In my work as a therapist, I see daily examples of relationships slowly dying-and occasionally exploding. While tragic, these examples give me some insight into a common set of factors that tend to ruin relationships. And with a little reverse engineering, they also shed light on how we might strengthen and improve relationships. I've taken these factors and combined them with with my own training as psychologist to come up with five practical tips anyone can use to improve the quality of your most important relationships.

Whether you want to strengthen your marriage, be a better parent, or get along better with your boss, learning to see people like a therapist can be a powerful way to do it. By far the biggest mistake I see people make in their relationships is getting stuck in <a href="https://nickwignall.com/paradoxical-problems/">problem-solving mode </a>. When we're stuck in problem-solving mode, we immediately respond to anything difficult or painful as if it was a problem: We analyze, judge, dissect, compare, evaluate, and interrogate. And while all of these problem-solving approaches are helpful if you're building a bridge or solving an equation, they tend to backfire when applied to people.

While your intentions are probably good, treating people's struggles like a problem is invalidating. It makes them feel like it's not okay for them to have the problem or that they should be able to fix it immediately. And for someone who's struggling or upset, feeling bad about feeling bad is a recipe for defensiveness, communication breakdowns, and long-term relationship trouble.

When we're upset, most of us simply want to feel understood and that we're not alone. The alternative is to <a href="https://nickwignall.com/self-compassion/">validate their struggles </a>first and reserve your problem-solving efforts for later (if ever). Validating someone's struggles simply means letting them know that you understand what they're saying and that it makes sense that they're feeling that way. For example, imagine your spouse comes home from work looking anxious and stressed. You ask what's wrong and she replies that she thinks she's going to be fired. She goes on to explain how she completely flubbed a potentially huge new sale and her boss was furious.

Instead of diving into 3 reasons she's unlikely to actually be fired (problem-solving), you might start by saying, I'm so sorry, honey. That sounds like a horrible experience. I'd be pretty worried too. This initial validating statement will help your spouse feel like she's really being heard and that you're with her. When we're upset, most of us simply want to feel understood and that we're not alone. This is why learning to validate problems is such a helpful tool. It rearranges the relationship dynamic such that you're on the same team rather than rivals.

Good therapists are trained to look beneath the appearance of a behavior and find the function that behavior serves. For example: You see your 16-year-old son struggling to open a can of pasta sauce, so you suggest he tap the edges of the top with a knife to loosen it up. Out of nowhere, he blows up at you: Criticizing you for always being in his business and storming out of the room, slamming the door behind him. A bit bewildered and more than a little hurt, you chalk it up to hormones and hope the whole thing blows over sooner than later.

The surface-level interpretation is I guess he's just hormonal or, less charitably, How did my little darling turn into such a jerk? Of course, neither of these is wrong, per se . Teenagers do have complicated hormonal changes that affect their behavior. And they can simply be jerks. But to go a layer deeper, you might ask yourself: What function does getting mad at and criticizing me serve?

Developmentally, teenagers are rapidly learning to become more independent, which-while often infuriating-is ultimately a healthy process. Your son is doing the hard work of trying to forge his own identity as an individual separate from his parents and family. And having his failure of independence (opening the jar) pointed out in what probably felt like a humiliating fashion hurt quite a bit. And often when we feel hurt or injured, we tend to <a href="https://nickwignall.com/secret-life-of-anger/">lash out in anger </a>.

Now, you may still disagree with your son's behavior of lashing out at you. But by taking the time to understand why he might have done it, and acknowledging that on a certain level it makes sense (we were all teenagers once, remember?), you can become <a href="https://nickwignall.com/negative-thoughts-self-compassion/">a little more compassionate </a>towards him.

Sometimes the best way to improve a relationship is to improve your own behavior. And a good therapist knows that changing your environment is often the best and fastest way to change your behavior. Suppose you've been having a lot of conflict with your supervisor at work. And that most of the conflict comes down to you frequently being a few minutes late to work. From your perspective, your supervisor is being needlessly neurotic and strict-probably as some kind of power play to boost their own ego. From your supervisor's perspective, she's concerned that tardiness is a slippery slope, and as soon as people believe it's okay to be three minutes late, they start to think ten minutes is acceptable, and so on.

At the end of the day, despite your irritations, you decide it's in your best interest to try and be on time to work. Instead of looking at your tardiness as a personality flaw or a character defect, try to look at it as a natural response to the unique environment you've built. Sometimes the best way to change your behavior is to change your environment. For example, perhaps you tend to run late to work because your favorite NPR segment ends right about the time you're supposed to be clocking into work. Consequently, you often end up sitting in your car waiting to hear the end of the segment, and therefore, get into work a few minutes late.

Hearing your favorite NPR segment come on the radio during your commute is the trigger that sets off the whole chain of emotions and behaviors that ultimately leads to you being late. So, change the trigger... You might, for example, subscribe to that NPR segment's podcast feed, which means you could listen to it on your commute home from work rather than before work.

If you want to change your behavior, don't try to change your behavior directly. Instead, change the environmental triggers that set your behavior in motion in the first place. Not only will this be more effective in the long-run, but you'll also avoid a lot of self-judgment and shame that goes along with a more internal attitude toward behavior change. As a rule, we don't have a ton of control over other people's behavior. However, it is possible to influence other people's behavior. And with a little psychology, you can make that influence far more effective.

Good therapists know how to harness the power of <a href="https://nickwignall.com/differential-reinforcement/">differential reinforcement </a>, which is a fancy term for rewarding a desired behavior and withholding reward from an undesired behavior. Suppose your 3-year-old daughter has developed the rather nasty habit of picking her nose and consuming her findings! Like most parents, your instinct is likely to punish the behavior in some form or another: You talk about how gross that is, how disgusted other people will be if they see that, or maybe you take away a favorite toy each time it happens. In any case, you're banking on fear motivating her to stop.

Turns out, this is not a very effective strategy, in part because by making a big scene each time it happens, you're also giving your kid the one thing she craves more than anything-attention! Which means the strength of your punishment is being outweighed by your unintentional positive reinforcement of the exact behavior you wish would stop.

Often it's more effective to simply ignore the problem behavior and focus your energies on reinforcing a better alternative behavior. Differential reinforcement would suggest a different approach: First, you would try to encourage and reinforce a better alternative behavior. You might, for example, mention that whenever your daughter feels the urge to scratch or pick her nose, she could run and get a tissue instead. Then, whenever she did get a tissue instead of picking, make a big deal over it: dance around, sing a goofy song, and generally go nuts in your praise for the alternative behavior.

Second, simply ignore the unwanted behavior and stop feeding it with your attention. This can be difficult and requires patience. But often trying to eliminate an unwanted behavior leads to a lot of unintended side effects that result in the behavior sticking around or even getting stronger. Of course, some unwanted behaviors that are explicitly dangerous or cruel and should have <a href="https://nickwignall.com/assertiveness/">boundaries put on them </a>. But often it's more effective to simply ignore the problem behavior and focus your energies on reinforcing a better alternative behavior.

Finally, the other major upside to this approach is that you inject your relationship with constructive positivity rather than criticism and negativity. Which, whenever possible, makes for a far more enjoyable (and effective) relationship. As a therapist, I've learned that one of my most powerful tools to help my clients is the occasional use of vulnerability. I might, for example, share a brief story of how I struggled with something similar to their struggle. I've even, on occasion, allowed myself to tear up when a client was telling me a particularly sad story that really moved me.

