#44 Creativity: The How

Ep 44 Between the Ears - Creativity (how)
Welcome, I'm Arnold and I enable you to have a better life between the ears because your inner state creates your outer reality. Today's topic is a follow-up to the first session about the what of creativity and now we're going to discuss the how of creativity. I would suggest a couple of things if you want to be creative, you want to improve your creativity, if you want to start with exploring your creativity, which is really important because from a very young age actually our creativity has been suppressed.

So I would ask you to allow yourself to be creative again. So what do you need that? I would suggest you need a question. What are you researching? What are you trying to address? What are you trying to make visible, tangible? So what's your question? Second one is you need a lot of different dots.

As in to be able to connect the dots. If you only have one or two dots well the connection is pretty easy and your perspective will be rather limited. But if you get a hundred dots you can make many many different combinations.

A dot is a topic, a subject in which you're interested. Something which inspires you, which you find interesting and it doesn't have to be related to your question or what you want to create. It can be something totally different.

A few years ago I read a book about the very very interesting man called Humboldt, Alexander von Humboldt. It was mentioned that later Chauvin used Humboldt's descriptions in his books. The book series of Chauvin is called Voyages Extraordinaires.

So you could say what is Chauvin and Alexander von Humboldt? What do they got to do with each other? Well they're just different dots and someone connected these dots. Time. You need time.

Give yourself time to create. It's not like oh this afternoon between three and four I have time to create something and then I want to create something and if it doesn't work I will be angry at myself. No.

Actually very opposed unnatural insights need time to digest, to penetrate, to really understand. So give yourself time. For instance, also years ago I read Robert's green book about human nature which I highly recommend and there was a chapter about where he talks about that we humans are foremost irrational beings and I'm like yeah yeah I understand what he's saying but it it was cognitive understanding.

I needed actually a few years before I fully understood and I fully felt what he meant by that we are foremost irrational beings. My addition that we are emotional beings and that the rational thing is not really who we are essentially. So give yourself some time to digest, to understand, to let it really land inside of you in your body as well.

So have patience. That's another one. Sleep on something.

Sometimes when I'm creating I would say every day but it's not like if I have an idea today and I set the outline on it and I work on it and I'm like no I'm finished, I'm done, that's it. No. Always always I would say sleep on it.

One night, a few nights, it doesn't matter how long but be patient because most of the time after I slept about it I'm like well I would phrase it in this way. Maybe I can add this. This is not really new.

I should skip that part. So have patience. Sleep on it.

Next one is fall in love with the problem not the solution. It's like hey I have this question. I have this problem.

That's what's driving you and not like hey I found one solution and now I'm gonna stick to that. No. Stay with the problem.

Next one is creativity needs space. Literally space in your head. You need space so you can receive new ideas and insights either from yourself because you are all of a sudden connecting a couple of dots or there are downloads as they call it.

Like I have no clue where this idea comes from but it popped in my head and now I start to work on it. You could call it divine intervention. You can call it many different things.

It doesn't matter but if you don't have space, if you don't allow yourself to have space then you cannot receive. It's like the other day I said to someone it's like if I show you my closed hand I cannot receive anything. If I open up my hand I can receive something.

Then you have to iterate. It's like hey I can create. I can do it like this.

I can do it like this and oh is it still working or not or how does it make me feel? Am I excited about what I created or is it just it's okay but it's not really good. Next one is creativity comes in and with chaos. The chaos is okay.

From the chaos things can emerge. You can put a structure to it later. You don't start with the structure.

The structure comes at the end. Just let it flow. Let it go and last but not least I would like to add remove expectations, remove the stigma, remove status, remove money, remove ego so that you're totally free to create what you think is needed in the world.

What's needed in your life without any expectations. So remove the pressure. Remove your inside pressure and your outside pressure.

So these are a few things which I would suggest you take into consideration when you are creating everyday beauty. We conclude each session with some examples of everyday beauty because beauty and especially moral beauty like kindness, courage and compassion has a very positive influence on your inner state. This is a post from well actually a tweet from well that well I don't know the person but it says give a shit about nature and there was a vineyard in Sacramento in California in the US has been dealing with a heavy pocket gopher and vole infestation and the researcher installed 25 barn owl nest boxes to see what would happen.

By the following year 18 breeding pairs had moved in and fledged 66 young. At peak 102 barn owls were hunting the property and surrounding areas simultaneously. Gopher activity declined measurably in the vineyard with owl boxes compared to a nearby control vineyard without them and over three breeding seasons these owls consumed an estimated 30,000 rodents and then the researchers ran the cost comparison.

Trapping averaged around eight dollar per rodent removed. The owl nest box accounting for materials installation and maintenance came on to 34 cents per rodent. That's a 24 to 1 cost ratio in for in favor of the owls.

A single barn owl family can remove between thousand and four thousand rodents per year depending on family size and hunting territory. Unlike rodenticide they don't accumulate in the food chain. A 2012 study found that anticoagulant rodenticides, so that's pesticides to get rid of the rodents, in 79 percent of the reptiles tested in but the owls taking rodents killed by poison became the next casualty in a chain that rules from the rat in the vineyard to the hawk to the fox to the coyote and above.

The nest box program doesn't do that. So this there was a study in the journal of pest management was the first to accurately measure the number of rodent deliveries to growing barn owl chicks and establish the economic value of a nest box program to farmers. A barn owl box costs between 30 and 80 dollars.

A family of owls willing to occupy it costs nothing and the rodent control starts within a season and is self-sustaining as long as the box stays up. So please remember we need your uniqueness. Be a better maker for yourself for others for the world.