Shelley Carson - Your Creative Brain: Seven Steps to Maximize Imagination, Productivity, and Innovation in Your Life

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Carson, Shelley, date

Your creative brain: seven steps to maximize imagination, productivity, and innovation in your life / Shelley Carson.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-470-54763-2 (hardback); ISBN 978-0-470-65103-2 (ebk); ISBN 978-0-470-65142-1 (ebk); ISBN 978-0-470-65143-8 (ebk)

1. Creative ability. 2. Cognition. 3. Brain. I. Title.

BF408.C216 2010

153.3'5dc22

2010018175

CONTENTS

To Stevie and Naciethe creative bookends of my life

PREFACE

This book begins in a small lab room in William James Hall. It is a late fall afternoon, and the shadows are growing long as Professor Bill Milberg removes the specimen from a formalin-filled Tupperware container. As usual, the source of this coveted specimen remains shrouded in mystery, leading to wild speculation among the doctoral students about how Milberg obtained it. He places it in my gloved hands, and I am suddenly transfixed. It is an almost mystical experience. What I am holding is an individuals universethe sum of one mans knowledge, his dreams, his favorite songs, his memories. I am holding a human brain.

The enormity of the power of this object threatens to overwhelm me (or maybe it is the formalin fumes?) and I think: How is it possible that the concepts for skyscrapers, interstate highway systems, orchestral symphonies, great works of literature and art, rockets that will take us to the moon and beyond, as well as acts of intense greed and cruelty all have their beginnings in an object similar to the three-pound universe within my hands? How boldand how creativeis the human brain! How is it possible that the brain, small enough to fit within my curved hands, can conceive and manifest all our human-made marvels? I suddenly realize that to attempt to answer this question will be an insatiable driving force in my professional life.

Fast-forward to 2010. By now, Ive had the privilege of meeting hundreds of creative brainshoused within the skulls of the unique individuals who have taken part in my studies, enrolled in my creativity courses, and consulted me to help them in their creative professions. Many of these individuals have been instrumental in talking me into writing this book. Let me briefly introduce you to three of those creative people.

Corey was a student in my creativity course a few years ago. When it came time to engage in some of the creativity tests we conduct in the class, he declined. He told me that he wasnt creative himself but was only taking the course because his girlfriend was an artist and he wanted to understand her better. (Corey, you get kudos for wanting to understand your girlfriend but you still have to take the tests!) Of course, it turns out that Corey was creative after all; but his pathway to innovative output was different from that of his girlfriend, and he needed to understand how to access his own unique pathway.

Jenna is an interior designer who almost lost the career she loved because she was having trouble coming up with new ideas. Every time she had an idea about a new design, she immediately rejected it because it didnt conform to the outdated standards she had learned in design school decades ago. She contacted me because she was afraid to let herself think innovative thoughts that werent tried and true. Jenna needed to get out of the evaluation mode before she could take advantage of her innate ability to generate new ideas.

Richard, an independent film producer and director who contacted me for help, had just the opposite problem. Unlike Jenna, he couldnt stop his innovative thoughts, and as a result, his latest film was in crisis. Each night he came up with original ideas for plot changes, character nuances, set design changes, and new ways to depict the deep themes within his movie. The next day, hed stop production to go over these exciting modifications with the cast and crew. Eventually, most of the cast left the project, fed up with the constant changes and delays, and Richard was left with nothing but the great visions in his mind to show for all his time. Richard had to learn how to stop generating ideas and focus on the work of implementing them.

Perhaps like Corey, you feel that there are creative people and there are uncreative people (and you have placed yourself in the latter category). Perhaps like Jenna, you sense that creative ideas are out there ready to be discovered, but youre afraid to let go of the safe mental space thats bounded by what is tried and true. Or perhaps like Richard, youre full of creative ideas but unable to stop generating them long enough to bring any one idea to fruition. If you identify with any of these, youll find that I wrote this book for you!

Here is something Ive learned in the years of study and experimentation since my first encounter with the human brain in Bill Milbergs class. The differences between the brains of highly effective creative achievers and the brains of the rest of us are far less important than the commonalities. There are certainly genetic differences that influence creativity, and of course, there will always be people who are more creative than others. However, through the study of highly creative brains, weve found that all of us have creative brains. We are allbarring serious brain injuryequipped with basically the same brain structures. It is the way we activate these structures (our brain activation patterns) and the way we form connections between these structures that appear to affect our ability to think creatively. The exciting part is that new findings indicate we can manipulate these brain activation patternsand we can form new connections within the brainwith training; in short, we can learn to activate our brains in similar patterns to those of highly creative individuals.