The benefit of these moments of vulnerability is that, while difficult, they supercharge the strength of the relationship and imbue it with trust, intimacy, and mutual admiration. The practical benefit being, for instance, that a client feels comfortable enough to share a pain they felt they couldn't share (and would therefore have to suffer silently with forever).

Of course, these are relatively rare in <a href="https://www.findyourtherapy.com">therapy </a>, but they illustrate the importance of vulnerability for any kind of relationship. If you're willing to be intentionally vulnerable in a relationship, you open up the possibility of taking the relationship to new heights. Intentional vulnerability can supercharge even the stodgiest of relationships. A common issue with married couples, for example, is they feel like they've lost a sense of intimacy and connection over the years. There's less passion in the marriage, not as much excitement, their love life has probably fallen off, and they generally just aren't as interested in each other anymore.

The key to rejuvenating relationships like these is to practice intentional vulnerability. See, vulnerability-the willingness to share your pains, struggles, hopes, and dreams in a radically honest way-can almost instantly forge a deep connection and level of intimacy. And along with intimacy comes all those things we feel like we've lost with time-passion, excitement, desire, connection, even humor.

The problem is, it's hard. Being vulnerable means opening yourself up to pain. It's always possible that the other person doesn't reciprocate, makes fun of you, or even uses the opportunity to wound you. Or maybe it just feels awkward. In any case, it's natural to be afraid and hesitant of being intentionally vulnerable. But if the person is someone you generally trust, and the relationship is valuable enough, vulnerability is the key to breathing new life into the relationship.

If you can practice being vulnerable in small ways, you'll steadily gain the confidence you need to be vulnerable in big ways. Finally, it's important to look at vulnerability as a skill, something you can develop gradually with practice. This can ease a lot of the <a href="https://nickwignall.com/understanding-anxiety/">anxiety </a>that goes along with trying to be vulnerable because it means you can start small and work your way up, <a href="https://nickwignall.com/confident-people/">building confidence </a>along the way.

For example, suppose you want to be more vulnerable in your sex life with your partner, but the embarrassment and anxiety are sky-high when you consider talking candidly about it. Instead, you might practice being vulnerable about something else like sharing some small insecurity-perhaps the fact that you worry a lot more about what other people think than you let on.

If you can practice being vulnerable in small ways, you'll steadily gain the confidence you need to be vulnerable in big ways. And once you can be vulnerable, you can start to unlock the true potential of any meaningful relationship. Therapists are trained to see the underlying psychology that influences our behavior. But this ability is a skill anyone can learn and use to improve the most important relationships in their lives. For better communication, validate first, problem-solve second.

In my work as a therapist, I see daily examples of relationships slowly dying-and occasionally exploding. While tragic, these examples give me some insight into a common set of factors that tend to ruin relationships. And with a little reverse engineering, they also shed light on how we might strengthen and improve relationships.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

parenting

Parenting

mentalhealth

Mental Health

loveandrelationships

Love & Relationships

humanresources

Human Resources

How to Improve Any Relationship by Thinking Like a Therapist

<ul><li><a href="https://thriveglobal.com/authors/stephanie-heller/">Stephanie Heller </a>, Business and Life Coach at Business Moms in Balance </li> </ul>

Fast forward to today where we literally don’t have to ‘think’ too hard to get an answer to basically anything.

<ul><li>Want to know how old Jennifer Lopez is? Ask Siri </li><li>Want to know if Target is open on Sunday? Ask Google Maps </li><li>How to set up an email market campaign? YouTube as 100’s of videos </li><li>When should a baby try solid food? Ask in a Facebook group </li> </ul>

What happens to your brain when you don’t use it to find and create solutions but use it as a sorting and skimming machine.

The ways to acquire information are endless and free. But usually ‘worth’ very little. Why?

Get back into the practice of being creative and imaginative – willing to think and explore all options for solving a problem. Focusing on the problem – stops you from solving in.

Focusing on yourself not having resources (time, money, status), focusing on other people as problem (husband, boss, kids, clients) and the Universe as the problem (I’m not lucky, don’t know right people, answer is outside you)

Giving away your power to solve problems to people and things outside of us is the fastest way to turn your brain into mush, make way less money and never lead the pack.

<ol><li>How are you using resources to solve problems? Throwing money at problems vs. solving with own creativity and imagination. Where are you delegating your power? </li><li>How can you keep going and solve for result you want – even when XX </li> </ol>

I remember as a kid having a set of World Books in my house. I used it for reports and went to the library to find resources and even used &#8216;micro film&#8217;. Now that I&#8217;ve dated myself. Fast forward&nbsp;to today where we literally don&#8217;t have to &#8216;think&#8217; too hard to get an answer to basically [&hellip;]

business

Business

creativity

Creativity

scienceandnature

Science & Nature

Your Superpower: Resourcefulness

This post is part of TED’s “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from people in the TED community;  browse through <a href="https://ideas.ted.com/tag/how-to-be-a-better-human/">all the posts here </a>. I have a question for you. Have you ever seen something and you wish you could have said something — but you didn’t? And I have a second question. Has something ever happened to you and you never said anything about it — but you should have?

I’m interested in this idea of action — of the difference between seeing, which is the passive act of observing, and the actual act of bearing witness. Bearing witness means writing down something you have seen, something you have heard, something you have experienced. The most important part of bearing witness is writing it down; it’s recording. Writing it down captures the memory. Writing it down acknowledges its existence. One of the biggest examples we have in history of someone bearing witness is Anne Frank and her diary. She simply wrote down what was happening to her family and about her confinement and, in doing so, we have a very intimate record of this family during one of the worst periods of our world’s history.

You too can use creative writing to bear witness, and I’m going to walk you through an exercise that I do with a lot of my college students, who are future engineers, technicians, plumbers — basically, they’re not creative writers. We use these exercises to unsilence things we’ve been keeping silent. It’s a way of unburdening ourselves. It’s 3 simple steps.

I give my students a prompt. The prompt is “The time when …” and I want them to fill in that prompt with times they might have experienced something, heard something or seen something and they could have said something or intervened but they didn’t. I have them write a list as quickly as possible.

I’ll give you example of some of the things I would write down: <ul><li>the time when a few months after 9/11 and two boys dared themselves to touch me and they did </li><li>the time when my sister and I were walking in a city and a guy spat at us and called us terrorists </li><li>the time way back when I went to a very odd middle school and girls a couple of years older than me were often married to men nearly double their age </li><li>the time when a friend pulled a gun on me </li><li> the time when I went to a going-away luncheon for a coworker and a big boss questioned my lineage for 45 minutes </li> </ul>

There are times when I have seen something and I haven’t intervened. For example: <ul><li>the time when I was on a train and I witnessed a father beating his toddler son and I didn’t do anything </li><li>the many times when I’ve walked by someone who was homeless and in need and asking me for money and I walked around them and I did not acknowledge their humanity </li> </ul>The list could go on and on. Think of times when something might have happened sexually, times when you’ve been keeping things repressed, and times with our families. Because our families — we love them, but at the same time we don’t talk about things. So we don’t talk about the family member who has been using drugs or abusing alcohol; we don’t talk about the family member who might have severe mental illness. We’ll say something like, “Oh they’ve always been that way,” and we hope that in not talking about it and not acknowledging it, we can act like it doesn’t exist, that it will somehow fix itself.

