soaked in sadness and sweat, barely more alive than dead.
My parents and everyone else that knew of my condition could not explain how a nine-year-old could be so sad. Life was just beginning, there were so many things to look forward to! But I kept struggling with purpose, because I had convinced myself there wasn’t any. Going to a doctor was not an option. Taking me to a psychiatrist would mean that I was crazy, and I wasn’t crazy, just really, really sad. So, my parents resorted to what they knew best; prayer and Bible passages, as well as forcing me to go to the park from time to time to enjoy the fresh air.
It didn’t work as well as they would’ve liked to.
The stigma and lack of information regarding mental illness at the time made my journey immensely difficult. I spent decades self-medicating with alcohol and drugs, ruining friendships and relationships, damaging my family beyond repair. I didn’t know what else to do, where else to turn. Sometimes I just wanted to feel numb, others I needed to feel something, something that would prove to me that my heart was still beating somewhere inside me.
I had to hit rock bottom several times to have the fortune to meet doctors that took the time to understand me, to be able to begin the slow crawl from the hole that I had dug for almost 20 years. It was painful, almost impossible at times, but I feel fortunate to have succeeded. That is the reason that children and parents are my focus nowadays; we must educate society to look for warning signs of mental distress early own, and we must end the stigma that tells them not to ask for help. We have a great responsibility, as a society, to help that nine-year-old child that might feel purposeless find a way to have hope, and to smile again.
The Flawed Ones is a novel that touches on the subject of depression, addiction, mental illness, the humanity that still surrounds those that are afflicted, and the stigma that we must eradicate to help the ones that feel helpless. You can have a chance to win a free copy before its official release at theflawedones.com
Photo credit: Michał Parzuchowski
You’ve read My Battle Against Depression As a Child and What I Wish I Would’ve Known, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
Happy National Dog Day! Out on the trail or curled up on the…
Happy National Dog Day! Out on the trail or curled up on the bed, we love our four-legged friends. At Denali National Park in Alaska, sled dogs are important members of the team. Here’s Tephra, a 9-year-old Alaskan husky working her last season before she retires this month. Photo of Tephra posing with fireweed by Miles Leguineche, National Park Service.
How To Hack Your Writing Brain
You’re reading How To Hack Your Writing Brain, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
Writing has always been the art that most intimately reaches out to people and asks them to create. Let’s be honest; we are more than aware when we can’t paint or draw or shade. We have relatively good indications of our futility in a great many arts because commonly, we can’t envision ourselves creating that art. If you can’t dance, you don’t think about your ability dance all day.
Additionally, many arts matter less in our daily lives due to a defined lack of practical application. Sure, you might need to help a sketch artist draw a bank robber’s headshot, but even then, you aren’t doing the drawing. There are rarely times where painting a picture of the snow falling in your front yard would be more practical than simply using your smartphone to take a picture and sending it, with love, to your friend in Florida. Your boss might say “write up a proposal and cover letter by the end of the day” but isn’t likely to say, “Please paint a picture showing how are meeting looked this afternoon.”
Writing is different because while it is an art (think Hemmingway), it is also a basic need (think writing a check or passing elementary school courses). And it can also be vindication (think about that time you went through that breakup and really wanted to put it all into words). The Internet is now in content overdrive. The competition for page views and sales is mostly funneled either via the written word, or video. Because video requires more laborious technological endeavors and skills, a greater challenge exists to accomplish it, leaving writing, once again, as the web’s driving art.
Writing has value in common daily application (think web marketing, your Facebook status, that cover letter) and art application (think that novella about growing up a small town girl in Kentucky, eventually ending up a pilates instructor in NYC, only to suffer the consequences of a fast-life suffering heart).
Because of this, I hear the phrase, “I wish I could write like you do” all the time. The written word is powerful and versatile, and for some, it seems unaccomplishable. Well, being a seasoned writer who has been published in USA Today, among other outlets, I can assure you, writing is something you can do. The problem is, you just don’t know how to hack your writer’s brain. And when I tell you how to mine your brain for writing ability, you may just not want it anymore. That’s because some would view hacking the writer’s brain as something that sits somewhere between an inconvenience and absolute annoyance.
But wait, I’m a writer, so how would I know if these tips work? Because writers just like me get writer’s block and I’ve learned that writer’s block is mostly just not following the below tips.
You decide. Here’s my list of ways to hack the writer’s brain.
