A Battle Against the Forces of Destruction or Why The Swiffer Won’t Do For Me

Posted on December 2, 2011 by joana galarza johnson

My top 3 favorite books about Creativity: Mihalyi Csikzentmihalyi’s Creativity Arthur Koestler’s The Act of Creation Twyla Tharp’s  The Creative Habit.   I recently discovered Jonah Lehrer (my favorite pop-science writer) is writing a book about this pet topic of mine.  I’m very excited about this–  Imagine: How Creativity Works  hits bookstores next Spring.  I mentioned the [...]

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What is Creativity Anyway?

Posted on July 21, 2011 by joana galarza johnson

I started this blog using Creativity as explained by Creativity scholar Mihalyi Csikszentmihaly as my working definition.  Csikszentmihalyi says, Creativity is any act, idea, or product that changes an existing domain, or that transforms an existing domain into a new one. And, The definition of a creative person is:  someone whose thoughts or actions change a [...]

Filed under: creativity, Defining Creativity, General Theory of Creativity, Idea Sharing, Ideas | Tagged: , , | 8 Comments »

Death and Mindset

Posted on January 5, 2011 by joana galarza johnson

Sometime after the birth of my first child I read The Good Life: Scott and Ellen Nearing’s Sixty Years of Self-Sufficient Living. Self-sufficient living is a backward idea overall, but one powerful image of the Nearings’ story has stuck with me.   Scott Nearing died by choice.  He lived to 100 years of age and [...]

Filed under: Defining Creativity, General Theory of Creativity, The Child, The Scientist, The Writer | Tagged: , , , | 4 Comments »

Creativity as a Hierarchy of Processes

Posted on December 10, 2010 by joana galarza johnson

Although the word Creativity actually appeared in the English dictionary only in the early twentieth century, by the 1950′s it became a popular catch-all and often overused word. Sixty years later, creativity is still ill-defined.  Today, a whimsical cook is creative, as is a finger painting toddler. Earlier this year, Fast Company Magazine published its [...]

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Defining Creativity, Part 7: Creativity as Experimentation in the Enlightenment

Posted on August 4, 2010 by joana galarza johnson

Every day, for a week,  I’m writing about the definitions of Creativity thinkers have offered throughout history and why each one cannot be the final definition. Yesterday I wrote about Cultural Suppression of Creativity. Sitting under an apple tree, Isaac Newton discovered gravity. A falling apple answered for him all questions regarding the mechanics of [...]

Filed under: Creativity: Historical Perspective, Defining Creativity, General Theory of Creativity, Ideas, What is Creativity | Tagged: , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Defining Creativity, Part 2: Semitic Slaves and the Brain-Altering Invention

Posted on July 26, 2010 by joana galarza johnson

Every day, for a week,  I’m writing about the definitions of Creativity thinkers have offered throughout history and why each one cannot be the final definition. Yesterday I wrote about Ancient Greek Artists Following the Rules. The first pure alphabet, created by Semitic slaves to track the work of underlings, stirred little sand and much [...]

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Creativity, is Not Yet Defined

Posted on July 24, 2010 by joana galarza johnson

Creativity is the ability to illustrate what is outside the box from within it.  –The Ride Today I’m spending time looking out windows. Creativity is still a fuzzy idea.  If you are looking, you know it when you see it. But, a clear-cut definition is still at large, still outside the box of science.  A [...]

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  • Creating Brains is a blog about the year I spent test-driving lessons left by thoughtful Creators of the past, current Neuroscience studies, Creativity Theory and insights from contemporary highly Creative people on how to live the Creative Life—from Scientists, Architects, Writers and Humanitarians. Creating Brains hit the net on the first day of Spring, March 2010. Here, I recount my daily adventures in pursuit of a highly Creative Life for myself and my growing young family of five children.
    I’m busy working on a book length project. So from May to September 2011 I”ll post on Fridays only. To read new posts at their freshest subscribe by e-mail (see below).
    Thanks for visiting. Please leave me a comment. I love to hear and learn from readers!

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  • 12 Quotes I Love:

    1. Take thought of the seed from which you spring. You were not born to live as brutes. --Dante Alighieri

    2. Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry. --Mark Twain

    3. I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious. --Albert Einstein

    4. The faculty of imagination lifted me when I was sinking. I am thankful to God, who gave me this faculty; and it is for me a part of my religion to defend this gift and to profit by its possession. --Charlotte Bronte

    5. The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives. --Albert Einstein

    6. Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. --Mark Twain

    7. Talent in cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work. --Stephen King

    8. He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed. --Albert Einstein

    9. Art is an attempt to integrate evil. --Simone de Beauvoir

    10. All the world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming. --Helen Keller

    11. The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of because words diminish your feelings - words shrink things that seem timeless when they are in your head to no more than living size when they are brought out. --Stephen King

    12. I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has had to overcome while trying to succeed. --Booker T.Washington

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