Your goal is to write down at least 10 things, and once you have those 10 things, you’ve actually done part one, which is to bear witness. You have unsilenced something that you have been keeping silent. What I suggest is going back to your list of 10 and picking 3 things that are really tugging at you, three things that you feel strongly about. It doesn’t have to be the most traumatic things but it’s things that are like, “Ah, I have to write about this.” I suggest you sit down at a table with a pen and paper — that’s my preferred method for recording but you can also use a tablet, an iPad, a computer, just something that lets you write.

I suggest taking 30 minutes of uninterrupted time, meaning that you turn your phone off, put it on airplane mode, no email. If you have family or if you have children, give yourself 20 minutes or 5 minutes. The goal is just to give yourself time to write. You’re going to focus on 3 things — you’re going to focus on the details, you’re going to focus on the order of events, you’re going to focus on how it made you feel. That last one is the most important part. I’m going to walk you through how I do it. The first thing I feel very, very strongly about is that time when a couple of months after 9/11, these two boys dared themselves to touch me. I remember I was in a rural mall in North Carolina and I was just walking, minding my business.

I felt like people walking behind me were very, very close. I was like, “OK, that’s kind of weird, let me walk a little bit faster.” They walked a little bit faster too and I heard them going back and forth —  “No, you do it” “You do it” “No, you do it.” And then one of them pushes me and I almost fall to the ground.

I popped back up, expecting some type of apology and the weirdest thing was they did not run away. They actually stood right next to me and I remember there was a guy with blond hair and he had a bright red polo shirt and he was saying “Give me my money, I did it, man”, and the guy with the brown hair who had a choppy haircut gave him a $5 bill. I remember it was crumpled, and so I’m like, “Am I still standing here? This thing just happened. What just happened?”

And it was so weird to be someone’s dare and then also not exist at all. I remembered when I was younger and someone dared me to touch something nasty or disgusting. I felt like that nasty and disgusting thing. A second thing I feel very, very strongly about is the time when a friend pulled a gun on me (I should say former friend). I remember there was a group of us outside, he had run up, and he had the stereotypical brown paper bag in his hand. I knew what it was. I’m a very mouthy person and I started going off. I was like, “What are you doing with that gun? You’re not gonna shoot anyone. You’re a coward. You don’t even know how to use it.”

I kept going on and on and on and he got angrier and angrier and angrier and he pulled the gun out and put it in my face. I remember every one of us got very, very quiet. I remember the tightness of his face. I remember the barrel of the gun and I felt like — and I’m pretty sure everyone around me who got quiet did too — felt like this is the moment I die.

The third thing I feel very, very strongly about is this going away luncheon and this big boss. I remember I was running late and I’m always late; it’s just a thing that happens with me. The whole table was filled except for the seat next to him. I didn’t know him well; I had seen him in the office. I didn’t know why the seat was empty; I found out later on why. So I sat down at the table and before he even asked me my name, the first thing he said was “What’s going on with all of this?” and he gestured at my head. I thought, “Do I have something on my face? What’s happening?”

Then he asked me with two hands this time “What’s going on with all of this?” And I realized he’s talking about my hijab. In my head I said, “Oh, not today.” But he’s a big boss — he’s like my boss’s boss’s boss. So for 45 minutes I put up with him asking me where I was from, where were my parents from, my grandparents. He asked me where I went to school, where I did my internships, he asked me who interviewed me for that job. And for 45 minutes, I tried to be very, very, very, very, very polite, trying to answer his questions.

But I remember I was making eyeball “Help!” signs at the people around the table, like “Someone say something, intervene”. It was a rectangular table, so there were people on both sides of us and no one said anything, even people who might be in the position to do so, bosses. No one said anything. I remember I felt so alone. I remember I felt like I didn’t deserve to be in his space. I remember I wanted to quit.

So these are my three things and you’ll have your list of three things. Once you have these three things, you have the details, you have the order of events, you have how it made you feel, you’re ready to actually use creative writing to bear witness. You don’t have to write a memoir; you don’t have to be a creative writer. I know sometimes storytelling can be daunting for some people but we are human, we are natural storytellers. If someone asks “How is your day going?”, we have a beginning, a middle and an end. That is a narrative.

Our memory exists and subsists through the act of storytelling. You just have to find the form that works for you. You can write a letter to your younger self, you can write a story to your younger self, you can write a story to your five-year-old child, you can write a parody, a song, a song as parody. You can write a play, you can write a nursery rhyme, you can write it in the form of a Wikipedia article.

If it’s one of those situations where you saw something and you didn’t intervene, perhaps write it from that person’s perspective. So if I go back to the boy on the train who I saw being beaten, What was it like to be in his shoes? What was it like to see all these people who watched it happen and did nothing? Or I could put myself in the position of someone who was homeless and just try to figure out how they got there in the first place. Perhaps it would help me change some of my actions, perhaps it will help me be more proactive about certain things.

By telling your story, you’re keeping it alive so you don’t have to do anything; you don’t have to show anyone any of these steps. But even if you’re telling it to yourself, you’re saying this thing happened, this weird thing did happen. It’s not in my head. It actually happened and by doing that maybe you’ll take a little bit of power back that has been taken away.

The last thing I’m going to do is I’m going to tell you my story. The one I’ve picked is about this big boss and I picked that one because I feel like I’m not the only one who has been in a position where someone has been above me and been talked down to. I feel like all of us might have been in positions where we felt like we could not say anything because this person has our livelihood, our paychecks, our jobs in their hands and times we might have seen someone who has power talking down to someone and we should have or could have intervened.

By telling this story, I’m taking back a little bit of power that was taken away from me. I have changed the names, and it happened a decade ago. It doesn’t have any happy ending, because it’s just me writing down what happened that day. This is how I use creative writing to bear witness. At Lisa’s Going Away Luncheon

I want to ask my boss’s boss’s boss if he’s stupid or just plain dumb after he takes one look at my hijab and asks me where I’m from in Southeast Asia. I tell him that it’s New Jersey, actually, and he asks where are my parents from, and my grandparents and my great-grandparents and their parents and their parents’ parents

as if searching for some Other blood, as if searching for some reason why some Black Muslim girl from Newark wound up seated next to him at this restaurant of tablecloths and laminated menus. I want to say “Slavery, jerk,” but I’ve got a car note and rent and insurances and insurances and insurances and credit cards and credit debt and a loan and a bad tooth

and a penchant for sushi so I drop the jerk but keep the truth. Tell me, he says, “Why don’t Sunnis and Shiites get along?” “Tell me,” he says, “What’s going on in Iraq?” “Tell me,” he says, “What’s up with Saudi and Syria and Iran?” “Tell me,” he says, “Why do Muslims like bombs?” I want to shove an M1 up his behind and confetti that pasty flesh and that tailored suit.

Instead I’m sipping my unsweetened iced tea looking around at the table, at the co-workers around me; none of whom, not one, looks back at me. Rather they do the most American things they can do: They praise their Lord. They stuff their faces And pretend they don’t hear him. And pretend they don’t see me.

