CreativityNow

Welcome to the Bonuses!

This is where you'll find all the bonus material promised in the book, "Creativity Now," written by Jurgen Wolff and published by Pearson. If you don't have the book yet, you can get it now from Amazon or your other favorite online (& in the UK, offline) retailer.

Bonus 1: Visualisation with music to supercharge your creativity

Here's the audio track that allows you to get into a more creative state (don't use it when driving or doing anything else that requires your full attention. Use it only when you can sit back and relax and close your eyes). Just click here:

Bonus 2: Games for you to play

Playfulness is an essential part of creativity. In the book I suggest some games, but here I’d like to mention a few more. Part of your playfulness can be to make up your own games, just as you did when you were a child. The best ones don’t require any equipment, game boards, or rules—just your imagination!

PEOPLE-WATCHING GAMES

The next time you’re walking along the street, or on a bus or the Underground, pick the first person that catches your eye and play one of these games:

· The secret! Make up what you think would be this person’s deepest, darkest secret.
· The biggest event. Imagine what is the biggest thing that ever happened to this person.
· The blind date. Imagine what would happen if this person went on a blind date with the next person you see.

STORY GAMES

Remember a fairy tale from your childhood and imagine a different ending. What if Little Red Riding Hood had realised that her grandmother was actually the Big Bad Wolf? How would she have gotten out of that situation? What if Jack hadn’t fallen down the hill? What were he and Jill really up to on that hill?

When you’ve seen a film or a TV show, imagine you had been the main character. What would you have done differently? What would have been the outcome?

Your life as a fairy tale. Tell your life so far in the form of a fairy tale, starting with “Once upon a time…” Then make up the rest of the story, the way you’d like it to be (bring in a fairy godmother if necessary).

PHYSICAL GAMES

Pretend you’re being followed because you’re a spy. To lose the people who are following you, take a different route to work or to the store. Or pretend that you’re the spy-catcher, designate someone you notice on the street as the spy and follow them unobtrusively for a little while. (Note: failing to be subtle about this may result in police involvement, embarrassment, and restraining orders.)

Buy a toy for a child you know but make it one you like and play with it first. Choose something that can be easily re-packaged without arousing suspicion.

Go to a park early in the morning and and create your own tai-chi type movements. If you wear the appropriate gear and look serious, you may end up with a following and a new source of income. If you’re shy, do this at home.

Whatever kind of game you choose, play at least once a day!

Bonus 3: Photos from my Streetcombing

Here are a few random images from my own streetcombing expeditions. When you do your own, don’t look for the most scenic vistas or attractive objects, just anything that looks interesting.

Bonus 4: from my BHAG Journal

Below are a couple of pages from my Big Hairy Audacious Goal Journal. As you can see, they’re rough and quick to draw—I suggest that you focus on getting your exciting ideas down quickly, without worrying about how it looks.

THE BREAKTHROUGH STRATEGY BHAG PAGE

The first relates to my Breakthrough Strategy Program. This is a new program that helps people to reach their most cherished goals and it puts together everything I’ve learned from NLP, hypnosis, cognitive behaviour therapy, Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy, and the years of teaching my “Create Your Future” workshop.

The page was just a rough drawing of the first stages that I had in mind. First, a beta-test with 30 people, half in London, half in the rest of the world. The idea was to test the whole program and give it to people in exchange for their feedback. This phase happened in August-September 2009 (the program is 60 days long). As I write this, I’m gearing up for the next program, and on the diagram you’ll see my goal is to have 26 people sign up for the (paid) Gold version, which features group coaching, and 3 sign up for the Platinum version, which features one-to-one weekly coaching.

Below that I’ve indicated my notion of how I will attract those people: 10 Gold and 1 Platinum from a writing workshop in Seattle where there will be at least 100 people attending; 6 Gold and 1 Platinum drawn from the people who did the test version; and 10 Gold and 1 Platinum from my Brainstorm e-bulletin subscribers.

After that, I’ve indicated my goals for the second full session, which will run from January through February 2010: 42 Gold level participants and 5 Platinum.