1) Honesty Fuels Creativity
Writing, of course, by most every standard, needs a creative infusion. Words don’t just magically appear. But often, people think of “creative writing” as only writing for specific circumstances, such as a novel or a poem. But writing on all fronts typically requires creativity. And creativity is spawned from one’s ability to be insightful. And the only way by which you can be insightful is, to be honest with yourself.
If you want to create characters, the best place to start is by understanding your own self. If you need to write something that manipulates another party’s position (think writing a letter to a landlord), then you need to be in tune with how a real human thinks, not how you want them to think. A strategic writer need not be a seasoned writer, rather, someone who understands the emotions of other people.
You can’t create a character built on human emotions when your own interpretation of human emotions are built on lies. Wait, what? Yes, get over it, we all lie to ourselves about how think, how we feel, how we react to things. We are revisionist when it comes to considerations made about our day’s events.
Really good writers step out of their own body and judge themselves without bias. And they expose themselves to the elements. If you want to learn to write powerfully, start by writing about the real you. You have an inside track to human character (yours), to human emotion (your happiness and sadness and frustrations), and to human error. By writing about yourself in candor, without the constraints of ego, you begin to understand how other’s feel and interpret. This changes how you write a letter to your boss asking for a raise. This changes how you develop a character in your novel.
And what’s great about this? It is what writing classes have said all along: keep a diary. I don’t tell anyone to write a daily journal, but I do encourage writing when you feel impassioned about something in your life. Nobody needs to see it; this is your training to hone a skill.
When you went to the grocery store this afternoon, you might tell people you were savvy and got a great deal using a coupon (you are smart), and on the way out, you gave a dollar to a homeless person (you are giving). These are things, which while genuine and relevant, are often just us living in a shell and protecting our self-worth from being devalued by the world. We want people to think we are great. Great writers don’t think like this; they are commonly comfortable in their own self-deprecation.
“I went to the store this afternoon. As I was checking out, I noticed that the checker wasn’t going to scan in my case of water bottles because they were under the cart. I knew if I could just hold tight, I’d save $8. But I folded, I felt scared of getting caught, so I alerted the checker. Does the fact that I wanted to not alert the checker put me on the fringe of moral depravity?”
That’s loaded with real, human emotion. It is relatable and honest. It’s interesting. An entire character could be built from just that excerpt (I made that up, by the way). By writing honest things, you get access to the most interesting human being on earth: YOU.
2) White Noise Is Writer Brain Food
I can’t write anything while there is a TV or radio on, I tend to start following those scripts or beats. I can work on my laptop at a great non-writing related tasks and have a TV on, but I can’t write a well-thought out sentence if an episode of Friends is on in the background.
Silence is golden, but there might be more gold in white noise. When I used to fly a lot, I began to realize that my creativity seemed to be elevated (pun intended). I loved the sounds of the engine as my background; I felt immersed inside my own little brain. Well as it turns out, that “noise” seems to be pretty healthy for writers. Check out this full article in Fast Company discussing ambient noise and productivity, they related it directly to writing.
This hack is super easy. You can purchase apps, or, do what I do and hit up Youtube.
Here is an Arctic Blizzard, definitely one of my favorites.
Thunderstorms out at sea (this is thinker’s gold).
There are also some cool alpha brain waves one (these don’t work for me, but reviews are insanely good). Here is one.
Just search “white noise” in Youtube’s search bar and find what you like. I have some Bose Noise Reduction headphones that I pair up with these white noise videos, and it feels as if I am in a new world or a far, far away land. My productivity, my creativity, and my focus all feel elevated. This also allows you to work near a TV, radio or in a busy cafe without being subjected to hearing unwanted noises.
3) Reading Can Break Writer’s Block
If you deploy the above tips and still find you are trapped in writer’s block anyway, pick up something creative and read it. Or, if you are attempting to write something more formal, find some formal pieces of writing and read those. The new, focused stimuli will help shift your brain’s mode to that gear. When I offer this advice to people, they often respond with “I never thought of that.”
To be honest, I forget it as well. Its very basic, but very powerful.
4) What You Eat Fuels The Brain (Boost it with MCT oil or Coconut Oil)
We are going to get started where it hurts: your diet. I want to make sure I’m clear here; I’m giving you an essential writer’s brain hack tip, I’m not advising you on health. You can see your doctor if you want to lose weight or develop amazing biceps, I’m here to make you a pound for pound writing champ.