We've all kept silent about painful things but by writing about them, we can start to reclaim our agency, says writer Sakinah Hofler.

How writing about difficult experiences can help you take back your power

None of us truly control our own destiny. Fate has too much power over us puny humans. Still, we often suspect that were we just a little richer, just a little more famous, if we were in charge and got the success we craved, then we’d finally have some say over the direction of our lives and of our world. How naive this is. How many false prisons this has created!

Now to be sure, the poor and disenfranchised amongst us suffer greatly. Some lack access to basic resources. Some are held down by systemic forces. Some are buffeted by adversity that we cannot even imagine. And we think, if we can just be the opposite of that, then everything will be great. In many ways, that is at the root of our pursuit of fame and fortune. And yet, it’s worth noting that the people we envy, who have reached the pinnacle of success as we have defined it, are hardly as free as we think.

There is a revealing scene in <a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/81028336">Miss Americana </a>, Netflix’s Taylor Swift documentary from earlier this year, that speaks to just this point. Here is a young woman who has accomplished in her field nearly everything you could ever dream was possible. She’s rich. She’s famous. She has millions of fans and followers. She’s sold tens of millions of albums. She’s won Grammys. She has challenged and beaten Apple and Spotify, as well as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/arts/music/taylor-swift-sexual-assault.html">a man who sexually assaulted her </a>.

And yet there she is, on film, confronting her manager, her parents, her publicist and nearly everyone who works for her, fighting—no, begging— for permission to make a standard political contribution to a candidate in a Democratic primary election in her home state. Eventually, she breaks down in tears. Why can’t you let me do this? Don’t you see that it’s important to me? You might think that all this resistance is just a quirk of her particularly risk-averse team, that it would be easy to push past it, but it isn’t. With power and success come all sorts of limitations and constraints. It’s not worse than oppression or actual slavery or incarceration, obviously, don’t be crazy. But it doesn’t change the fact that to experience the kind of suffocating restriction on display in the Taylor Swift documentary is to feel like you are living within a prison of your own making, a slave to what you have built.

“Today, I’m sort of a mannequin figure that’s lost its liberty and happiness,” Napoleon once wrote to a friend. “Grandeur is all very well, but only in retrospect and in the imagination.” <a href="https://el2.convertkit-mail.com/c/zluqvm626inh82nel/08hwh9hegwpxl/aHR0cDovL2dlbmkudXMvdjR3cWdETA==">Ernest Renan </a>, writing about Marcus Aurelius, observed that the “sovereign… is the least free of men.” You’d think that being a millionaire or being a celebrity or being the CEO would be empowering. If done right, perhaps it is. But the reality is that most of the time it is inherently disempowering. How is that possible, you might ask?

Many years ago, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/05/tales-of-the-tyrant/302480/">Mark Bowden answered that question in a fascinating article </a>about Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. While ostensibly a detailed day-in-the-life portrait, Bowden illustrates many of the paradoxes of power. This paragraph is worth reading in full: One might think that the most powerful man has the most choices, but in reality he has the fewest. Too much depends on his every move. The tyrant’s choices are the narrowest of all. His life—the nation!—hangs in the balance. He can no longer drift or explore, join or flee. He cannot reinvent himself, because so many others depend on him—and he, in turn, must depend on so many others. He stops learning, because he is walled in by fortresses and palaces, by generals and ministers who rarely dare to tell him what he doesn’t wish to hear. Power gradually shuts the tyrant off from the world. Everything comes to him second or third hand. He is deceived daily. He becomes ignorant of his land, his people, even his own family. He exists, finally, only to preserve his wealth and power, to build his legacy. Survival becomes his one overriding passion. So he regulates his diet, tests his food for poison, exercises behind well-patrolled walls, trusts no one, and tries to control everything.

Many years ago, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/05/tales-of-the-tyrant/302480/">Mark Bowden answered that question in a fascinating article </a>about Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. While ostensibly a detailed day-in-the-life portrait, Bowden illustrates many of the paradoxes of power. This paragraph is worth reading in full: Lest you think this is an edge case in the history of power, know that it is in fact the oldest story in the world. There’s even an ancient myth about it: The Sword of Damocles . We think a king is free… in fact, terror hangs over him. The point of painting this picture is not to get you to pity the powerful; it’s to get you to ask some important questions about your own ambitions and desires. Are you sure the goals you pursue are what you truly desire? Are you sure you understand what success entails? Are you sure you have defined it properly? Are you sure it will make you happy?

Over the years, I have wrestled with this. As I wrote a while back, <a href="https://ryanholiday.net/how-does-it-feel-to-get-everything-you-ever-wanted/">I wanted to be a writer </a>. I wanted to be a highly-paid one. I wanted to have influence and a platform. But one of the very interesting things about becoming a writer—a job which is a calling and a craft—is that the more success you have at it, the less time you actually have to write.

Suddenly, people want you to speak. They want you to be on social media. They want you to consult. You have all sorts of decisions to make about covers and titles and foreign publishing deals. You have gratifying emails from fans, from people who want your advice, but all of that–to read it, to respond to it—takes time .

It is very possible, and very tempting, for this to consume your life. Write another book? Who has the time? Sitting down on a quiet morning with your thoughts? Ha! Quiet mornings don’t exist anymore. Think of the actor who gets typecast. Think of the billionaire whose every waking second is consumed by managing their fortune. Think of the CEO who is at the mercy of the enormous beast that is their business. Think of the prime minister whose schedule is controlled by their staff. It might seem glamorous, but looking closer, it’s hardly so enviable.

It took me a while to realize that it was quite possible that the success I thought I wanted would prevent me from doing the thing I actually wanted to do. What kind of sense does that make? Today, I don’t define success the way that I did when I was younger. I don’t measure it in copies sold or dollars earned. I measure it in what my days look like and the quality of my creative expression: Do I have time to write? Can I say what I think? Do I direct my schedule or does my schedule direct me? Is my life enjoyable or is it a chore?

In a word: autonomy. Do I have autonomy over what I do and think? Am I free ? Free to decide what I do most days… Free to do what I think is right… Free to invest in myself or projects I think worth pursuing… Free to express what I think needs to be expressed… Free to spend time with who I want to spend time with… Free to read and study and learn about the things I’m interested in…

Free to leave the office to enjoy dinner with my family before tucking my kids into bed… Free to pursue my definition of success… This also always helps me to weigh opportunities properly. Does this give me more autonomy or less? Screw whether it’s fancy. Screw whether it’s what everyone else is doing, whether it gets me a few more followers or a couple extra dollars. What matters is freedom. Because without freedom, what good is success? As Seneca said, “Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.”

Don’t just nod your head at that. Think about it for a minute. Or for the rest of the day. Was this morning your own? Or were you rushed through it, to go somewhere, to do something, for someone you don’t actually like? Are you sure that “getting everything you want” is what you actually want? Will it mean the ability to dictate what you do today? Will it give you control of your life—insofar as that is possible as a puny human being? Because if it doesn’t… well, what’s the point?