THE WRITING COACH BHAG PAGE

My main target group for the Breakthrough Strategy Program is writers and people who aspire to write, partly because that’s the field I have been in for more than 20 years, and partly because I have built up some credibility in teaching in that field based on my workshops and my book, “Your Writing Coach.”

Therefore, one of my other goals is to become the world’s top writing coach (hey we're talking Big and Audacious here!). On the BHAG page I wanted to explore what will be the signs that I have achieved that (when you have a goal, it’s always a good idea to know how to tell when you’ve arrived). As you’ll see, the indictors I came up with include high levels of book sales, a certain number of keynote speeches at major writing events, etc., a high level of popularity for the YouTube videos I’m planning on producing, etc.

YOUR BEHAG PAGES

Your own BHAG pages don’t have to look anything like mine (in fact, some of mine look different from these two samples). You can paste up pictures that represent one of your goals, inspirational quotes, or anything else. If you’re willing to share some of yours, I’d love to see them—send them to me at [email protected].

Bonus 5: A Gallery of Imposters

In Creativity Now, I discuss the ‘imposter syndrome’—that feeling that at any minute the world may discover that we’re actually not qualified or not talented. That’s just our fear coming to the fore, but there have been some amazing imposters for real. Here are a few of my favourites:

Frank Abagnale, who was played by Leonardo diCaprio in the film, “Catch Me If You Can.” He started when he was only 16 and posed as an airline pilot, a lawyer, a prison inspector, a doctor, and passed bad checks worth more than $2.5 million in a period of five years. He escaped from custody multiple times, once posing as an FBI agent. He was released after serving less than five years and became a consultant to the FBI. He also runs his own fraud consultancy company—which has made him a millionaire again, this time legitimately.

Abagnale may have been inspired by Ferdinand (“Fred”)Waldo Demara, who posed as (among other things) a surgeon and actually performed quite a few operations on a Royal Canadian destroyer during the Korean War. None of his work was fatal to the patients. Apparently he had a photographic memory and a very high IQ, and by simply reading about the surgical procedures was able to perform them. But he was using the identify of a real doctor, whose mother read a newspaper account of one of these operations and knew her son was in Korea at the time. That led to his exposure, although the Canadian Navy didn’t press charges. Demara didn’t use his deceptions to make a lot of money, just to get jobs for which he wasn’t qualified. In his later life, he became a hospital chaplain. Robert Crichton wrote a book about Demara’s life, called “The Great Imposter,” which was turned into a film starring Tony Curtis. Demara died in 1982.

Another fraudster who inspired a movie was David Hampton. The film (first a play) was “Six Degrees of Separation,” by John Guare. Hampton’s main con was pretending to be the son of actor Sidney Poitier. In that guise he got free meals and convinced a number of celebrities to give him money or let him stay with them. The victims included Melanie Griffith, Calvin Klein, and Gary Sinese. A jail term failed to reform Hampton and he took on various other identities. He also tried to sue Guare for $100 million dollars for “stealing” the story of his life. The suit was dismissed. Hampton died in 2003 at the age of 39, of AIDS -related complications.

Our final imposter claimed a spiritual pedigree. Born Cyril Henry Hoskin, he took on the name Tuesday Lobsang Rampa and wrote a book called “The Third Eye.” It told how he had grown up in a monastery in Tibet after being sent there at the age of seven, and how having a hold drilled in his skill gave him the power of clairvoyance. It became a world-wide best-seller. However, a private eye found out that Rampa had never been to Tibet. Confronted with this fact, Rampa changed his story. He said he’d been up in a tree, trying to photograph an owl, and fell down. When he came to, the soul of the original Lobsang Rampa transmigrated into his body. Despite being exposed, he continued to write another 18 books, including “Living With The Lama,” which he said was dictated to him by his cat. He left Great Britain and settled in Canada, where he died in 1981. He still has fans who defend his stories (if you're one of them, don't write to me, you could be right.)

Bonus 6: My mind machine and how it works

In this video, I show you my mind/brain machine (this is the Sirius model) and how it works. To find current stockists of mind machines, I suggest you do a search on Google for "mind machines UK" (or wherever you are).

