PREFACE

This book begins in a small lab room in William James Hall. It is a late fall afternoon, and the shadows are growing long as Professor Bill Milberg removes the specimen from a formalin-filled Tupperware container. As usual, the source of this coveted specimen remains shrouded in mystery, leading to wild speculation among the doctoral students about how Milberg obtained it. He places it in my gloved hands, and I am suddenly transfixed. It is an almost mystical experience. What I am holding is an individual's universe—the sum of one man's knowledge, his dreams, his favorite songs, his memories. I am holding a human brain.

The enormity of the power of this object threatens to overwhelm me (or maybe it is the formalin fumes?) and I think: How is it possible that the concepts for skyscrapers, interstate highway systems, orchestral symphonies, great works of literature and art, rockets that will take us to the moon and beyond, as well as acts of intense greed and cruelty all have their beginnings in an object similar to the three-pound universe within my hands? How bold—and how creative—is the human brain! How is it possible that the brain, small enough to fit within my curved hands, can conceive and manifest all our human-made marvels? I suddenly realize that to attempt to answer this question will be an insatiable driving force in my professional life.

Fast-forward to 2010. By now, I've had the privilege of meeting hundreds of creative brains—housed within the skulls of the unique individuals who have taken part in my studies, enrolled in my creativity courses, and consulted me to help them in their creative professions. Many of these individuals have been instrumental in talking me into writing this book. Let me briefly introduce you to three of those creative people.

Corey was a student in my creativity course a few years ago. When it came time to engage in some of the creativity tests we conduct in the class, he declined. He told me that he wasn't creative himself but was only taking the course because his girlfriend was an artist and he wanted to understand her better. (Corey, you get kudos for wanting to understand your girlfriend but you still have to take the tests!) Of course, it turns out that Corey was creative after all; but his pathway to innovative output was different from that of his girlfriend, and he needed to understand how to access his own unique pathway.

Jenna is an interior designer who almost lost the career she loved because she was having trouble coming up with new ideas. Every time she had an idea about a new design, she immediately rejected it because it didn't conform to the outdated standards she had learned in design school decades ago. She contacted me because she was afraid to let herself think innovative thoughts that weren't “tried and true .” Jenna needed to get out of the evaluation mode before she could take advantage of her innate ability to generate new ideas.

Richard, an independent film producer and director who contacted me for help, had just the opposite problem. Unlike Jenna, he couldn't stop his innovative thoughts, and as a result, his latest film was in crisis. Each night he came up with original ideas for plot changes, character nuances, set design changes, and new ways to depict the deep themes within his movie. The next day, he'd stop production to go over these exciting modifications with the cast and crew. Eventually, most of the cast left the project, fed up with the constant changes and delays, and Richard was left with nothing but the great visions in his mind to show for all his time. Richard had to learn how to stop generating ideas and focus on the work of implementing them.

Perhaps like Corey, you feel that there are creative people and there are uncreative people (and you have placed yourself in the latter category). Perhaps like Jenna, you sense that creative ideas are out there ready to be discovered, but you're afraid to let go of the “safe” mental space that's bounded by what is “tried and true.” Or perhaps like Richard, you're full of creative ideas but unable to stop generating them long enough to bring any one idea to fruition. If you identify with any of these, you'll find that I wrote this book for you!

Here is something I've learned in the years of study and experimentation since my first encounter with the human brain in Bill Milberg's class. The differences between the brains of highly effective creative achievers and the brains of the rest of us are far less important than the commonalities. There are certainly genetic differences that influence creativity, and of course, there will always be people who are more creative than others. However, through the study of highly creative brains, we've found that all of us have creative brains. We are all—barring serious brain injury—equipped with basically the same brain structures. It is the way we activate these structures (our brain activation patterns) and the way we form connections between these structures that appear to affect our ability to think creatively. The exciting part is that new findings indicate we can manipulate these brain activation patterns—and we can form new connections within the brain—with training; in short, we can learn to activate our brains in similar patterns to those of highly creative individuals.

In this book I present a model that describes seven different brain activation patterns. I call this the CREATES brainsets model. It is based on neural activation correlates of what I believe to be the most salient mental aspects of human creativity. These include: openness and cognitive flexibility, mental imagery, divergent or associative thinking, convergent or deliberate thinking, judgmentalism, self-expression, and improvisation or flow. In my model, these aspects of creativity are conceived as states (or transient mental activation patterns) rather than as traits. Some of these states facilitate the generation of creative ideas, while some of them facilitate the implementation of ideas. The trick is to know which is which and how to get from one to another. That's what this book is about.

Clearly all of these states of creativity have their own underlying brain mechanisms; hence some of the confusion in the research literature about how creativity actually plays out in the human brain. It is my contention that you can enhance your creative output by: (1) understanding which of these various states related to creativity you prefer—I call this preference your “mental comfort zone”—and (2) gradually venturing out from your comfort zone to explore different aspects of creativity by learning to modify your brain activation state.

Although the CREATES model is just that—a model and not proven scientific fact—it is based on the latest neuroscience and research in the field of creative thinking, and the training aspects of the model are based on established psychological methods of behavioral change. Each of the seven brain states described in the CREATES model is accompanied by a set of exercises to help you enter that state. Like most such exercises, these have not been studied in rigorous trials to prove their efficacy, but they've produced positive results for the Coreys, Jennas, and Richards with whom I've had the pleasure of working. I urge you to sample a wide variety of the exercises and decide for yourself which are most effective for you.

My hope is that the contents of this book will aid and inspire you to take your innate creative abilities to the next level. And I invite you to let me know about your results! You can contact me—and explore the additional reader-only content and interactive tools—at http://ShelleyCarson.com. I challenge you now to read further, and then to discover, to perform, to produce, to invent, or to express—in short, to take advantage of—the unique and precious resources that dwell within YOUR CREATIVE BRAIN.