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The Definition of Success Is Autonomy

Several studies suggest that individuals widely prefer to remain ignorant about information that would benefit them when it’s painful—and sometimes when it’s pleasurable <ul><li>By <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/author/francesca-gino/">Francesca Gino </a> on <time>June 16, 2020 </time> </li> </ul>In our information age, an unprecedented amount of data are right at our fingertips. We run genetic tests on our unborn children to prepare for the worst. We get regular cancer screenings and monitor our health on our wrist and our phone. And we can learn about our ancestral ties and genetic predispositions with a simple swab of saliva.

Yet there’s some information that many of us do not want to know. A study of more than 2,000 people in Germany and Spain by Gerd Gigerenzer of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin and Rocio Garcia-Retamero of the University of Granada in Spain <a href="https://content.apa.org/record/2017-07341-002">found that 90 percent of them would not want to find out </a>, if they could, when their partner would die or what the cause would be. And 87 percent also reported not wanting to be aware of the date of their own death. When asked if they’d want to know if, and when, they’d get divorced, more than 86 percent said no.

Related research points to a similar conclusion: We often prefer to avoid learning information that could cause us pain. Investors are less likely to log on to their stock portfolios <a href="https://academic.oup.com/rfs/article/29/4/863/1896505">on days when the market is down </a>. And one laboratory experiment found that subjects who were informed that they were rated less attractive than other participants <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/mic.3.2.114">were willing to pay money not to find out their exact rank </a>.

More consequentially, people avoid learning certain information related to their health even if having such knowledge would allow them to identify therapies to manage their symptoms or treatment. As one study found, <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.103.2.804">only 7 percent of people at high risk for Huntington’s disease elect to find out whether they have the condition </a>, despite the availability of a genetic test that is generally paid for by health insurance plans and the clear usefulness of the information for alleviating the chronic disease’s symptoms. Similarly,participants in a laboratory experiment <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2017-57519-002">chose to forgo part of their earnings </a>to avoid learning the outcome of a test for a treatable sexually transmitted disease. Such avoidance was even greater when the disease symptoms were more severe.

Emily Ho, now at Northwestern University, and her colleagues recently developed a <a href="https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/mnsc.2019.3543">scale </a>to measure people’s relative aversion to potentially unpleasant but also potentially useful information. (You can learn about your own tendency to avoid information <a href="https://cmu.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0oYP0OROwDv1f2l">here </a>.) The researchers presented 380 participants with various scenarios designed to test their desire to know across three domains (personal health, finances and other people’s perceptions of them), with each scenario presenting the possibility of a favorable or unfavorable outcome for the participant. Scenarios included subjects learning their risk for a particular medical condition, finding out the performance of an investment opportunity they missed and knowing the truth about how well a speech they gave went.

The seriously information-averse were a minority, although a substantial one: On average, participants reported that they would definitely or probably not want to receive such information 32 percent of the time. About 45 percent would avoid finding out how much they would have gained by choosing a more profitable investment fund in the past; 33 percent would prefer not to know what someone meant when describing them as quirky; and 24 percent would not want to be aware of whether a friend liked a book they had given that person as a birthday gift.

The researchers also documented personal characteristics of the participants, some of which proved to be significant variables. While the degree to which people wanted to avoid information wasn’t associated with gender, income, age or education, subjects who were higher in extraversion, conscientiousness and openness to new experiences were more prone to seek out such information. Meanwhile those with high neuroticism scores showed the opposite tendency. (Among those who were more open to such information, there was often at least one domain in which they opted to remain uninformed.) In a second study, participants rated the same series of scenarios twice, four weeks apart. Their responses remained stable over time.

Not surprisingly, Ho and her team found, the motivation to avoid information impacts our behavior. In one of their experiments, participants completed the initial survey on knowledge avoidance. Two weeks later, they had the option to visit a Web site with potentially valuable information that they might find painful to learn. For instance, one site compared the average salaries of men and women across occupations. Another contained health data about people’s individual risk of burnout. Participants’ tendency to avoid information, as measured by the initial survey, correlated with avoiding such Web sites.

This general body of research suggests that deliberate ignorance is a widespread preference not only in relation to painful news and events, such as death and divorce, but also pleasurable ones, such as birth. When Gigerenzer and Garcia-Retamero asked their 2,000-plus participants if they wanted to learn about positive life events, most preferred ignorance over knowledge. More than 60 percent indicated not wanting to know about their next Christmas present. And about 37 percent said they’d prefer not to find out the sex of their unborn child. This result might have something to do with the possibility of disappointment, but the bigger issue, this research shows, is that people enjoy the suspense.

Information avoidance can be a problem, of course, if it keeps us from learning things that would help us make smarter choices (those regarding our health, for example, or our finances). But declining to learn available information does allow us to forego some of the suffering that knowing the future may cause—and to enjoy the sense of suspense that pleasurable events provide. There seems to be some magic in the maybe.

Scientific American is the essential guide to the most awe-inspiring advances in science and technology, explaining how they change our understanding of the world and shape our lives.

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Why Do People Avoid Facts That Could Help Them?

One of the most important life skills to develop, for those just starting out in life (and everyone else!), is the skill of self-discipline. It's like a superpower: when I developed some self-discipline, I started exercising and eating healthier and meditating and writing more, I quit smoking and ran marathons, I started a blog and wrote books, I read more and work earlier, I decluttered and transformed my finances. I'm far from perfect, but I've learned a lot.

But if you don't develop self-discipline, it causes problems: health problems, distraction, procrastination, financial problems, clutter, things piling up and overwhelming you, and much more. So it's such an important skill to develop, but most people don't know where to start. This guide is aimed at helping you get started. I'm writing it for my kids, and for anyone else who would like to develop a superpower.

The first question is, how do you even get motivated to start? Most of us don't want to think about our lack of discipline, let alone take a bunch of actions. For me, the motivation came from realizing that what I was doing wasn't working. Ignoring the problems only made things worse. Trying to be disciplined but doing it half-assedly only resulted in me feeling bad about myself. Being wholly undisciplined was causing myself a bunch of pain.

Once you realize that you're causing yourself pain ... you might develop a whole-hearted intention to stop hurting yourself. You might say, "OK, that's enough with making my life worse. Let's try to make it less worse." With that in mind, you can tell yourself that you are going to:

<ul><li>Start taking small actions to make things better </li><li>Do the things that hurt you less </li><li>Push yourself into discomfort a little bit, so you can get better at this over time </li><li>Get good at self-discipline with some practice </li> </ul>Keep these things in mind as you practice, as you get the urge to not practice, and as you make mistakes and then want to give up. There are other good motivations as well:

<ol><li>Wanting to help others - if you get better at exercise or healthy eating, for example, you can help your aging parents who need to get better at these things. If you get better at not procrastinating on your life's work, you can help more people with that meaningful work. More on this below, in the "Focus on Others" section. </li><li>Appreciating life - we have a short time here on Earth, and the life we have is a gift. When we procrastinate and give in to endless distraction, and don't make the most of our time, we are not fully appreciating the gift we have. Instead, we can appreciate it by being present, being grateful, and being purposeful about how we spend our time. </li> </ol>

With these motivations - or whatever motivations move you the most - we can start to practice. One of the most important things you can do to get better at self-discipline is to take small actions. It can seem overwhelming to tackle huge, intimidating projects ... so don't. Instead, tackle easy actions, things so small you can't say no. Have some taxes to do? Just do 5 minutes. Want to run? Just run for 10 minutes. Have a report to work on? Just do the first few paragraphs. Want to declutter? Just find 5 things to declutter.

