Because fire-breathing's a lost art

I've been away too long! Vacation's very happily chewed into my time this month and I've neglected this space.

But I've dropped in to point you to an excellent post by Sunil Sebastian (the guy who Makes Things Go) on Slaying the Creativity Dragon. You know... the beast that keeps you from developing your newest idea. Or the one that's keeping me from coming up with my own blog posts.

Meanwhile, go read Sunil's tips on the best way to kick off your battle, wrestle the dragon under your bed, and come out breathing your own Great Balls of Fire. His plan for stepping through the creative process makes coming up with new ideas seem oh-so-less-intimidating!

Next: What Curiosity has done for me lately.

Next, Next: Besides a badass pirate logo and a boatload of Great Big Ideas, what makes the folks at Brains On Fire so damned cool?

It's not Schrodinger's fault. He was just Curious

I've recently come across an odd banana-yellow book shouting a single word title from the bookstore shelf. The link is here. It's called Curious?

Aren't you?

I love the bold black font of the title, love the Curious-George feel of the dust jacket.

I'll admit that I haven't yet read the book and this is by no means a review or endorsement, but I'm going to write about it anyway. There's something about the idea that resonates.

Todd Kashdan of the really-long-and-rather-ambiguously-named, Laboratory for the Study of Social Anxiety, Character Strengths, and Related Phenomena, says that the missing ingredient to living a more fulfilling life is to become more curious. And then cultivate it.

Because this sounds like such an awfully simple and zen sort of premise, and because I'm already convinced that fulfillment happens to come in two convenient forms- hatching of new thought and nurturing of new ideas- it appeals.

The Curious book is next on my reading list but meanwhile, it's the bold-font title that's prompted some thinking about the role curiosity plays in snowballing Big Ideas.

Along with apophenia, one of the quirkier and sometimes even annoying traits I'd claim is a basic curiosity which causes me to ask people a lot of questions. The two traits tag team, because to make the connections that form those Big Ideas I'm always talking about, you've got to ask a lot of questions. Every new venture or adventure I've begun has come from a single query.

What if I started a blog on cultivating all those Big Ideas my friends always seem to cook up?

The energy and impetus to continue moving forward remains as long as I engage by asking more questions:

Where do those Big Ideas come from?

What are the essential qualities of a person who continually comes up with new (ad)ventures?

How can I encourage myself and others through the "idea incubation" stage?

How do we find the energy to work through stalls and setbacks ?

I've found that as the curiosity fades, the Idea begins to die. But what kills it? According to Kashdan's book, it's when the benefits of being curious no longer outweigh the risks of pursuing an unknown path.

Kashdan talks about developing the kind of person he calls "a curious explorer",and since he's volunteering to help me out, I'm up for some personal development. His promised methods sound just right for conjuring success from the genesis of a single question.

Over the next couple of weeks while on vacation, I'll be reading and taking notes. If his promised "exercises to show you how to become what he calls a curious explorer" deliver, this will become a testing ground for developing what he hopes is a "person who's comfortable with risk and challenge", and this blog will become a place where I'll examine functioning optimally in this, our "unstable, unpredictable world".

Going in, I've got a lot of questions for Kashdan. But for you, here's one: Do you know that Curious George was not a monkey?!

Hope: It's Now Available In Refillable Jars

What tools do you use to ensure that you remember your successes? Do you actively try to keep them foremost in your mind?

If not, why not?

If, as a child, you had a shelf full of trophies, you most likely understand where I'm going with this. And if that doesn't describe you at all (It certainly didn't describe me), then you need to hear this more than most.

I'm a Florida guardian ad litem, a court appointed advocate for children. So I actively look for ways to ensure that, for the case I am assigned to, my child's best interests are heard and served. On one level this can mean adequate care, but on another it means ensuring that he or she has every opportunity to succeed.

Makes sense. An adult who champions for a troubled young person.

While in court a bit ago, all of us involved in a particular case reported the progess of a teen we are charged with caring or advocating for. Our reports were universally glowing. This good news was deserved, too, because she's doing an excellent job with schoolwork and making huge strides in her path to adulthood. Our judge was so impressed with her, as a matter of fact, that she had the entire court give her a well-deserved round of applause.

Imagine you're a 16-year-old receiving applause from a judge and a roomful of people who are there to ensure your success.


At that moment, I wondered whether I could bottle that applause so that she'd have it long past that afternoon. When life got scary, she could uncork the applause. When her boyfriend broke up with her, she'd twist the top off the jar. And when she faced job layoffs or career launches, she'd be able to pop the top.

I got to thinking. I can't bottle the accolades she got that day, but I can make a journal, box, or album with the same intent. It would include every report card, record of the judge's glowing comments, and photos of those who'd encouraged her along the way. Everyone involved in her case could write letters to her future. We could tell her how much hope we have for her in the years to come, and how much we've believed in her enough to stand by her side through times bad and good.

It would be her real Hope In a Jar.

Couldn't we each make our own jar just like that one and recycle it when the contents got depleted?

Who Killed Creativity?

A lot of people I've seen come up with some really good concepts for new businesses or ventures end up not believing in their own ideas. Why? There seems to be a stopping point in the development process, one which comes with the notion that the term Creative doesn't apply to them. I've seen a few friends give up right at the point of initial concept, comfortably seated in the notion that they won't succeed in taking it any further because they're "just not very creative". The problem could be in understanding that their own definition of the word is too narrow or exotic. Maybe it seems too grand a term, one that's been shelved in favor of other skills we believe more suited to the formal corporate world. Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson would even argue that it's dead. In this Ted Talks video, he'll tell you schools killed it. Personally, I don't think the body's cold. It's merely dormant and contained.

