Revolutionary understandings in clinical psychology now suggest that healthy interpersonal relationships are the fuel for optimal emotional, cognitive, intellectual, behavioral, and creative functioning. Contrary to how we’ve been taught to value independence and autonomy, this new scientific evidence is showing that we are at our best when we are connected with others.

My contention is that creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status... Truthfully what happens is, as children grow up we start to educate them progressively from the waist up. And then we focus on their heads. And slightly to one side.

Early researchers linked confabulation with amnesia and abnormal brain chemistry. Nowadays it's more pleasantly harnessed to the marvelous potential of the human imagination. Fantastic and spontaneous outpourings of irrelevant associations and bizarre ideas come quite naturally to ordinary creative folks.

Perfectionism has taken a bum rap. Were it not for perfectionism, we would be in short supply of all those myriad human activities we deem extraordinary, excellent, outstanding or great in quality.

Info on a series of podcasts on the Personal Life Media page "The Joy of Living Creatively: Tapping Your Innovation and Imagination."

The character development work "doing archetypes" is the foundation for discovering and writing your own already-existing characters.

In her essay A Room of One's Own in 1929, Virginia Woolf said that for women artists “a lock on the door means the power to think for oneself" and to develop the "habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think." But solitude is not the only sort of place to nourish creative expression. Many artists acknowedge the value of academies such as Idyllwild and Juilliard, and less formal artist retreats and workshops.

Whether you consider yourself a highly creative person or not, it is possible for all of us to be more creative if we'll take the time to nurture that part of ourselves. These simple steps will give you direction in how to bring more of your creativity to the surface and to optimize your intuitive powers at the same time.

By Robert J. Sternberg -- Creativity refers to the potential to produce novel ideas that are task-appropriate and high in quality. Creativity in a societal context is best understood in terms of a dialectical relation to intelligence and wisdom. In particular, intelligence forms the thesis of such a dialectic. Intelligence largely is used to advance existing societal agendas.

Worried that you’re not creative? You are, but you may be out of touch with it. Your intuition can lead you into a world of novel ideas, experimentation, and brainstorming that will perk up your work life and stimulate innovation and problem-solving.