Bonus 7: Transforming your inner critic

That harsh voice you hear may be your own! Most of us do have a harsh inner critic who says things like “What makes you think THAT will work!?” or “Who do you think YOU are to try to do something like that?” It can instantly drain us of our enthusiasm and energy.

The good news is that you can transform it into an constructive inner guide. Listen to the following audio for a quick course in how to do that (it may take a few seconds for the player to appear and load):

If your Inner Critic is REALLY strong, you may be interested in my more comprehensive Tame Your Inner Critic programme. You can find out all about it by clicking: TAME YOUR INNER CRITIC.

www.tameyourinnercritic.com/sales.html

Bonus 8: Mind juggling & other ways to balance your brain

Here's a demonstration of mind juggling and other ways to balance your brain. Give them a try--you won't look any sillier doing these than I do!

Bonus 9: A Gallery of Adventurers

Here’s a glimpse of some of my favorite adventurers. The core factual material is drawn from Wikipedia.

LAWRENCE OF ARABIA

Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence CB, DSO (16 August 1888^[5] – 19 May 1935), known professionally as T. E. Lawrence, was a British military officer renowned especially for his liaison role during the Arab Revolt of 1916–18. His vivid writings, along with the extraordinary breadth and variety of his activities and associations, have made him the object of fascination throughout the world as Lawrence of Arabia, a title popularised by the 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia based on his life.

Lawrence's public image was due in part to American journalist Lowell Thomas's sensationalised reportage of the Revolt, as well as to Lawrence's autobiographical account, Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

Seven Pillars of Wisdom is brilliantly written and if the politicians of the time had listened to Lawrence’s advice regarding re-drawing the boundaries of the Arab world, the Middle East might not be the center of turmoil it is today. Part of Lawrence’s continuing appeal is that he was a shameless self-promoter even as he claimed to want to be out of the spotlight. There is also speculation that masochism accounted for his enjoyment of the harsh conditions he endured and that he was gay. He came to be friends with many of the major figures of his time, including George Bernard Shaw, Nancy Astor, and Winston Churchill.

SIR RICHARD BURTON

No relation to the famous actor of the same name, Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton KCMG FRGS (19 March 1821 – 20 October 1890) was an English explorer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, ethnologist, linguist, poet, hypnotist, fencer and diplomat. He was known for his travels and explorations within Asia and Africa as well as his extraordinary knowledge of languages and cultures. According to one count, he spoke 29 European, Asian, and African languages.^[

Burton's best-known achievements include traveling in disguise to Mecca, The Book of One Thousand Nights and A Night, an unexpurgated translation of One Thousand and One Nights (also commonly called The Arabian Nights in English after Andrew Lang's abridgement), bringing the Kama Sutra to publication in English, and journeying with John Hanning Speke as the first Europeans led by Africa's greatest explorer guide, Sidi Mubarak Bombay, utilizing route information by Indian and Omani merchants who traded in the region, to visit the Great Lakes of Africa in search of the source of the Nile. Burton extensively criticized colonial policies (to the detriment of his career) in his works and letters. He was a prolific and erudite author and wrote numerous books and scholarly articles about subjects including human behavior, travel, fencing, sexual practices, and ethnography. A unique feature of his books is the copious footnotes and appendices containing remarkable observations and unexpurgated information. He was a captain in the army of the East India Company serving in India (and later, briefly, in the Crimean War). Following this he was engaged by the Royal Geographical Society to explore the east coast of Africa and led an expedition guided by the locals which discovered Lake Tanganyika. In later life he served as British consul in Fernando Po, Damascus and, finally, Trieste. He was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and was awarded a knighthood (KCMG) in 1886.

As with Lawrence of Arabia, part of Burton’s enduring appeal is the mystery and hints of scandal around his person exploration of sexual practices and his willingness to defy the prudery of his era. My favorite book about him is The Devil Drives: A Life of Sir Richard Burton, by Fawn M. Brodie.

