Download or read book Bursts of Brilliance for a Creative Life written by Teresa R. Funke and published by . This book was released on 2019-08-27 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this heartfelt and uplifting book, you will learn in quick, readable bursts: -What makes you uniquely creative -Why your art or ideas matter -How to silence your inner critic and access the courage to create -How to carve out time to follow your passion -How to trust your intuition and tap into your Higher Self

Download or read book Uncertainty written by Jonathan Fields and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-11-06 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jonathan Fields knows the risks-and potential power-of uncertainty. He gave up a six-figure income as a lawyer to make $12 an hour as a personal trainer. Then, married with a 3-month old baby, he signed a lease to launch a yoga center in the heart of New York City. . . the day before 9/11. But he survived, and along the way he developed a fresh approach to transforming uncertainty, risk of loss, and exposure to judgment into catalysts for innovation, creation, and achievement. In business, art, and life, creating on a world-class level demands bold action and leaps of faith in the face of great uncertainty. But that uncertainty can lead to fear, anxiety, paralysis, and destruction. It can gut creativity and stifle innovation. It can keep you from taking the risks necessary to do great work and craft a deeply-rewarding life. And it can bring companies that rely on innovation grinding to a halt. That is, unless you know how to use it to your advantage. Fields draws on leading-edge technology, cognitive science, and ancient awareness-focusing techniques in a fresh, practical, nondogmatic way. His approach enables creativity and productivity on an entirely different level and can turn the once-tortuous journey into a more enjoyable quest.

Download or read book Dancing in Combat Boots written by Teresa R. Funke and published by Bailiwick Press. This book was released on 2007-09 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eleven fictional stories representative of the millions of housewives and mothers who took off their aprons and stepped into the factories, offices and hospitals to do the work of husbands, sons and brothers who were called to war.

Download or read book Borrowing Brilliance written by David Kord Murray and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009-09-03 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a book poised to become the bible of innovation, a renowned creativity expert reveals the key to the creative process-"borrowing". As a former aerospace scientist, Fortune 500 executive, chief innovation officer, inventor, and software entrepreneur, David Kord Murray has made a living by coming up with innovative ideas. In Borrowing Brilliance he shows readers how new ideas are merely the combination of existing ones by presenting a simple six-step process that anyone can use to build business innovation: ?Defining-Define the problem you're trying to solve. ?Borrowing-Borrow ideas from places with a similar problem. ?Combining-Connect and combine these borrowed ideas. ?Incubating-Allow the combinations to incubate into a solution. ?Judging-Identify the strength and weakness of the solution. ?Enhancing-Eliminate weak points while enhancing strong ones. Each chapter features real-life examples of brilliant borrowers, including profiles of Larry Page and Sergey Brin (the Google guys), George Lucas, Steve Jobs, and other creative thinkers. Murray used these methods to re-create his own career and he shows readers how to harness them to find creative solutions.

Download or read book The Smart Thinking Book written by Kevin Duncan and published by Concise Advice. This book was released on 2015-10-31 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plenty of people are intelligent and have the right qualifications. But in business, to be successful, you also have to be smart and creative. This book contains 60 pieces of distilled wisdom to help you think smartly and creatively, and to enable you to stand out from the others. By the author of the bestselling 'The Diagrams Book' (12 languages licensed), each piece of advice can be read in one minute or the entire book in one hour. Divided into six main sections (Growth, Communication, Innovation, Creativity, Relationships and Thinking, this powerful little book draws from a range of disciplines and perspectives to enable readers to transform the way they approach work and life. LID Publishing's popular Concise Advice Lab notebooks are designed to be quick and comprehensive brainstorming tools and skill-building resources for busy professionals. The small trim size makes it easy to take along in a briefcase or purse. Interior pages are matte finish, so ink won't smear, and there's plenty of space to jot notes. A ribbon makes it easy to mark your place, and the elastic outer band keeps the notebook closed.

Download or read book The Artful Year written by Jean Van't Hul and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2016-11-15 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Celebrating the seasons provides a wonderful opportunity to embrace creativity together as a family. It’s also a fun way to decorate for, prepare for, and learn about the holidays we celebrate. In The Artful Year, you’ll find a year’s worth of art activities, crafts, recipes, and more to help make each season special. These artful explorations are more than just craft projects—they are ways for your family to create memories and mementos and develop creatively, all while exploring nature, new ideas, and traditions. The book includes: • Arts and crafts, using the materials, colors, and themes of the season • Ideas and decorations for celebrating the holidays together • Favorite seasonal recipes that are fun for children to help make (and eat!) • Suggested reading lists of children’s picture books about the seasons and holidays The 175+ activities in this book are perfect for children ages one to eight, and for creating traditions that appeal to all ages.

