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Imagination is precious. As children we play with the box the toy came in, long after the toy has been discarded. As we grow older the education system grinds this imagination down, adding pressure to succeed and taking the fun out of being young. Release from this is sought through computer games, but these are the creation of other peoples imagination.

I had a conversation with a teacher recently, who was complaining because her rigid instructions on what to put on a Mothers Day card hadn’t been adhered to by one of her seven year old pupils. The little girl felt she’d somehow ‘got it wrong’, and ended up not giving the card to her mum because it wasn’t like all the rest.

Everyone’s imagination is vivid, but it can be shut down by adults who believe it’s their job to control instead of guide their charges.

With this in mind I asked a couple of children to give me the subject for ‘a story’. They looked at each other and gleefully decided on ‘fish guts.

Then they chose the names of their characters.
?Mildew’ and Mustard? they said, and looked at me expectantly. ‘Don’t look at me’ I said. ‘It’s your story.’

This is what we came up with.

‘Mildew is the smelliest brother in the world’ thought Mustard. ‘His feet smell, especially when he sticks them in my face. And he hasn’t had a bath since he started to walk!’

That was seven years ago.

Mildew sat in his room, counting his fish guts. He arranged them in smells. Smelly, very smelly, and drop dead smelly. He had plans for these guts, and kept them in a special ‘gut box’. It had a glass lid so he could keep a check on their progress.

His sister would go off like a fruit bat when she found them in the hood of her jacket.

It does seem mean, but Mildew reckoned his sister deserved it.

Mustard loved hot food. That’s why everyone called her Mustard. She put chili’s on her corn flakes, pepper on her ice-cream and mustard on everything else. It wouldn’t have bothered Mildew, except she put something red hot in HIS food when he wasn’t looking.

Last night Mildew had a drink of black currant juice. He swallowed twice before his tongue did something completely new. It exploded and blew a hole in the roof of his mouth.

Mildew found his voice, hiding in the fridge rubbing itself frantically against a packet of frozen peas.

‘MUSTARD!’ He screamed.

‘Yes Mildew’ smiled Mustard sweetly. ‘Oh, I quite forgot! I juiced a hundred of those nice little Mexican chili’s and poured them into your juice bottle. I hope you don’t mind.

She feigned horror. ‘You didn’t drink it did you Mildew?!’

‘The hottest chili’s in the world’ she shouted after him, ‘Mum! Mildews been drinking my chilli juice ….. Tell him not to!’

Mildew’s mouth was so hot his teeth rattled and his face was falling off. He looked at his ‘gut box’.

But fish guts were bad. After watching them mutate over 5 days he’d had second thoughts. Worms were wriggling, and the guts had turned a dizzy green. He held his breath and opened the lid, collapsing on the floor gasping like a fly hit by a litre of bugs spray.

‘That would make a dung beetle throw up’ he said to his pale green reflection in the mirror. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t be so mean - she IS my sister’

Mildew thoughtfully squeezed a blob of toothpaste. He brushed his teeth hard, before noticing it tasted a bit funny. He didn’t have time to wonder how Mustard had managed to squeeze chili seeds into his tube of toothpaste. His mum found him downstairs with his tongue stuck to the inside of the freezer. His eyes were wild, cross-eyed and popping.

She pulled Mildew away from the freezer with a gentle ripping sound

‘Oh dear’ she said, ‘I hope that wasn’t your tongue Mildew.’

‘Of Courth idth my tong’ he shouted, leaping around looking for something heavy to hit Mustard with. ‘It’th my nuthy thithter, she’th twying to kwill me. ‘I’m goin’ du dwag her intho the garden by her pethky toe nails and pull her dorky legth off …. AND DON’ YOU TWY AND THTOP ME!!!!’

Mildew wasn?t worried anymore about putting fish guts into Mustard’s hood but, as he awoke the next morning and heard his mother scream he knew the day had gone horribly wrong. Slowly he opened the curtains and peered out of the rain splattered window…
Why on earth was she wearing Mustards Jacket.

Children should be seen, heard and allowed to let their imaginations run riot. Their future depends on it.

Rob Daniel is a children’s author, creative writing, memory and self-esteem teacher. He lives in beautiful Albany on the south west corner of Western Australia, has a passion for mangos, the Greek Islands and bringing the best out of young people.

Rob creates ‘turn the page’ children’s e-books with illustrators from around the world. You can check out and buy these books instantly from http://www.chocmint.com You’ll also find an opportunity to join the chocmint adventure yourself, if you have a passion for writing and illustrating for children.

