Creative Guidance

Chapter 1 excerpt from The Power of Thinking Differently by Javy W. Galindo

From section entitled “Creative Guidance” (updated 1/18/09 from draft IIII)

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Once you possess this, once you have enough motivation and willingness to think differently, what would be helpful is some guidance; some way to get a glimpse of the creative process so that you may come to know what to expect of its terrain. You will need to learn how to identify where you are in it so that you can respond accordingly to the obstacles that stand in your way. You will need to learn to appreciate it for what it is so that your experiences don’t overwhelm or under whelm you.

Several guides have helped me along my creative endeavors. I have found each insightful in their own way, and they each have helped me deal with certain aspects of the creative process. I feel it is my duty to repay my debt to them by sharing what I have learned with others so that they too may benefit from our innate ability to think differently.

In the following chapter I have summarized various popular perspectives of the creative process so that you can see them laid out side by side. Hopefully through this guided tour you can compare, contrast, and notice how your perspective may be similar to or different from these.

For the remainder of this book I will guide you through my own synthesis. In order to make sense out of all the different perspectives I have encountered, I needed to develop my own unique understanding of how they were all related within a larger creative process framework. What I discovered was a wonderful, rich story of creativity. With this, I am now better able to identify the common blocks to the creative process and how to resolve them in various contexts – including the artist, the businessperson, the inventor, the scientist, the worker, the community organizer, and much more.

Using real world examples, psychology, and neuroscience, I will do my best to illustrate what I understand to be the creative process.

In your hands is my map to the power of thinking differently.

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