Everyday creativity- the kind that can lead to a fulfilling business or career- can come from a mild case of apophenia, defined as "making new connections where none previously existed". It can be used as a problem solving skill, a tool to help craft your next piece of writing, or a catalyst for developing a new uses for common items. (Anyone remember the Pet Rock?) A case of apophenia is worth cultivating in helping find ways to develop and market your new ideas.

As a kid, one of my favorite games was Sesame Street's "one of these things is not like the other". It was simple enough that I was regularly rewarded with Cookie Monster growling, "yooou so smaart" at the end, but my real appreciation came because it appealed to my need to make connections in order to make sense of the world. Linking is where my own brand of "creativity" started. I'm not a creative. I'm a synergist, and that's a term I find a lot less daunting.

These days I exercise my apophenia as most of us do, as a people watcher and a hoarder of information, juxtaposing snippets of one against the other, tossing all of the pieces together against what's been gathered before. Thinking of ways to solve the problem of useable goods from foreclosures ending up in dumps is a very simple example of linking a problem to a solution. Connecting Budget Car Rentals to Harley-Davidson to rent motorcycles was how American Road Collection linked desires to fulfillment. The basic ideas aren't the least bit complex and required no more than 3 links.

1. Cars are rented.
2. People like driving motorycles but don't always own one.
3. Rent motorcycles.

This is right about the spot I've seen a lot of people stop their creative process. Once the high-level Big Idea has been generated, the same skill used to develop it isn't applied on a micro level. But the method is the same. Continued linking within each segment can lead to new ways to view each piece of the puzzle, and each step in executing a plan. If your links break, make new ones. Mindmapping is an excellent tool to help you visualize your links, and Sentinel World is an excellent place to learn how to get started on the process.


Apophenia has a flip side. For some, this thought process veers into the territory of consipiracy theories and magical thinking, but for most of us, it simply allows a true form of creativity to begin and is a first step in a path to finding and executing the next Big Idea. Besides, Big Ideas always seem like magic.

Further reading:

New York Times article
Where to Get a Good Idea:Steal It Outside Your Group

Breaking Bread with your Monster Under the Bed

To continue the thoughtstream from my last post on creativity and human potential, I'm pointing you to CNN's article:

How to Fail Your Way to Success.

The message is a simple one I'd come across with through reading and studying eastern philosophies. The buddhist view seems to be, as blogger and teller of stories Communicatrix explains, to lean right into it. Move towards it, and sit down with it. Make it a cup of coffee and a poundcake if it means you can get comfortable in its presence. List what you don't like about this monster and think through each bullet point until you can feel the emotions that come with the failure, then decide, one by one, whether you can accept it.

It's ironic that for the most part, every time I've failed spectacularly while attempting something new, I've been pleased with the resulting story I get to tell. And I actually smile hard or laugh whenever I recount each one of them. What's more, I'm nearly compelled to announce my failures. Just like this: There's the time I got stuck (impaled!) on a fence between the Daytona Airport and the Speedway during race week, poised in full view of several sports network trucks with running camera equipment.

Or maybe it was more like the occasion I moved up from riding a Honda 250 to a Sportster 1200 for the very first time and actually tried using the instructor's lessons on putting only one foot down when coming to a full stop. I survived, the bike's clutch handle and exhaust pipes didn't.

These were very small and personal failures. No fortunes were lost this time, and in the end, I'm infinitely more pleased with myself for trying than I am upset with the failure.

Does this pride-in-taking-the-dare over embarassment-for-the-defeat hold true for you as well? How can we keep this feeling in mind and use it to our advantage when we're poised to take our next leap?

We'll have a hell of a story. Do you have one to tell?

Is human potential lost, or just crippled?

The key question isn't "What fosters creativity?" But it is why in God's name isn't everyone creative? Where was the human potential lost? How was it crippled? I think therefore a good question might be not why do people create? But why do people not create or innovate? We have got to abandon that sense of amazement in the face of creativity, as if it were a miracle if anybody created anything.

- Abraham Maslow

Maslow's got a point when he asks, "Where was the human potential lost? How was it crippled?" But I think he's off base in asking why everyone isn't creative. I don't buy it. Part of the reason this blog exists is because over the course of years in the corporate world, I've worked in cubicles alongside some amazingly creative people who were wellsprings of bright and big ideas, regularly churning out three or four at a time. It's possible that one or two of those hundred ideas is currently in the works, but most never made it past the point of being bounced off of a few friends. How many are abandoned only to evaporate into thin air?

The problem is not that we're not creative, but that few of us want to gather up the strength to fail. We know chances are good that a bright new concept will find itself facing a series of tall brick walls. That risk is exactly what big ideas are made of!

Risk aversion is the counterweight balancing human potential.

That statement is an obvious one, but acknowledging it is most often used to give ourselves an out. We can explain away our reasons for limiting our own potential by convincing ourselves we're just being smart. Unlike Maslow, I don't believe the potential is lost at all. Instead, it's crippled by the fact that though we know a degree of risk aversion is necessary, we have no idea how to work past that counterweight even when we'd like to try. Maybe we should try desensitizing ourselves to failure. Why not build, right from our conceptual launchpad, a clearly outlined plan for several potential areas of failure and an even stronger and more detailed plan for the steps to recovery. So what if we don't fail in the exact way we'd imagined, we will still have worked through the exercise. Why not gather a group of friends who not only pat you on the back for your bold new idea, but help you face the potential for public humiliation, then assist in formulating that plan for recovery? Put the possibility that you will make a mess out there for your friends to see and let them give you feedback.

Is a better question the one no one really wants to ask: "How do I practice my failure"?

I want to find a mentor to teach me just that. If you have a wellspring of experience in that area, you can count me in as a fan.