If you’re right brained you’re creative. Scientifically there is some minor legitimacy to the assertion but in practical application it’s metaphoric and a tired one at that. But wait, there’s more.

Jill Bolte Taylor has an astonishing story. At most it will change your perception of how you exist; at least it will make you think about how her research applies to you. If ever there was a “right” person to experience a stroke it was her.

Jill was working at the Harvard Department of Psychiatry as a brain researcher when, during a 4 hour episode one morning, she witnessed the slow deterioration of the left hemisphere of her brain. Was she suddenly hyper-creative because her awareness was entirely right sided? No, not exactly, but her description will sound like you’re favorite spiritual guru or your 60’s friend on an acid trip.

Her stroke took 8 years from which to recover. Asked how she knew when recovery had taken place, she responds, “When I returned to a solid”. One of her remarkable discoveries is that without your left brain there is no longer a concept of self, no boundary that indicates where you begin and end.

Jill Bolte Taylor has one of the most fascinating stories to tell and does so in this TED presentation from 2008. There are additional links below the video including her website, a link to her book: “My Stroke of Insight” and an interview by Charlie Rose on Sept. 4, 2009.

“My Stoke of Insight” by Jill Bolte Taylor
Website Home page and interview by Charlie Rose.

Making money with creativity generates incredible friction; the two fight for attention and simply refuse to get along.  They rarely even play nice.

It’s nearly impossible to write an introduction to the works of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi [M.C. for short] in the space of a blog post, but this video will help.

What motivated me to pass this along are these barriers to creative flow: Worry, Anxiety, Boredom, Apathy and the like.  What better way is there to describe the buttons that “creative for money” pushes repeatedly – as though waiting for a stalled elevator – than to suggest these barriers.

The ecstasy of creation is what we’re chasing and what M.C. describes as the Flow experience.  Get back to it by putting away the anxiety if you can. Maybe this will help.

Oh, one more thing: take note how M.C. threw the 10 years of study into the mix.  Do you think Malcom Gladwell ever read M.C.’s work?

In this Video from the TED Conference this year, Author of Eat, Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert has this fun take on the origins of our creativity and a great way to conquer the fear.

Bio from her website:

Elizabeth Gilbert was born in Connecticut in 1969 and was raised on a small family Christmas tree farm.   She is the sister of the young adult novelist Catherine Murdock author of Dairy Queen and The Off Season. Elizabeth went to college in New York City in the early 1990’s, and spent the years after college traveling around the country and the world, working odd jobs, writing short stories and essentially creating what she has referred to as her own MFA program.