The Creative Mind

The following is from "The Scientific Mind" magazine, June/July 2008 edition. I found it very interesting, and wanted to share:

"Creativity is not a gift from the muses only granted to certain people. Rather, it is something that anyone can cultivate, using a variety of methods."

From Robert Epstein, author of "The Big Book of Creative Games" and more:

"There are 4 different skill sets, or competencies that I've found are essential for creative expression. The first and most important competency is "capturing" -- preserving new ideas as they occur to you and doing so without judging them. Writing them down in a journal upon wakening, using a voice recorder. There are many ways to capture new ideas.

The second competency is called "challenging' -- giving ourselves tough problems to solve. In tough situations, multiple behaviors compete with one another, and their interconnections create new behaviors and ideas.

The third area is "broadening." The more diverse your knowledge, the more interesting the interconnections -- so you can boost your creativity simply by learning interesting new things.

And the last competency is "surrounding" -- which has to do with how you manage our physical and social environments. The more interesting and diverse the things and the people around you, the more interesting your own ideas become."

1. Capturing
2. Challenging
3. Broadening
4. Surrounding

AMEN to THAT!