Download or read book Daughter of Smoke Bone written by Laini Taylor and published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2011-09-27 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book in the New York Times bestselling epic fantasy trilogy by award-winning author Laini Taylor Around the world, black handprints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky. In a dark and dusty shop, a devil's supply of human teeth grown dangerously low. And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherworldly war. Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real; she's prone to disappearing on mysterious "errands"; she speaks many languages--not all of them human; and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? That is the question that haunts her, and she's about to find out. When one of the strangers--beautiful, haunted Akiva--fixes his fire-colored eyes on her in an alley in Marrakesh, the result is blood and starlight, secrets unveiled, and a star-crossed love whose roots drink deep of a violent past. But will Karou live to regret learning the truth about herself?

Download or read book Things I Learned at Art School written by Megan Dunn and published by Penguin Random House New Zealand Limited. This book was released on 2021-08-17 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part memoir, part essay collection, Megan Dunn’s ingenious, moving, hilariously personal Things I Learned at Art School tells the story of her early life and coming-of-age in New Zealand in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s. From her parents’ divorce to her Smurf collection, from the mean girls at school to the mermaid movie Splash!, from her work in strip clubs and massage parlours (and one steak restaurant) to the art school of the title, this is a dazzling, killer read from a contemporary voice of comic brilliance. Chapters include: The Ballad of Western Barbie; A Comprehensive List of All the Girls Who Teased Me at Western Heights High School, What They Looked Like and Why They Did It; On Being a Redhead; Life Begins at Forty: That Time My Uncle Killed Himself; Good Girls Write Memoirs, Bad Girls Don’t Have Time; Videos I Watched with My Father; Things I Learned at Art School; CV of a Fat Waitress; Nine Months in a Massage Parlour Called Belle de Jour; Various Uses for a Low Self-esteem; Art in the Waiting Room and Submerging Artist. Praise for Tinderbox: “Tinderbox is deadpan hilarious and Megan Dunn is a comic genius.” - Susanna Andrew, Metro “Megan Dunn's wry, whip-smart memoir about Fahrenheit 451, literary ambition & the last days of Borders Bookstores is funny & insightful as hell. Like Kathy Acker meets Sue Townsend. The read of the summer! ... already one of my favourite New Zealand books.” - Hera Lindsay Bird “Witty, highly entertaining.” - Philip Matthews, Stuff "Tinderbox is such a shape-shifter, such a sui generis work, that to call it a memoir does it a disservice ... [Dunn’s] voice is hard to resist – sardonic, brazen, sagacious – recalling, in places, Nora Ephron, John Jeremiah Sullivan, and Maggie Nelson.” - James Cook, Review 31