ALDOUS HUXLEY

Whereas many adventurers explore the outer world, Aldous Huxley was more interested in exploring the interior world. Aldous Leonard Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. He spent the later part of his life in the United States, living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death in 1963. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and wide-ranging output of essays, he also published short stories, poetry, travel writing, and film stories and scripts.

Aldous Huxley was a humanist and pacifist, and he was latterly interested in spiritual subjects such as parapsychology and philosophical mysticism. He is also well known for advocating and taking psychedelics. In October 1930, the occultist Aleister Crowley dined with Huxley in Berlin, and to this day rumours persist that Crowley introduced Huxley to peyote on that occasion. He was introduced to mescaline (considered to be the key active ingredient of peyote) by the psychiatrist Humphry Osmond in 1953.^[6] On 24 December 1955, Huxley took his first dose of LSD. Indeed, Huxley was a pioneer of self-directed psychedelic drug use "in a search for enlightenment", famously taking 100 micrograms of LSD as he lay dying. His psychedelic drug experiences are described in the essays The Doors of Perception (the title deriving from some lines in the book The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake), and Heaven and Hell. Some of his writings on psychedelics became frequent reading among early hippies.

By the end of his life Huxley was considered, in some academic circles, a leader of modern thought and an intellectual of the highest rank.

I think if you could mix Brave New World with George Orwell’s 1984, you’d get a pretty good picture of where we are today and where we’re heading. But you’d be depressed.

GRAHAM GREENE

Henry Graham Greene OM, CH (2 October 1904 – 3 April 1991) was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world. Greene was notable for his ability to combine serious literary acclaim with widespread popularity.

Although Greene objected strongly to being described as a Catholic novelist rather than as a novelist who happened to be Catholic, Catholic religious themes are at the root of much of his writing, especially the four major Catholic novels: Brighton Rock, The Heart of the Matter, The End of the Affair and The Power and the Glory.^[1] Later works such as The Quiet American, Our Man in Havana and The Comedians also show an avid interest in the workings of international politics and espionage. Throughout his life Greene travelled far from England, to what he called the world's wild and remote places. The travels led to him being recruited into MI6 by his sister, Elisabeth, who worked for the organisation; and he was posted to Sierra Leone during the Second World War. Kim Philby, who would later be revealed as a Soviet double agent, was Greene's supervisor and friend at MI6.^[11][12]

As a novelist he wove the characters he met and the places where he lived into the fabric of his novels. Greene first left Europe at 30 years of age in 1935 on a trip to Liberia, that produced the travel book Journey Without Maps. His 1938 trip to Mexico, to see the effects of the government's campaign of forced anti-Catholic secularisation, was paid for by Longman's, thanks to his friendship with Tom Burns.^[13] That voyage produced two books, the factual The Lawless Roads (published as Another Mexico in the U.S.) and the novel The Power and the Glory. In 1953 the Holy Office informed Greene that The Power and the Glory was damaging to the reputation of the priesthood; but later, in a private audience with Greene, Pope Paul VI told him that, although parts of his novels would offend some Catholics, he should not pay attention to the criticism.^[14] Greene travelled to the Haiti of François Duvalier, alias "Papa Doc", where occurred the story of The Comedians (1966). The owner of the Hotel Oloffson in Port-au-Prince, where Greene frequently stayed, named a room in his honour.

Greene suffered from bipolar disorder,^[2] which had a profound effect on his writing and personal life. In a letter to his wife Vivien he told her that he had "a character profoundly antagonistic to ordinary domestic life", and that "unfortunately, the disease is also one's material”

Although critics don’t rate it as his finest work and it was made into a mediocre film, my favorite Greene novel is “The Comedians.” Judging by the news reports coming out of Haiti, not too much has changed since Greene wrote the book—Papa Doc is gone but the island’s violence and grinding poverty live on. Most of Greene’s books seem to have been written when he was in the depressed phase of his bi-polar condition, although “Travels With My Aunt” and some of his short stories are exceptions.

WANT TO JOIN OUR GALLERY OF ADVENTURERS?

Send me a photo of yourself holding your League of Adventurers membership card (which I’ll send you upon request---just send me your name and postal address and one line of self-description) and I’ll add it! Send it to [email protected]