Week of September 1
QUOTES
“Creative people, as I see them, are distinguished by the fact that they can live with anxiety, even though a high price may be paid in terms of insecurity, sensitivity, and defenselessness for the gift of ‘divine madness,’ to borrow the term used by the classical Greeks. They do not run away from non-being, but by encountering and wrestling with it, force it to produce being. They knock on silence for an answering music; they pursue meaninglessness until they can force it to mean.”
Rollo May, The Courage to Create
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BOOKS
Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform Ourselves, by Sharon Begley
The Dalai Lama, Buddhist monks and some of the world’s leading neuroscientists all gather once a year at a conference on the latest discoveries in neuroplasticity: the study of how the human brain can change itself. This remarkable conference serves as the center of Wall Street Journal science columnist Begley’s account of neuroplasticity.. she walks readers through the seminal experiments showing that in fact new neurons are created in the brain every day, even in people in their 70s. With frequent tangents into Buddhist philosophy, Begley surveys current knowledge of neuroplasticity. [Publishers Weekly summary]
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PROGRAMS
Find Your Life Mission and Live It If you want more than a job change, if you want more than a career change… if what you really want is a meaningful life change, maybe it’s time you started thinking about ChangingCourse.com
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ARTICLES
Abraham Maslow and Humanism
Humanism may be summarized as “any system or mode of thought which emphasizes human interests, values, and dignity.”
To get more specific with reference to personal growth, it is a central philosophy in the Human Potential Movement, which “formed around the concept of cultivating extraordinary potential that its advocates believed to lie largely untapped in most people. The movement took as its premise the belief that through the development of ‘human potential’, humans can experience an exceptional quality of life filled with happiness, creativity, and fulfillment.” [Wikipedia]
Humanistic psychology developed as a “force” or major direction in psychology, along with psychoanalysis, behaviorism, and transpersonal psychology.
American psychologist Abraham Maslow (1908–1970) is considered one of the intellectual founders of humanistic psychology, and is noted for his idea of a “hierarchy of human needs.” [link to diagram]
In his book Toward a Psychology of Being, Maslow declared, “If we wish to help humans to become more fully human, we must realize not only that they try to realize themselves, but that they are also reluctant or afraid or unable to do so. Only by fully appreciating this dialectic between sickness and health can we help to tip the balance in favor of health.”
More on Talent Development Resources
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Mind enhancement devices and drugs
A flickering candle, the sound of surf, beating drums, psychotropic plants - those can all be seen as early “devices” for altering mental states and consciousness. Now, there is a wide range of much more sophisticated devices, software and smart drugs designed to enhance awareness and cognitive abilities, which may or may not work.
The process known as brainwave synchronization or entrainment has been used for years in sound-light based mind machines (termed Auditory Visual Stimulation Devices). The main idea is to “drive” our average brainwave frequency from a high or faster level to a lower level, more associated with relaxation and meditative states.
Bill Harris, founder and director of Centerpointe Research Institute, describes his company’s version of this technology, acclaimed by many personal development leaders including James Ray and Jack Canfield.
Harris notes, “In the early 1970s the Menninger Foundation studied some Indian yogis who were in the United States. They hooked these yogis to different machines in order to measure the yogis’ control over supposedly unconscious mental and physical functions. These studies gave researchers the first peek at the electrical brain wave patterns of meditation.
“At about the same time, but completely independently, a researcher named Dr. Gerald Oster of Mt. Sinai Medical Center in New York… discovered a method, using sound, to create any desired electrical pattern in the brain, including those of meditation.”
Continued in his article How Holosync Works.
Another related mind enhancement technology (also via CD programs) is the Paraliminal series.
More on Talent Development Resources
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Never Lose Hope In Dealing With Your Fears And Depression
by Stanley Popovich — Challenge your negative thinking with positive statements and realistic thinking. When encountering thoughts that make you feel fearful or depressed, challenge those thoughts by asking yourself questions that will maintain objectivity and common sense.
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Summer Bishil on the emotional toll of “Towelhead”
Summer Bishil stars in “Towelhead,” about a Lebanese American girl’s coming of age in Texas during the first Iraq war.
In an article about the film, Rachel Abramowitz notes Bishil was 18 when she played 13-year-old Jasira in the film directed by Alan Ball (”Six Feet Under,” “American Beauty”), based on the novel by Alicia Erian.
Abramowitz describes the story as exploring “Jasira’s burgeoning sexuality and the fear it instills in her Lebanese single father who wishes she’d remain 9, and the desire it stirs in Jasira’s next-door neighbor, a 35-year-old Army reservist played by Aaron Eckhart.
“To some, the film — with its comic-horrific tone — will be shocking, but to Bishil it was a relief to find a part that not only suited her ethnically but actually resonated with her.
“It was like, finally, I’m reading something that holds a lot of truth in it, and means something. I was so relieved,” Bishil says. . . . .
Still, Bishil found one particularly violent scene was upsetting. . . she remembers going back to her dressing room and “having a little emotional tantrum and crying. And being very sad. I was really tired too. I wasn’t sleeping a lot. I was working 16 hours a day and operating on four hours of sleep. I’d come home and couldn’t sleep.
“Everyone was so nice about it. There wasn’t any reason to be crying,” Bishil recalls. But just living in Jasira’s mind was sometimes hard. “I didn’t realize the toll it took on me, until now.”
More on The Inner Actor
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How to nurture creativity: Are we all creative?
Is creativity possible for any of us? Yes, it is a pretty dumb question, but it can be all too easy to take on some form of belief that only kids or “artists” or “professionals” can use their minds in truly creative ways.
In one of his sermons, Reverend David Herndon argues, “Some people assume that creativity is a gift, bestowed or withheld by some capricious divinity.
“But I would invite us to consider another point of view, that creativity is a talent widely distributed among human beings, a talent which can be cultivated and developed, if one understands something of how creativity works.”
He quotes three people who know from personal experience about developing creative talent: “Whence and how [my ideas] come, I know not; nor can I force them,” said Mozart. “The role of this unconscious work in mathematical invention appears to me incontestable,” said Poincaire. “Because the thing has already taken form in my mind before I start on it,” said Van Gogh. Leonardo da Vinci also attested to the role of the unconscious..”
Continued in article Creative Ability Development.
Many artists and psychologists acknowledge our shadow side, or unconscious, as a source and power for creativity.
Author David Richo, in his book Shadow Dance: Liberating the Power and Creativity of Your Dark Side, quotes Carl Jung: “The shadow is the negative side of the personality, the sum of all those unpleasant qualities we like to hide, together with the insufficiently developed functions and the contents of the personal unconscious…. [The shadow] also displays a number of good qualities such as normal instincts, appropriate reactions, realistic insights, creative impulses, etc.”
Also see the pages on Depth psychology and The Shadow Self.
Creativity also involves going outside of ourselves.
R. Keith Sawyer, PhD, a leading expert on the science of creativity, says in his article The Hidden Secrets of the Creative Mind that one of our cultural myths about creativity is that of the lone genius.
But, he notes, “Ideas don’t magically appear in a genius’ head from nowhere. They always build on what came before. And collaboration is key. Look at what others in your field are doing. Brainstorm with people in different fields. Research and anecdotal evidence suggest that distant analogies lead to new ideas—like when a heart surgeon bounces things off an architect or a graphic designer.”
Also see more Creativity enhancement articles, as well as many books, quotes and programs on this site on how to nurture creativity growth.
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