LATEST book published ‘A Tail’s Tale’, illustrated by UK artist Elizabeth Stringer. Part proceeds from these books go towards sponsoring children at the Bear-Care orphanage in Kitgum, Uganda run by the extraordinary Murray Kidd

People are inherently creative.

When it comes to creative thinking, it’s safe to say that at one time we have all been guilty of expressing our ideas before they were ready for prime-time at some point. Often when new ideas are being formed the words that come out of our mouths have only a passing resemblance to the brilliant little lights of genius that we originally had in our heads.

Talking about the as-yet unformed little kernels of creative genius too early has a damaging effect because forcing the unshaped into shapes (pushing meanings into words) before they have matured has an unfortunate tendency to cut off significant chunks of wisdom.

A small piece of genius badly expressed runs the risk of being considered dismissible at best, at worst dismissive of the creative thinker.

Take a second and think of a time when you had a fantastic idea – one so good that your brain was racing just trying to keep up. If you excitedly began to talk about the idea too soon, somehow you didn’t get it right didn’t you? For some weird reason it didn’t sound so intelligent coming out of your mouth. Frustrated, you tried to explain it another way but somehow that didn’t work either.

In fact the more you talked the more you lost the thread of what you were saying…it’s as if the words you were speaking somehow took you further away from what you were trying to say. But you KNEW it was a stroke of genius when it was in your brain before you tried to describe it…didn’t you?

So was it a totally dumb idea disguised as a stroke of genius, or was it a stroke of genius that got dumber as you tried to explain it?

If you’re like many people, after having the experience of explaining an idea badly, and then losing the essence of the first thought, you would probably come to believe that it wasn’t all that brilliant to begin with. You’d rationalize that talking about it revealed the obvious flaws and you might have been embarrassed how stupid the idea was in the first place, and relieved you found out how dumb it was before investing money!

In the end you rationalized that what really happened was that the process of stuffing the idea into a bunch of words turned what you thought was genius into the obviously dumb idea it had been all along.

What if in fact the idea was brilliant and had been from the beginning? What if it was actually a stroke of genius but the real problem had been the attempt to define and express it before it was ready to be expressed and translated to the world of the five senses?

What if the exercise of taking a brilliant (but unprocessed) piece of thought and talking about it too early drained it of meaning…or distorted it so much the original kernel of genius was obscured and lost.

Okay so how does that happen? How can the process of communication actually distort the meaning of what it is we’re trying to say?

Words and Meaning

First off there is a huge distinction between the words we use and the underlying meaning we want to communicate.

Think for a second about how words tend to be fairly rigid containers of meaning. Words mean what they mean, but that meaning doesn’t expand far beyond the boundary of their meaning. Dogs are dogs and horses are horses.

Now think about meaning beyond words. If you think of meaning as a liquid that is poured over words streaming out of our mouths in a chain of sentences, you can imagine that when the meaning is much richer than the current vocabulary, bits of the meaning are necessarily deleted, distorted or generalized to accommodate the word flow.

So until an idea is fully formed and well-understood, the words chosen to convey it run the risk of being imprecise enough to literally destroy the tiny kernels of genius that the idea represented.

So next time you have a fantastic idea, follow these simple guidelines designed to protect your creative genius.

• No matter when the idea arrives, take a minute or two and scribble down the broadest outline, keeping it very general.

• Go back to what you were doing immediately - sleeping, cycling, walking whatever. Immediately continue the previous activity.

• Get out of your own way. Think of ANYTHING else. By preserving the core of the idea on paper, trust that it is protected. By shifting your attention to something mundane, you are allowing the internal process of genius to continue without interference.

Trust your subconscious’ ability to continue the job it started - developing the brilliant thought it came up with in the first place. You’ll be glad you did!

Hugh Comerford is an internationally recognized trainer, coach and the creator of the BEST ™ (Behavioural & Emotional State Transformation) Program.
With clients spanning the globe from all walks of life, Hugh is a true renaissance man and consistently delivers his unique blend of skills and proprietary performance enhancing technologies.
Of particular note is Hugh’s ground breaking corporate culture work, where he excels at merging cultures, building bridges, forming teams, and demystifying the unconscious processes that dominate the personal and corporate world.
Hugh enjoys analyzing, explaining, and supporting excellence through personal improvement and shares his views regularly through his ever popular blog (http://www.nlpworks.com/blog)

Based in Toronto Canada, Hugh lives with his wife Jennifer and their culture-shattering son, Jack.

