The Reluctant Creative: 5 Effo

Looking for a balm to soothe your pandemic languishing? You’re not alone.
Maybe you have a "good" job, feel respected by your peers and friends, and feel competent. Life should be satisfying. But is something missing? Despite job promotions, new relationships, or beach vacations, you can't shake that feeling, like a bad habit. Did you take a wrong turn on the way to Easy Street? You just need a better, simpler strategy to find happiness, as such.

Find the elixir from a slumbering spring within yourself. Your creativity. But it's not what you think. Sure, it can be macrame and performance art, but there is another way. Everyday creativity includes blissfully normal things like making a meal, choosing your outfit, or building a pivot table. What if you could use creativity as a boot camp to face a productive struggle every day? Exercise your own unique style of creativity and reap the rewards of a better mood, performance, and resilience beyond the impossible. Creativity can seem like an unlikely coach to transform stress into strength.

Is it worth a try, at least?

"This practical and funny book can help anyone find their creative spark. Equally important, it will make you smile" - Daniel H. Pink, #1 New York Times bestselling author of WHEN, TO SELL IS HUMAN, and DRIVE.

You might not be an artist, but everyday creativity is in you. In a good way, like a deliciously warm meal, not an alien-took-over-your-body way. When you make a presentation plant a garden, braid your unicorn's mane, or sneak vegetables into smoothies - you’re practicing creativity and building resilience. Every step into creativity forces you to face failure, judgment, and confront uncertainty with a positive attitude.

The Reluctant Creative is a literary mullet: fun in the front, data in the back. A colorful tossed salad with humor and exercises to help you embed five effortless habits to expand your comfort zone. Supported by research and personal stories about my experiences as a veterinarian, mom, and stand up comic, and stories about others who have used creativity to make their lives better.

What happens when you cross a veterinarian with a researcher and a stand-up comedian? You get a writer with a delightful sense of humor providing an evidence-based dissection of creativity with a step-by-step guide on how to nurture it in your daily life. - David Newman, PhD - Creativity Alchemist – Creatific Culture Labs; UBC Creativity professor.

Explore the evidence that creativity is the #1 skill you need in this decade, with benefits like:

• more resilience
• solve more problems and create new opportunities
• confidence in uncertainty
• a happiness advantage
• speak up and stand out without fear
• stress management
• amplify job performance and satisfaction
• even increase your salary.

All you have to do is D.A.N.C.E. Explore 5 effortless habits to expand your comfort zone in a few minutes a day:

Daydreaming: in a specific way for best results to gain disruptive insights

Ambiguity for confidence when you don’t know the answer

Novelty to fuel your creativity for groundbreaking ideas

Curiosity to wonder how things could be different

Edit Later to stop crushing creativity before it has the chance to speak up

What if you had the courage to stand up and speak from the heart, with new ideas that could disrupt everything? Use the five effortless habits to leap over the obstacle of judgment, to solve more problems, take small risks for huge leaps, and feel more confident and challenged in life and work. Not only will you reap the benefits, but you will give others permission to do the same. If you exercise your creativity every day you can change your brain, change your life.

Pinky swear♥