When I was growing up, one of my writing teachers used to tell me that if I wanted to achieve a more creative writing state, I should eat candy. He kept candy on his desk. This might be true, but the problem with it is you will have little endurance. Your writing tank will run out. Refined carbs aren’t great for endurance. Often, we think of diet and exercise as related (because they are). If someone is going to play basketball or run a marathon, they think, “what should I eat that offers me endurance?” The same should be true for writing. Writers need to be able to focus and concentrate for extended periods of time.
Stay with lower carbs or complex carbs. This means proteins such as meats, or carbs such as raw (or unsweetened nuts). Your brain will run more efficiently in this mode and eliminate that “crashing” feeling that refined carbs induce. You need your brain to have stabilized energy. The brain, is in fact, a much sharper machine when it runs lower carb. Here’s a great article from Authority Nutrition explaining how the presence of ketones in the brain is healthier for the brain (ketones are the result of super low carb diets that go on for extended periods of time).
So the hack? Get the ketones going and sharpen up that brain for the long haul. You can do this by ordering some MCT oil, or some coconut oil. For added effect, put either in your coffee. Don’t bust out sugary carbs until you are done writing. This focus is so intense that I often find myself 4,000 words deep and not even realizing what time it is, or how much time has passed. Writers, just like athletes, need endurance. And the writer’s main muscle is focus. Often, writer’s block is merely the result of a brain that can’t focus.
5) Hack Your Perception
I’m going to say this as candidly as possible: every person and every situation are interesting. If you think you are boring, it is the fault of your own perception skills, rather than the fault of who you are. If you think the store is boring and without any substance, that’s your perception missing life.
Life is interesting, always, unless you make it not so. I always tell people to go to a store and stop and look around and think, “what could I write that would make this experience more interesting.” This will help tune your perspective on matters to be a bit more intuitive. Most books ever written are about things, people and situations which are boring, the writer chose to not be bored.
Wherever you are, if you see a dull horizon, that’s always on you. Making a habit out of seeing the interesting factors in everyday situations and in yourself will help to hack your writing brain. It grants you greater self-awareness and refined intuition. Practice having increased intuition and watch the words flow for anything you choose to write about.
Conclusion: In the end, everyone is a writer. Sure, some of us are born with a little more prowess than others, but everyone can get better at it with practice and creating the right conditions.
Cory is a seasoned writer who currently writes for a prepping website called PrepForThat.com.
Photo credit: Daniel McCullough
You’ve read How To Hack Your Writing Brain, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
How To Hack Your Writing Brain
You’re reading How To Hack Your Writing Brain, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
Writing has always been the art that most intimately reaches out to people and asks them to create. Let’s be honest; we are more than aware when we can’t paint or draw or shade. We have relatively good indications of our futility in a great many arts because commonly, we can’t envision ourselves creating that art. If you can’t dance, you don’t think about your ability dance all day.
Additionally, many arts matter less in our daily lives due to a defined lack of practical application. Sure, you might need to help a sketch artist draw a bank robber’s headshot, but even then, you aren’t doing the drawing. There are rarely times where painting a picture of the snow falling in your front yard would be more practical than simply using your smartphone to take a picture and sending it, with love, to your friend in Florida. Your boss might say “write up a proposal and cover letter by the end of the day” but isn’t likely to say, “Please paint a picture showing how are meeting looked this afternoon.”
Writing is different because while it is an art (think Hemmingway), it is also a basic need (think writing a check or passing elementary school courses). And it can also be vindication (think about that time you went through that breakup and really wanted to put it all into words). The Internet is now in content overdrive. The competition for page views and sales is mostly funneled either via the written word, or video. Because video requires more laborious technological endeavors and skills, a greater challenge exists to accomplish it, leaving writing, once again, as the web’s driving art.
Writing has value in common daily application (think web marketing, your Facebook status, that cover letter) and art application (think that novella about growing up a small town girl in Kentucky, eventually ending up a pilates instructor in NYC, only to suffer the consequences of a fast-life suffering heart).
Because of this, I hear the phrase, “I wish I could write like you do” all the time. The written word is powerful and versatile, and for some, it seems unaccomplishable. Well, being a seasoned writer who has been published in USA Today, among other outlets, I can assure you, writing is something you can do. The problem is, you just don’t know how to hack your writer’s brain. And when I tell you how to mine your brain for writing ability, you may just not want it anymore. That’s because some would view hacking the writer’s brain as something that sits somewhere between an inconvenience and absolute annoyance.
