School of Creative Business - Creative Entrepreneurship

"Creative Thinking"- Strategy # 7- Getting in Touch with Your Emotions Video

Living a Creative Thought Provoking Life: Strategy #7 - Get in Touch with Your Emotions

Strategy #7 - Get in Touch with Your Emotions

Flickr image National Media Museum

OMG, I am the most emotional person I know. I cry at a drop of a hat. I cry when I'm sad, happy, angry, and excited. Getting in touch with my emotions, I have no problems with. What I need to work on is understanding why I am having these emotions, what are they connected to and how can I overcome them when they are the most inappropriate.

Emotions are good and we should express them whenever we can, but we also have to understand the why behind them. So when you feel some type of emotions during the day, systematically ask yourself:

• "What, exactly, is the thinking leading to this emotion?" For instance- if you are angry about something- ask yourself, what is the thinking that is making me angry?

• What other ways should I think about this situation? Can I put a humor spin on it, can I just cough it up as just life experience and learn from it?

• If you can, change the direction of the emotion, your emotions will soon shift to match the new thoughts.

Emotional Artists

An extremely emotional artist is not really the most productive and easy person to work with . If you ever get bad reviews on an art show, then suck it up and learn from it. Everyone isn't going to like your work, it 's their lost, not yours. Just leave the crying and emotional threats at the door.

A few of us may even get emotional when we are praised. (This is me.) When someone complements me on my work, I feel this overwhelming emotion come over me. And I know this is because I honestly don't feel like I deserve it, so instead of tearing up, I try to play down the complement, by saying " Oh- it took me no time to make it, or its no big deal."

Because of strategy #7- I am taking the time to observe these emotions and I'm trying use other comments that reflects  pride and confidence in my work.

 

"Creative Thinking"- Statergy # 6 - Redefine the Way You See Video

Living a Creative Thought Provoking Life: Strategy #6 - Redefine the Way You See

Strategy # 6 - Redefine the Way You See

Flickr image By Tina Manthorpe

 This strategy is my favorite strategy so far. In this strategy, you are to practice redefining the way you see things around you- turning negative situations into positive situations - dead ends into new beginnings - mistakes into opportunities to learn.

To make this strategy more practical to our everyday lives we have to set up a few guidelines.

• Make a list of 5 to 10 recurrent negative contexts in which we feel frustrated, angry, unhappy or worried.
• Then identify what might be the root cause of these negative contexts.
• Allow the next step to be plausible alternative to solve the negative context- plan for a new response as well as new emotions.

"For every problem under the sun, there is a solution or there is none. If there be one, think til you find it. If there be none, then never mind it."

The quote above explains how I live my life now. I don't worry about things I can not fix and for those I can fix, I try to solve them with the simplest solutions. I swear since I've taken this role to living life, my life seems so much better. Learn to take the high road.

"Creative Thinking" - Strategy # 5 - Dealing with Egocentric Thinking Video

Living a Creative Thought Provoking Life: Strategy #5 - Dealin with Egocentric Thinking

Strategy # 5 - Egocentric Thinking

Flickr image  by Jubiii

Today's Creative Thought Provoking Strategy deals with our egocentric thinking. Egocentric thinking is thought to be way in which we favor oneself. Well you might say -"What is wrong with thinking highly of yourself?" I too thought the same thing. I was taught to think good of yourself. But like anything we do too much of a good thing, can do us some harm.

Start to observe you egocentric thinking in action by contemplating questions such as these:

• Under what circumstances do I think with bias of myself?
• Do I ever become irritable over small things?
• Did I do or say anything "irrational" to get my way?
• Did I try to impose my will upon others?
• Did I ever fail to speak my mind when I felt strong about something, to later feel resentment?

The key thing to learn from this strategy is to identify your egocentric thinking in action. Once you have identified a few of your patterns you can then replace them with more rational thought through systematic self-reflection. Like: What would a rational person feel in this or that situation?, or What would a person free of major egocentric thinking do?

In the case of egocentric thinking I'm not going to say to remove all egocentric thinking. That would be and feel to odd for an artist. I think we have to tell ourselves that our work is good, or better than others to continue doing what we do. I don't consider this egocentrism, I just call it being confident.

Try it out for yourself. Just be more aware of when the ego might get in the way of your success and learn how to replace this ego with more rational thoughts.

Next ...

 My personal video journal on Egocentric Thinking .

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Thanks - Peace & More Love,  

 

"Creative Thinking" Strategy # 4- Reshape Your Character Video

Living a Creative Thought Provoking Life: Strategy #4 - Reshape Your Character

Strategy #4 - Reshape Your Character

_{Flickr Image  M. Alfreshaid}

Our parents and other love ones have talked to you and me about how important it is to have good character. And I totally agree that we all should strive to have the best character trait out there, but sometimes as we get older we have to revisit the character we have developed so many years ago. This post today is about reshaping the character we have so long held onto.

Strategy #4 requires you to choose one intellectual trait - intellectual perseverance, autonomy, empathy, courage, humility or any other one you feel you would like to address. You are to focus on how you can develop that trait in yourself.

For this week, I chose - Courage. "The courage to choose love & The courage to live out my dream". Just recently I posted on my Studio 2229 blog - "Good, Better, the Best" my courage to choose love.

The ideal is to focus on your verbal and physical reactions, emotions and thoughts as you introduce a trait into your life today. For example if you choose humility- look for when you admit you are wrong, when you refuse to admit you are wrong, or when you become defensive when another person tries to point our a deficiency within work or thinking.

The point is to pay closer attention to your actions, record them and learn how to better handle such situations. Character development is a good thing, and like when we were younger it made us into better people, by taking the time to reshape your character a little more can only mean that we are to become  better artists and as people.

Take a few moments today and introduce a new character trait into your creative life. Looking forward to hearing your responses.

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Thanks - Peace & More Love,  

"Creative Thinking" Strategy # 3 - Internalize Intellectual Standards - Video

Living a Creative Thought Provoking Life: Strategy #3 - Intellectual Standards

Strategy # 3 - Intellectual Standards

_{Flickr Image J-Stevens}

For today the purpose of strategy #3 is to develop a heightened awareness of any intellectual standards we might have about what we create. The Critical Thinking Community has noted that there are 8 intellectual standards: clarity, precision, accuracy, relevance, depth, breath, logicalness, & significance. Each one of these  standards should be analyzed one at a time. And for the purpose of this post, I suggest that you only choose one and incorporate the others later on during the week.

But in any case- the standard you choose for today should be one that reflects your intellectual standard of your art work at this moment. For example if you chose clarity , then pay close attention to when you speak or write, whether you are clear about what you are trying to say.

State what you are saying with explicit and precise words -I have a dictionary with me at all times- but I'm still working on becoming a better writer and speaker everyday.

Elaborate when necessary on topics that may seem unclear to others who may not understand or know your art style- Not everyone is going to know the techniques that you use, so explain a few simple details to allow others to know and appreciate the skills it takes to create such artwork.

Give examples of what you mean form personal experiences- people connect to personal stories. Include them anytime you get a chance.

Use analogies, metaphors, pictures, or diagrams to illustrate what you mean- as a artist, I know that a picture is worth a 1000 words. Use images of your work to illustrate techniques, style and/or expression.

This strategy becomes handy when you are writing your artist statement  Try your best to use Strategy #3 to create better artist statements.

Tomorrow's Post:

Video on my personal take on Strategy #3 - Internalize Intellectual Standards.

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Thanks - Peace & More Love,