Download or read book The Eureka Factor written by John Kounios and published by Random House. This book was released on 2015-04-14 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a book perfect for readers of Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit, David Eagleman’s Incognito, and Leonard Mlodinow’s Subliminal, the cognitive neuroscientists who discovered how the brain has aha moments—sudden creative insights—explain how they happen, when we need them, and how we can have more of them to enrich our lives and empower personal and professional success. Eureka or aha moments are sudden realizations that expand our understanding of the world and ourselves, conferring both personal growth and practical advantage. Such creative insights, as psychological scientists call them, were what conveyed an important discovery in the science of genetics to Nobel laureate Barbara McClintock, the melody of a Beatles ballad to Paul McCartney, and an understanding of the cause of human suffering to the Buddha. But these moments of clarity are not given only to the famous. Anyone can have them. In The Eureka Factor, John Kounios and Mark Beeman explain how insights arise and what the scientific research says about stimulating more of them. They discuss how various conditions affect the likelihood of your having an insight, when insight is helpful and when deliberate methodical thought is better suited to a task, what the relationship is between insight and intuition, and how the brain’s right hemisphere contributes to creative thought. Written in a lively, engaging style, this book goes beyond scientific principles to offer productive techniques for realizing your creative potential—at home and at work. The authors provide compelling anecdotes to illustrate how eureka experiences can be a key factor in your life. Attend a dinner party with Christopher Columbus to learn why we need insights. Go to a baseball game with the director of a classic Disney Pixar movie to learn about one important type of aha moment. Observe the behind-the-scenes arrangements for an Elvis Presley concert to learn why the timing of insights is crucial. Accessible and compelling, The Eureka Factor is a fascinating look at the human brain and its seemingly infinite capacity to surprise us. Praise for The Eureka Factor “Delicious . . . In The Eureka Factor, neuroscientists John Kounios and Mark Beeman give many other examples of [a] kind of lightning bolt of insight, but back this up with the latest brain-imaging research.”—Newsweek “An incredible accomplishment . . . [The Eureka Factor] is not just a chronicle of the journey that numerous scientists (including the authors) have taken to examine insight but is also a fascinating guide to how advances in science are made in general. Messrs. Kounios and Beeman examine how a parade of clever experiments can be designed to answer specific questions and rule out alternative possibilities. . . . Wonderful ideas appear as if out of nowhere—and we are delighted.”—The Wall Street Journal “An excellent title for those interested in neuroscience or creativity . . . The writing is engaging and readable, mixing stories of famous perceptions with explanations of how such revelations happen.”—Library Journal (starred review) “A lively and accessible ‘brain’ book with wide appeal.”—Booklist “[An] ingenious, thoughtful update on how the mind works.”—Kirkus Reviews “The Eureka Factor presents a fascinating and illuminating account of the creative process and how to foster it.”—James J. Heckman, Nobel laureate in economics

Download or read book The Age of Creativity written by Emily Urquhart and published by House of Anansi. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A moving portrait of a father and daughter relationship and a case for late-stage creativity from Emily Urquhart, the bestselling author of Beyond the Pale: Folklore, Family, and the Mystery of Our Hidden Genes. “The fundamental misunderstanding of our time is that we belong to one age group or another. We all grow old. There is no us and them. There was only ever an us.” — from The Age of Creativity It has long been thought that artistic output declines in old age. When Emily Urquhart and her family celebrated the eightieth birthday of her father, the illustrious painter Tony Urquhart, she found it remarkable that, although his pace had slowed, he was continuing his daily art practice of drawing, painting, and constructing large-scale sculptures, and was even innovating his style. Was he defying the odds, or is it possible that some assumptions about the elderly are flat-out wrong? After all, many well-known visual artists completed their best work in the last decade of their lives, Turner, Monet, and Cézanne among them. With the eye of a memoirist and the curiosity of a journalist, Urquhart began an investigation into late-stage creativity, asking: Is it possible that our best work is ahead of us? Is there an expiry date on creativity? Do we ever really know when we’ve done anything for the last time? The Age of Creativity is a graceful, intimate blend of research on ageing and creativity, including on progressive senior-led organizations, such as a home for elderly theatre performers and a gallery in New York City that only represents artists over sixty, and her experiences living and travelling with her father. Emily Urquhart reveals how creative work, both amateur and professional, sustains people in the third act of their lives, and tells a new story about the possibilities of elder-hood.

Download or read book Magpie Mind written by Laura Turnbull Fyfe and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind written by Julian Jaynes and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2000-08-15 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National Book Award Finalist: “This man’s ideas may be the most influential, not to say controversial, of the second half of the twentieth century.”—Columbus Dispatch At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion—and indeed our future. “Don’t be put off by the academic title of Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Its prose is always lucid and often lyrical…he unfolds his case with the utmost intellectual rigor.”—The New York Times “When Julian Jaynes . . . speculates that until late in the twentieth millennium BC men had no consciousness but were automatically obeying the voices of the gods, we are astounded but compelled to follow this remarkable thesis.”—John Updike, The New Yorker “He is as startling as Freud was in The Interpretation of Dreams, and Jaynes is equally as adept at forcing a new view of known human behavior.”—American Journal of Psychiatry

Download or read book Doing My Part written by Teresa R. Funke and published by . This book was released on 2009-09-18 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based of a true story, fourteen-year-old Helen Marshall takes a summer job at a war factory when her mother is hurt and unable to work. She discovers that not everyone appreciates her enthusiasm as she confronts a lazy boss and two older women who try to slow her down. Along the way, Helen learns the true sacrifices of war and that some grown-up decisions have life-or death consequences.