But wait, I’m a writer, so how would I know if these tips work? Because writers just like me get writer’s block and I’ve learned that writer’s block is mostly just not following the below tips.
You decide. Here’s my list of ways to hack the writer’s brain.
1) Honesty Fuels Creativity
Writing, of course, by most every standard, needs a creative infusion. Words don’t just magically appear. But often, people think of “creative writing” as only writing for specific circumstances, such as a novel or a poem. But writing on all fronts typically requires creativity. And creativity is spawned from one’s ability to be insightful. And the only way by which you can be insightful is, to be honest with yourself.
If you want to create characters, the best place to start is by understanding your own self. If you need to write something that manipulates another party’s position (think writing a letter to a landlord), then you need to be in tune with how a real human thinks, not how you want them to think. A strategic writer need not be a seasoned writer, rather, someone who understands the emotions of other people.
You can’t create a character built on human emotions when your own interpretation of human emotions are built on lies. Wait, what? Yes, get over it, we all lie to ourselves about how think, how we feel, how we react to things. We are revisionist when it comes to considerations made about our day’s events.
Really good writers step out of their own body and judge themselves without bias. And they expose themselves to the elements. If you want to learn to write powerfully, start by writing about the real you. You have an inside track to human character (yours), to human emotion (your happiness and sadness and frustrations), and to human error. By writing about yourself in candor, without the constraints of ego, you begin to understand how other’s feel and interpret. This changes how you write a letter to your boss asking for a raise. This changes how you develop a character in your novel.
And what’s great about this? It is what writing classes have said all along: keep a diary. I don’t tell anyone to write a daily journal, but I do encourage writing when you feel impassioned about something in your life. Nobody needs to see it; this is your training to hone a skill.
When you went to the grocery store this afternoon, you might tell people you were savvy and got a great deal using a coupon (you are smart), and on the way out, you gave a dollar to a homeless person (you are giving). These are things, which while genuine and relevant, are often just us living in a shell and protecting our self-worth from being devalued by the world. We want people to think we are great. Great writers don’t think like this; they are commonly comfortable in their own self-deprecation.
“I went to the store this afternoon. As I was checking out, I noticed that the checker wasn’t going to scan in my case of water bottles because they were under the cart. I knew if I could just hold tight, I’d save $8. But I folded, I felt scared of getting caught, so I alerted the checker. Does the fact that I wanted to not alert the checker put me on the fringe of moral depravity?”
That’s loaded with real, human emotion. It is relatable and honest. It’s interesting. An entire character could be built from just that excerpt (I made that up, by the way). By writing honest things, you get access to the most interesting human being on earth: YOU.
2) White Noise Is Writer Brain Food
I can’t write anything while there is a TV or radio on, I tend to start following those scripts or beats. I can work on my laptop at a great non-writing related tasks and have a TV on, but I can’t write a well-thought out sentence if an episode of Friends is on in the background.
Silence is golden, but there might be more gold in white noise. When I used to fly a lot, I began to realize that my creativity seemed to be elevated (pun intended). I loved the sounds of the engine as my background; I felt immersed inside my own little brain. Well as it turns out, that “noise” seems to be pretty healthy for writers. Check out this full article in Fast Company discussing ambient noise and productivity, they related it directly to writing.
This hack is super easy. You can purchase apps, or, do what I do and hit up Youtube.
Here is an Arctic Blizzard, definitely one of my favorites.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SVAgQh7Gg0
Thunderstorms out at sea (this is thinker’s gold).
There are also some cool alpha brain waves one (these don’t work for me, but reviews are insanely good). Here is one.
Just search “white noise” in Youtube’s search bar and find what you like. I have some Bose Noise Reduction headphones that I pair up with these white noise videos, and it feels as if I am in a new world or a far, far away land. My productivity, my creativity, and my focus all feel elevated. This also allows you to work near a TV, radio or in a busy cafe without being subjected to hearing unwanted noises.
3) Reading Can Break Writer’s Block
If you deploy the above tips and still find you are trapped in writer’s block anyway, pick up something creative and read it. Or, if you are attempting to write something more formal, find some formal pieces of writing and read those. The new, focused stimuli will help shift your brain’s mode to that gear. When I offer this advice to people, they often respond with “I never thought of that.”