You'll get better at self-discipline if you focus on small tasks, and break bigger projects into small tasks. <a href="https://zenhabits.net/tiny-victory/">Read more </a>. One of the reasons we don't have self-discipline is because we run from the hard, uncomfortable things. We would rather do the easy, comfortable, familiar things. So instead of facing our hard, uncomfortable projects or finances, we run to distractions, videos, games. This running from discomfort is <a href="https://zenhabits.net/discomfort-ruin/">ruining our lives </a>.

What you can tell yourself is that you're done running. You are going to push into discomfort, a little at a time, and get good at being uncomfortable. This is another of your superpowers. When others run, you're OK (even if it's not always fun). One small task at a time, push yourself into discomfort. See how it feels. See that it's not the end of the world. See that you are awesome enough to handle discomfort, and that the results are well worth it. You'll have the urge to quit doing something hard, or to put it off for now. Those urges don't serve you well.

Instead, develop mindfulness around those urges, and see that you don't have to follow them. A good way to do that is to set a time for yourself where you can do nothing but X. For example, for the next 10 minutes, you can do nothing but write your book chapter (or exercise, meditate, etc.). When you have the urge to procrastinate or run to distractions, you'll easily see it, because you're either writing the book, or you're not. When you have the urge, tell yourself you can't follow it, you have to either write your book chapter or sit there and do nothing.

Raymond Chandler used that as his simple writing system: "Write or nothing. I find it works. Two very simple rules, a. you don't have to write. b. you can't do anything else." The reason it works is that you are setting up a time where you do nothing else but that one specified task, and you can see your urges to run away. Use this to learn to be mindful of your urges, and see that you don't have to follow them. If you combine the above items into a system of bursts, or intervals, you can train yourself using interval training:

<ol><li>Set your intention to practice self-discipline and not hurt yourself anymore. </li><li>Set a task to focus on (writing, drawing, strength training, meditating, etc). </li><li>Set a timer for 10 minutes. Five minutes is also fine if 10 is too long. Don't go longer until you get good at 10 minutes, then increase to 12 and eventually 15. I don't find I need to go beyond 15-20 minutes even when I'm kicking butt. </li><li>Do nothing but sit there and watch your urges, or push into your discomfort by doing the task. </li><li>When the timer goes off, give yourself a 5-minute break. </li><li>Repeat. </li> </ol>

You can train for several intervals, or potentially for an hour or two. Then take a longer break, and do another set of intervals after that. This kind of interval training is fantastic, because it's not that hard, you really train yourself in discomfort and watching urges, and you can get a lot done this way. When you find yourself struggling, dig into deeper motivation: doing your work/exercise/meditation etc. not for yourself, but for others.

For example: <ul><li>I'm writing this article to help my kids, and anyone else who might benefit. </li><li>I work out to be healthy, not only for myself but as an example for my kids and others who might benefit. </li><li>I meditate not only for my own peace and sanity, but so that I can help others find their own peace and sanity. </li><li>You might draw or write or play music to inspire others. </li> </ul>

In each example, you might benefit ... but you're also doing it to benefit others. And this benefit to others is much more motivating than doing something just for yourself. Try it ... try doing a difficult task for someone else. Tell them you're going to do it for them beforehand, then keep them in mind as you do it. See if you feel more motivated. A huge mistake that a lot of people make is that they mess up, and get discouraged by this. They feel bad about messing up. This causes them to give up and not want to think about developing self-discipline.

Here's the thing: failure is actually a victory. Failure means you tried. So it's a victory from the start. But it also means you learned something - you now know that what you tried didn't quite work. Next time, you can try something a bit different. Add more accountability, try it at a different time, unplug your wireless router, get a workout partner, anything. Because of your failure, you have new information. You've learned, and that helps you get better.

Failure is a victory. Success is also a victory. No matter what your result, you can see it as an opportunity to learn, to grow, to get better. Drop any ideas of being perfect at this, and just keep trying. The next time you fail at whatever you're trying, instead of letting it get you discouraged, see it as a victory. Then keep going, no matter what, because giving up is only going to hurt you some more. You're not in this alone. You have family, friends, online strangers who can help you. Form a support team by reaching out to the people around you, and asking for their help.

Lots of people skip this because they are embarrassed by their lack of discipline. They feel that the way they behave is shameful. That's not true. Actually, we all act like this, but we're just afraid to show that side to each other. But the truth is, if you show your "dark" side to people, they actually love you more, trust you more, relate to you more. So don't be afraid to connect with others in a vulnerable way.

One of the most important life skills to develop, for those just starting out in life (and everyone else!), is the skill of self-discipline. It's like a superpower: when I developed some self-discipline, I started exercising and eating healthier and meditating and writing more, I quit smoking and ran marathons, I started a blog and wrote books, I read more and work earlier, I decluttered and transformed my finances.

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A Guide to Developing the Self-Discipline Habit : zen habits

A random sampling of the world's most successful people will show one common trait: a love of reading. Reading is the easiest way to <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-athletes-way/201401/reading-fiction-improves-brain-connectivity-and-function">continue the learning process </a>, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2013/oct/08/literary-fiction-improves-empathy-study">increase empathy </a>, <a href="http://www.sparringmind.com/creative-thinking/">boost creativity </a>, and even just <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ibCtsHgz3Y">unwind from a long day </a>. But books can also change the way we think and live.

Warren Buffett, who <a href="https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2013/05/the-buffett-formula-how-to-get-smarter/">says he spends 80% of his time </a>reading and writing, attributes a huge amount of his success to a single book: The Intelligent Investor , by his mentor Benjamin Graham. For Malcolm Gladwell, it was Richard Nisbett's The Person and the Situation <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/books/review/malcolm-gladwell-by-the-book.html">that inspired his string </a>of New York Times bestselling books. These are what economist Tyler Cowen calls " <a href="http://ryanholiday.net/quake-reading/">quake books </a>"-pieces of writing that are so powerful they shake up your entire worldview.

As author and avid reader <a href="http://ryanholiday.net/how-to-read-more-a-lot-more/">Ryan Holiday explains </a>: "Whatever problem you're struggling with is probably addressed in some book somewhere written by someone a lot smarter than you." Every story has been experienced, recorded, and published by someone at some point in time. Beyond just stories, books provide life lessons-a set of proven theories and anecdotes that you can apply to your own life. So there's the why of reading, but what about the how ? Too often we get through a book, flip the last page, sit back, and think, "What the hell did I just read?" Reading and being able to use what you've read are completely different things.

Understanding how to get the most out of your time reading starts with understanding why we remember things at all, and then figuring out the best way to use that information. Without purpose and intention, the ideas sparked while reading easily slip away. Learning to hold onto them means understanding how our memory works. For the purposes of reading retention, we can think of our memory as being basically <a href="http://www.oldandsold.com/articles06/memory-17.shtml">made up of three components </a>: When you're impressed by something, there's a <a href="http://www.spring.org.uk/2014/08/how-to-learn-anything-better-by-tweaking-your-mindset.php">much higher probability </a>that you'll remember it. This could mean a phrase or quote that catches you off guard or changes the way you think about a certain topic. Or an interesting fact that you'll want to teach someone later on.