Deep within each of us lies a great wealth of creative potential, and I believe tapping into this potential is the best way to solve the challenges that we encounter in our lives. Let me share a story that illustrates my point.

A lady takes her pet chihuahua with her on a safari holiday. Wandering too far one day, the chihuahua gets lost in the bush and soon encounters a very hungry looking leopard. The chihuahua realizes he’s in trouble, but, noticing some fresh bones on the ground, he settles down to chew on them, with his back to the big cat. As the leopard is about to leap, the chihuahua smacks his lips and exclaims loudly, “Boy, that was one delicious leopard. I wonder if there are any more around here!” The leopard stops mid-stride, and slinks away into the trees.

The little dog sees them approaching and fears the worst. Thinking quickly, the little dog turns his back, pretends not to notice them, and when the pair are within earshot says aloud, “Now where’s that monkey got to? I sent him ages ago to bring me another leopard….”

What a wonderful story to illustrate how with just a little extra thought and some creative thinking we can keep the “monkey off our back” and the “leopards at bay!” I challenge you to think differently about the issues you are facing in your life this year. Gather all the facts, be constructively discontent with those facts and do some brainstorming and green-light thinking. Then, simply write out an action plan to live a richer, fuller and happier life. Take action on the plan!

©2005 Professional Development Systems All Rights Reserved

Robert Prentice of Professional Developments Systems has spent the last twenty years bringing
inspiration and motivation to business owners as well as their employees. For more information
visit his website at http://www.mrattitudespeaks.com

There are few creative people who are able to pursue their artistic and creative talents whilst earning a reasonable income from just them exclusively.

Often the creative work that is most original, most challenging and pioneering, is, due to its nature, without precedent and so not immediately accepted or sought after anyway.

How many great painters do we hear of only becoming famous and respected after painting hundreds of canvases? How many novelists wrote dozens of novels - literally millions of words - before they had a book accepted by a major publisher and actually made a living from their creative work?

How many artists are only deeply appreciated after their death? And how many other artists continue to go undiscovered, patiently pursing their craft in poverty and virtual isolation?

The answer to all these questions of course an immeasurably large number.

So back to us and what we can do. How do we manage to develop and explore our own creativity whilst also putting food on the table?

Well, widely speaking, there are two ways of doing this:

Be as creative as possible in your current day job

Whatever your current employment and means of earning income, there are ways of being creative in your approach to your work.

It may be that you already work in a very creative environment and so being able to apply this approach is very easy and actively encouraged.

But whatever your role, think about all the different ways you can apply your own creative abilities. Be inventive with this, look beyond the obvious large scale creative actions, and get into tiny details.

Live each action as a creative person. Embrace your identity as a highly creative individual, and refuse to do anything in a regular dull way, from making a drink to chairing an important meeting.

If your current job is repetitive or monotonous and does not particularly tax your mind, use this time to develop your ideas and thinking. Have a small note pad in your pocket to jot down ideas then continue to formulate them
in your head whilst you work.

Find a Creative Day Job

The second option is to find a job that will utilise your creativity and help to stimulate you and inspire you in your other creative projects.

There are obvious interpretations to this idea. For example if you’re a keen photographer, seek a job in a photo processing business or a photographic gallery.

If you’re a writer, seek a job in a bookshop and surround yourself with inspiring literature and people hungry to read, or work in a local newspaper office.

There are also more abstract ways of considering this approach though. Arguably the truly creative person can take inspiration from virtually any source around them at any time. Think about what inspires YOU as an artist, as a creative person.

It could be that you paint and in particular enjoy painting coastal landscapes. Maybe a day job as a lifeguard would support and nurture this creative talent?

Or maybe you write beautiful effusive poems about being lost in nature. As a train driver you could cover miles of scenic routes each week, from expansive green fields to tightly packed urban architecture.

These are two quite abstract examples but hopefully you see the point. Think about what you really love doing creatively and all the different elements of that.

What kind of environment and surroundings support your creativity? What kind of people are you around when you’re at your most creative? What situations inspire you?

In all of these ideas, try out our own variations, experiment and find what works best for you. Maybe the best way to support yourself creatively and financially, is not as obvious as you first thought…

© Copyright 2006 Dan Goodwin.

Creativity Coach Dan Goodwin is the author of “Create Create!”, a FREE twice monthly ezine for people who want simple and powerful articles, tips and exercises to help them unleash their creative talents. Sign up right now and get your FREE “Explode Your Creativity!” Action Workbook, at http://www.CoachCreative.com