Download or read book Scrappy written by Terri L. Sjodin and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For those times when hard work and persistence just aren't enough, Terri Sjodin offers an inspiring guide to getting scrappy and beating the odds. Terri Sjodin loves scrappy people -- those who beat the odds with a blend of cleverness and fighting spirit. People who see big problems and come up with big solutions. People like the clever Girl Scout who sold 117 boxes of cookies in two hours outside a medical marijuana dispensary, or the entrepreneur who turned his home into an indoor jungle to sell investors on the Rainforest Cafe Restaurant chain. It can seem like these successes are just one-off acts of ingenuity or isolated flashes of brilliance. But today it takes more than just creativity, more than just persistence, more than just a dream to reach big goals -- it takes a mindset and a strategy. Sjodin explains the common elements behind every successful scrappy effort.

Download or read book Mean written by Myriam Gurba and published by Coffee House Press. This book was released on 2017-11-07 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: True crime, memoir, and ghost story, Mean is the bold and hilarious tale of Myriam Gurba’s coming of age as a queer, mixed-race Chicana. Blending radical formal fluidity and caustic humor, Gurba takes on sexual violence, small towns, and race, turning what might be tragic into piercing, revealing comedy. This is a confident, intoxicating, brassy book that takes the cost of sexual assault, racism, misogyny, and homophobia deadly seriously. We act mean to defend ourselves from boredom and from those who would cut off our breasts. We act mean to defend our clubs and institutions. We act mean because we like to laugh. Being mean to boys is fun and a second-wave feminist duty. Being mean to men who deserve it is a holy mission. Sisterhood is powerful, but being mean is more exhilarating. Being mean isn't for everybody. Being mean is best practiced by those who understand it as an art form. These virtuosos live closer to the divine than the rest of humanity. They're queers. Myriam Gurba is a queer spoken-word performer, visual artist, and writer from Santa Maria, California. She's the author of Dahlia Season (2007, Manic D) which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, Wish You Were Me (2011, Future Tense Books), and Painting Their Portraits in Winter (2015, Manic D). She has toured with Sister Spit and her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach. She lives in Long Beach, where she teaches social studies to eighth-graders.

Download or read book The Sense of an Ending written by Julian Barnes and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-10-05 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A novel that follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he never much thought about—until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance: one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. A novel so compelling that it begs to be read in a single setting, The Sense of an Ending has the psychological and emotional depth and sophistication of Henry James at his best, and is a stunning achievement in Julian Barnes's oeuvre. Tony Webster thought he left his past behind as he built a life for himself, and his career has provided him with a secure retirement and an amicable relationship with his ex-wife and daughter, who now has a family of her own. But when he is presented with a mysterious legacy, he is forced to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.

Download or read book Beautiful Ruins written by Jess Walter and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2012-06-12 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Why mince words? Beautiful Ruins is an absolute masterpiece.” — Richard Russo The acclaimed, award-winning author of the national bestseller The Financial Lives of the Poets returns with his funniest, most romantic, and most purely enjoyable novel yet: the story of an almost-love affair that begins on the Italian coast in 1962 . . . and is rekindled in Hollywood fifty years later. The story begins in 1962. On a rocky patch of the sun-drenched Italian coastline, a young innkeeper, deep in daydreams, looks out over the waters of the Ligurian Sea and spies an apparition: a tall, thin woman, a vision in white, approaching him on a boat. She is an American starlet, he soon learns, and she is dying. And the story begins again today, half a world away, when an elderly Italian man shows up on a movie studio's back lot—searching for the mysterious woman he last saw at his hotel decades earlier. What unfolds is a dazzling roller coaster of a novel, spanning fifty years and nearly as many lives. From the lavish set of Cleopatra to the shabby revelry of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Walter introduces us to the tangled lives of a dozen unforgettable characters: the starstruck Italian innkeeper and his long-lost love; the heroically preserved producer who once brought them together and his idealistic young assistant; the army veteran turned fledgling novelist and the rakish Richard Burton himself, whose appetites set the whole story in motion—along with the husbands and wives, lovers and dreamers, superstars and losers, who populate their world in the decades that follow. Gloriously inventive, constantly surprising, Beautiful Ruins is a story of flawed yet fascinating people, navigating the rocky shores of their lives while clinging to their improbable dreams.