Just like a teacher is able to master a subject because they know they'll be teaching it later on, attacking a book with the same level of purpose means you'll be able to recall information a lot quicker. A recent study in the journal Memory &amp; Cognition <a href="http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/27160.aspx">showed the effect </a>that reading with intention and purpose can have. Two groups were given the same material to read-one was told they'd have a test at the end, while the others were told they'd have to teach someone the material. In the end, both groups were given the same test. Surprisingly, the group that was told they'd have to teach the material (rather than be tested on it) performed much better:

Having a clear question in mind or a topic you're focusing on can make all the difference in helping you to remember and recall information. While this can be as easy as defining a subject to look into beforehand, if time is no object <a href="http://productivity.stackexchange.com/questions/8638/what-methods-can-i-undertake-to-ensure-i-get-the-most-possible-information-fro">here's how to effectively "hack" your brain </a>into being impressed with the subject matter:

Ruin the ending. Read reviews and summaries of the work. You're trying to learn why something happened, so the what is secondary. Frame your reading with knowledge around the subject and perspective of what's being said and how it relates to the larger topic. As you read, have a specific purpose in mind and stick to it. Don't let your mind be the river that sweeps your thoughts away as you read. Be a ruthless notetaker. Your librarian might kill you for this, but using a technique <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginalia">such as marginalia </a>(writing notes in the margin and marking up key patterns for follow ups), will make you a more active reader and help lock information in your memory.

Engage with the material. Write a summary or analysisof the main ideas you want to recall or use, research supporting topics and ideas noting how they connect with what you've read, and then present, discuss, or write about your final ideas. Association is a peg upon which you hang a new idea, fact, or figure. When you know where the peg is located, it's a lot easier to find what you've hung upon it. As you read and come across new ideas and thoughts, you'll want to connect and associate these with familiar memories as a means of creating a bond between old and new. There are many different ways to create associations in your mind, from pairing new thoughts with familiar objects, to creating acronyms.

Many champion memorizers (there is such a thing) talk about <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci">creating a memory palace </a>-a mental map in their mind where they store information. Each memory is connected to a 'physical' place in their mind, so as they walk through the palace they can 'find' what they were looking for, just like you or I would walk through the house looking for our keys.

The information "sticks out" because it's in contrast to the "physical" locations in your mind. Our <a href="http://blog-pickcrew.s3.amazonaws.com/6-things-know-brain-learns/">brain's work much better with visuals </a>than they do with words and abstract thoughts alone. Connecting a memory with a location or visual makes it much easier to recall. The final factor influencing our memory, and the one that is most important for long-term memorization, is repetition. Without revisiting or re-engaging with the material that you've read, there's a pretty low chance you'll be able to remember and apply any of that knowledge in the real world.

This doesn't necessarily mean you need to read through the book multiple times ( <a href="http://pne.people.si.umich.edu/PDF/howtoread.pdf">although that does help </a>). But rather, that you need to have a method for taking and organizing notes around the key parts you want to revisit later on. The most successful creatives don't just read for pleasure, they read to learn. This might not seem like much of a distinction, but it is. Reading with intention is the sum of all of the parts of memory-it means that you have a specific goal at hand (impression), that you want to connect what you're reading to other information (association), and that it is something you're invested in and will come back to again and again (repetition).

Here's how some of the most well-read and successful people organize their thoughts and get the most out of reading: Ryan Holiday's monthly <a href="http://ryanholiday.net/reading-newsletter/">book recommendation emails </a>are one of my favorite newsletters to receive. Ryan is so well-read on a wide variety of subjects that I was incredibly curious as to how he organizes his thoughts as he reads. Ryan <a href="http://thoughtcatalog.com/ryan-holiday/2013/12/the-notecard-system-the-key-for-remembering-organizing-and-using-everything-you-read/">uses a method he picked up </a>from his mentor Robert Greene.

Here's the rundown: <ul><li>While reading, write detailed notes in the margins and then fold the bottom corner of any page you've written on. </li><li>After a week or two, come back to the book and transcribe the notes you're still impressed by onto 4×6 cards. </li><li>Each card gets a category or theme in the top righthand corner (or you can use color-coded cards). </li><li>Organize the cards by category (or by chapter if you're working on a book project). This way you can move them around as you please and connect random ideas (the basis of creativity). </li> </ul>

If you read <a href="http://www.brainpickings.org/">Brainpickings.org </a>, you'll quickly realize that Maria Popova either has a freakishly good memory or has devised an incredible way to store and organize thoughts. Turns out it's a little bit of both. Maria relies on making her own indexes of books in order to quickly scan what's inside and connect it to what she's writing. Here's how it works: <ul><li>While reading, highlight any passages or quotes you find interesting (making notes in the margin). </li><li>In the back (or front) of the book, create an index listing each page you've highlighted and what category the note should be under (This could be "C" for creativity, or even the title of your latest project). </li> </ul>

A random sampling of the world's most successful people will show one common trait: a love of reading. Reading is the easiest way to continue the learning process, increase empathy, boost creativity, and even just unwind from a long day. But books can also change the way we think and live.

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Reading with intention can change your life

This page pulls together my most essential information about creativity. I'll share how creativity works, how to find your hidden creative genius, and how to create meaningful work by learning how to make creative thinking a habit. I've tried to present the basics of everything you need to know to start mastering creativity, even if you don't have much time.

At the end of this page, you'll find a complete list of all the articles I have written on creativity.Let's define creativity.The creative process is the act of making new connections between old ideas or recognizing relationships between concepts. Creative thinking is not about generating something new from a blank slate, but rather about taking what is already present and combining those bits and pieces in a way that has not been done previously.

While being creative isn't easy, nearly all great ideas follow a similar creative process. In 1940, an advertising executive named James Webb Young published a short guide titled, <a href="https://jamesclear.com/book/a-technique-for-producing-ideas">A Technique for Producing Ideas</a>.Young believed the process of creative connection always occurred in five steps.

<ol><li>Gather new material.At first, you learn. During this stage you focus on 1) learning specific material directly related to your task and 2) learning general material by becoming fascinated with a wide range of concepts.</li><li>Thoroughly work over the materials in your mind.During this stage, you examine what you have learned by looking at the facts from different angles and experimenting with fitting various ideas together.</li><li>Step away from the problem.Next, you put the problem completely out of your mind and go do something else that excites you and energizes you.</li><li>Let your idea return to you.At some point, but only after you have stopped thinking about it, your idea will come back to you with a flash of insight and renewed energy.</li><li>Shape and develop your idea based on feedback.For any idea to succeed, you must release it out into the world, submit it to criticism, and adapt it as needed.</li></ol>

Read more: <a href="https://jamesclear.com/five-step-creative-process">For a More Creative Brain, Follow These 5 Steps</a>While we often think of creativity as an event or as a natural skill that some people have and some don't, research <a href="https://jamesclear.com/creativity#footnote-1-6206">1</a>actually suggests that both creativity and non-creativity are learned.According to psychology professor Barbara Kerr, "approximately 22 percent of the variance [in creativity] is due to the influence of genes." This discovery was made by studying the differences in creative thinking between sets of twins. <a href="https://jamesclear.com/creativity#footnote-2-6206">2</a>All of this to say, claiming that "I'm just not the creative type"is a pretty weak excuse for avoiding creative thinking. Certainly, some people are primed to be more creative than others. However, nearly every person is born with some level of creative skill and the majority of our creative thinking abilities are trainable.

