Your Creative Brain

Can sitting in front of a light box increase your creativity? [YES] How about listening to Bach's Italian Concerto in F major? [NO]. These are crucial questions to the survival of humans. We need to find ways to unlock our creativity, both as individuals and as a species, if we are to adapt to the challenges and dangers, as well as the opportunities, of the accelerated-change climate of the 21st century. Creativity is not only for artists, musicians, and mad scientists. This original and useful book presents a program to understand and increase your creativity in seven specific states of mind or brainsets. 1. The Connect Brainset: This is a defocused state of attention that allows you to see the connections between objects or concepts and to generate multiple solutions to a given problem rather than focusing on a single solution. 2. The Reason Brainset: This is a state of purposeful planning in which you consciously manipulate information in your working memory to solve a problem. 3. The Envision Brainset: This is a state in which you see possibilities and patterns. You speculate using what if as a launching pad and respond with the full force of your imagination. 4. The Absorb Brainset: This is a state in which you open your mind to new experiences and ideas. You uncritically view your world and take in knowledge. Everything fascinates you and attracts your attention. 5. The Transform Brainset: This is a state in which you are able to transform negative energy into works of art and great performances. You are also motivated to express (in creative form) the pain, the anxieties, and the hopes that we all share as part of the human experience. 6. The Evaluate Brainset: This is the state in which you consciously judge the value of ideas, concepts, products, behaviors, or individuals. This is the critical eye of mental activity. 7. The Stream Brainset: The state is associated with the actual production of creative material, such as jazz improvisation, narrative writing (as in novels or short stories), sculpting or painting, and the step-by-step revelation of scientific discovery. Readers will learn which parts of the brain are hot during each of these seven brainsets, and find quizzes, exercises, and self-tests to help them use each brainset to their advantage.