To be honest, I forget it as well. Its very basic, but very powerful.
4) What You Eat Fuels The Brain (Boost it with MCT oil or Coconut Oil)
We are going to get started where it hurts: your diet. I want to make sure I’m clear here; I’m giving you an essential writer’s brain hack tip, I’m not advising you on health. You can see your doctor if you want to lose weight or develop amazing biceps, I’m here to make you a pound for pound writing champ.
When I was growing up, one of my writing teachers used to tell me that if I wanted to achieve a more creative writing state, I should eat candy. He kept candy on his desk. This might be true, but the problem with it is you will have little endurance. Your writing tank will run out. Refined carbs aren’t great for endurance. Often, we think of diet and exercise as related (because they are). If someone is going to play basketball or run a marathon, they think, “what should I eat that offers me endurance?” The same should be true for writing. Writers need to be able to focus and concentrate for extended periods of time.
Stay with lower carbs or complex carbs. This means proteins such as meats, or carbs such as raw (or unsweetened nuts). Your brain will run more efficiently in this mode and eliminate that “crashing” feeling that refined carbs induce. You need your brain to have stabilized energy. The brain, is in fact, a much sharper machine when it runs lower carb. Here’s a great article from Authority Nutrition explaining how the presence of ketones in the brain is healthier for the brain (ketones are the result of super low carb diets that go on for extended periods of time).
So the hack? Get the ketones going and sharpen up that brain for the long haul. You can do this by ordering some MCT oil, or some coconut oil. For added effect, put either in your coffee. Don’t bust out sugary carbs until you are done writing. This focus is so intense that I often find myself 4,000 words deep and not even realizing what time it is, or how much time has passed. Writers, just like athletes, need endurance. And the writer’s main muscle is focus. Often, writer’s block is merely the result of a brain that can’t focus.
5) Hack Your Perception
I’m going to say this as candidly as possible: every person and every situation are interesting. If you think you are boring, it is the fault of your own perception skills, rather than the fault of who you are. If you think the store is boring and without any substance, that’s your perception missing life.
Life is interesting, always, unless you make it not so. I always tell people to go to a store and stop and look around and think, “what could I write that would make this experience more interesting.” This will help tune your perspective on matters to be a bit more intuitive. Most books ever written are about things, people and situations which are boring, the writer chose to not be bored.
Wherever you are, if you see a dull horizon, that’s always on you. Making a habit out of seeing the interesting factors in everyday situations and in yourself will help to hack your writing brain. It grants you greater self-awareness and refined intuition. Practice having increased intuition and watch the words flow for anything you choose to write about.
Conclusion: In the end, everyone is a writer. Sure, some of us are born with a little more prowess than others, but everyone can get better at it with practice and creating the right conditions.
Cory is a seasoned writer who currently writes for a prepping website called PrepForThat.com.
Photo credit: Daniel McCullough
You’ve read How To Hack Your Writing Brain, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
Christina Baker Kline
Every author has a story beyond the one that they put down on paper. The Barnes & Noble Podcast goes between the lines with today’s most interesting writers, exploring what inspires them, what confounds them, and what they were thinking when they wrote the books we’re talking about.
Christina Baker Kline’s fiction draws us with subtle and irresistible power into the lives and hearts of her characters, from the abandoned children of her bestselling novel Orphan Train to the enigmatic heroine of her latest book. In this episode of the podcast, the author talks with Miwa Messer about A Piece of the World, in which she investigates and re-imagines the story behind Andrew Wyeth’s iconic painting “Christina’s World.”
To Christina Olson, the entire world was her family’s remote farm in the small coastal town of Cushing, Maine. Born in the home her family had lived in for generations, and increasingly incapacitated by illness, Christina seemed destined for a small life. Instead, for more than twenty years, she was host and inspiration for the artist Andrew Wyeth, and became the subject of one of the best known American paintings of the twentieth century.
As she did in her beloved smash bestseller Orphan Train, Christina Baker Kline interweaves fact and fiction in a powerful novel that illuminates a little-known part of America’s history. Bringing into focus the flesh-and-blood woman behind the portrait, she vividly imagines the life of a woman with a complicated relationship to her family and her past, and a special bond with one of our greatest modern artists.
See more from Christina Baker Kline here.
Like this podcast? Subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher to discover intriguing new conversations every week.
The post Christina Baker Kline appeared first on The Barnes & Noble Review.
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Sig Nordal 