Read more: <a href="https://jamesclear.com/creative-thinking">Creativity Is a Process, Not an Event</a><ul><li><a href="https://jamesclear.com/anthony-trollope">The 15-Minute Routine Anthony Trollope Used to Write 40+ Books</a>: Beginning with his first novel in 1847, Anthony Trollope wrote at an incredible pace. Over the next 38 years, he published 47 novels, 18 works of non-fiction, 12 short stories, 2 plays, and an assortment of articles and letters. Let's break down why Trollope's simple strategy allowed the author to be so productive and how we can use it in our own lives.</li><li><a href="https://jamesclear.com/dr-seuss">The Weird Strategy Dr. Seuss Used to Create His Greatest Work</a>: In 1960, the founder of Random House publishing firm challenged Dr. Seuss to write an entertaining children's book using only 50 different words. The result was a little book called Green Eggs and Ham. Here's what we can learn from Dr. Seuss...</li><li><a href="https://jamesclear.com/markus-zusak">How Creative Geniuses Come Up With Great Ideas</a>: Best-selling author Markus Zusak estimated that he rewrote the first part of his popular book "The Book Thief" 150 to 200 times. His work ethic and dedication tell us something crucial about how creative geniuses come up with great ideas.</li></ul>

You can also check out creativity articles about <a href="https://jamesclear.com/albert-einstein-desk">Albert Einstein</a>, <a href="https://jamesclear.com/quality-comparison">Martha Graham</a>, <a href="https://jamesclear.com/george-rr-martin">George R.R. Martin</a>, and <a href="https://jamesclear.com/maya-angelou">Maya Angelou</a>.In any creative endeavor, you have to give yourself permission to create junk. There is no way around it. Sometimes you have to write 4 terrible pages just to discover that you wrote one good sentence in the second paragraph of the third page.Creating something useful and compelling is like being a gold miner. You have to sift through pounds of dirt and rock and silt just to find a speck of gold in the middle of it all. Bits and pieces of genius will find their way to you, if you give yourself permission to let the muse flow.

Read more: <a href="https://jamesclear.com/ira-glass-failure">What Every Successful Person Knows, But Never Says</a>No single act will uncover more creative genius than forcing yourself to create consistently. Practicing your craft over and over is the only way to become decent at it. The person who sits around theorizing about what a best-selling book looks like will never write it. Meanwhile, the writer who shows up every day and puts their butt in the chair and their hands on the keyboard - they are learning how to do the work.

If you want to do your best creative work, then don't leave it up to choice. Don't wake up in the morning and think, "I hope I feel inspired to create something today." You need to take the decision-making out of it. Set a schedule for your work. Genius arrives when you show up enough times to get the average ideas out of the way.

Read more:<a href="https://jamesclear.com/professionals-and-amateurs">The Difference Between Professionals and Amateurs</a>Finish something. Anything. Stop researching, planning, and preparing to do the work and just do the work. It doesn't matter how good or how bad it is. You don't need to set the world on fire with your first try. You just need to prove to yourself that you have what it takes to produce something.

There are no artists, athletes, entrepreneurs, or scientists who became great by half-finishing their work. Stop debating what you should make and just make something.Read more:<a href="https://jamesclear.com/make-things">Why You Should Make Things</a>Everyone struggles to create great art. Even great artists.Anyone who creates something on a consistent basis will begin to judge their own work. I write <a href="https://jamesclear.com/best-articles">new articles</a>every Monday and Thursday. After sticking to that publishing schedule for three months, I began to judge everything I created. I was convinced that I had gone through every decent idea I had available. My <a href="https://jamesclear.com/goals-systems">most popular article</a>came 8 months later.

It is natural to judge your work. It is natural to feel disappointed that your creation isn't as wonderful as you hoped it would be, or that you're not getting any better at your craft. But the key is to not let your discontent prevent you from continuing to do the work.You have to practice enough self-compassion to not let self-judgement take over. Sure, you care about your work, but don't get so serious about it that you can't laugh off your mistakes and continue to produce the thing you love. Don't let judgment prevent delivery.Read more: <a href="https://jamesclear.com/your-job">It's Not Your Job to Tell Yourself "No"</a>

Share your work publicly. It will hold you accountable to creating your best work. It will provide feedback for doing better work. And when you see others connect with what you create, it will inspire you and make you care more.Sometimes sharing your work means you have to deal with haters and critics. But more often than not, the only thing that happens is that you rally the people who believe the same things you believe, are excited about the same things you are excited about, or who support the work that you believe in - who wouldn't want that? <a href="https://jamesclear.com/creativity#footnote-3-6206">3</a>

The world needs people who put creative work out into the world. What seems simple to you is often brilliant to someone else. But you'll never know that unless you choose to share.Read more: <a href="https://jamesclear.com/vivian-maier">Lessons on Sharing Your Gifts With the World From Someone Who Didn't</a>Finding your creative genius is easy: do the work, finish something, get feedback, find ways to improve, show up again tomorrow. Repeat for ten years. Or twenty. Or thirty.Inspiration only reveals itself after perspiration.

This page pulls together my most essential information about creativity. I'll share how creativity works, how to find your hidden creative genius, and how to create meaningful work by learning how to make creative thinking a habit. I've tried to present the basics of everything you need to know to start mastering creativity, even if you don't have much time.

books

Books

How to Master Creativity and Uncover Your Creative Genius

Many of us are aware of IQ (Intelligence Quotient). Designed to measure intellectual intelligence, it gives a score from a series of tests. Higher IQs indicate better cognitive abilities, or the ability to learn and understand. People with higher IQs are more likely to do well academically without exerting the same amount of mental effort as those with lower IQ scores.

A logical assumption, therefore, is that people with higher IQs will be more successful at work and through life. This assumption has been proven incorrect – there is more to success than simply being ‘clever’. Emotional Intelligence (EI or sometimes EQ – Emotional Quotient) is a more modern concept and was only fully developed in the mid-1990s, by Daniel Goleman, among others. Emotional Intelligence: A Definition

Emotional Intelligence is the measure of an individual’s abilities to recognise and manage their emotions, and the emotions of other people, both individually and in groups. <ul><li>People with higher emotional intelligence find it easier to form and maintain interpersonal relationships and to ‘fit in ’ to group situations. </li><li>People with higher emotional intelligence are also better at understanding their own psychological state, which can include <a href="https://www.skillsyouneed.com/ps/stress.html">managing stress effectively </a> and being less likely to suffer from <a href="https://www.skillsyouneed.com/ps/depression.html">depression </a>. </li> </ul>

In other words, academic aptitude (IQ) has no connection with how people understand and deal with their emotions and the emotions of others (EI). This makes perfect sense: we’ve all met very clever people who nonetheless had no idea about how to deal with people, and the reverse.

Emotional intelligence is a measure of how well we understand our emotions and the emotions of others. Learn about and develop your emotional intelligence.

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