Unthink: Rediscover Your Creative Genius
Erik Wahl
Language: English
Pages: 224
ISBN: 0770434002
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In the tradition of A Whole New Mind and The War of Art, graffiti artist and corporate thought leader, Erik Wahl explores the power of creativity to achieve superior performance.
Somehow we’ve come to believe that creativity is reserved for the chosen few: the poets, the painters, the writers. The truth is creativity is in all of us and re-discovering it is the key to unlocking your fullest potential. Unthink is a book that pushes us beyond our traditional thought patterns.
Unthink is a book that will inspire everyone to realize that we are capable of so much more than we have pre-conditioned for. Creativity is not in one special place--and it is not in one special person. Creativity is everywhere and in everyone who has the courage to unleash their creative genius.
crucial factor for future successes. From in-person interviews with more than 1,500 CEOs from sixty countries and thirty-three industries worldwide, IBM reported, “Chief executives believe that—more than rigor, management discipline, integrity or even vision—successfully navigating an increasingly complex world will require creativity.” Yet the same study also revealed that “less than half of global CEOs believe their enterprises are adequately prepared” for the future.3 Why are so many
teens we wanted to be someone. We were each the same something—a student—so what mattered most was acceptance, who we were seen to be. Popularity was more important than our place in the world. But then, sometime after high school, our wantings began to merge into a grander vision for our lives. We wanted to be both something and someone. And at the heart of that vision was a job.”2 Duncan goes on to describe what then happens to most of us in the process of becoming that something and someone
labels. As a result, he was, according to close friend and former teammate Jake Plummer, “one of the freest thinking guys I’ve ever been around.… That was the beauty of that guy. He just had a very unique perspective on things. He was a one of a kind.”7 He was surrendered to his own art. 3. Surrender the Moment The most recognizable line from Martin Luther King Jr.’s most famous speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial is undoubtedly “I have a dream …” But according to Time magazine,
exploration to help formulate answers to our questions. We learned instead to rely on what we already knew to make decisions, offer explanations, and solve problems. Efficiency became our vehicle for progress, replacing curiosity. In 2005, a study co-conducted by Vladimir Sloutsky, professor and director of the Center for Cognitive Science at Ohio State University, and Anna Fisher, a graduate student at Ohio State, showed that adults were better at remembering pictures of imaginary animals they
and the eleven-year-olds were third best. The adults were the worst at recalling which animals they had seen. Sloutsky explained that the reason the younger children—especially the five-year-olds—were far better than the adults in the test was that they had not yet learned to categorize the animals in their minds. As a result, they studied each picture closely to determine whether it was similar to the one of the cat who had beta cells. On the other hand, once the adults learned that only the