1. Why does it seem like some people can effortlessly “follow their passions,” while others can’t?
1.1. The systems we find ourselves in condition out of us the courage to risk.
1.2. Playing it safe suits the naysayers who are scared of the sacrifice and upheaval big ideas entail.
2. Books that help you improve your creativity
2.1. The War of Art: Break Through Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield
2.1.1. “Our job in this life is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.”
2.1.2. “The War of Art” frames the struggle of producing meaningful work in a context that most of us can relate to.
2.1.3. Pressfield also explains that we need to find out who we already are if we’re going to unlock the creativity within us. He nudges us towards the practical necessity of self-discovery and how to get there.
2.2. The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp
2.2.1. “When you’re in a rut, you have to question everything except your ability to get out of it.”
2.2.2. Creativity is not a gift bestowed on a select few. Studies have found that only 30% of creativity is genetic, which means that the majority is environmental and can be cultivated.
2.2.3. “The Creative Habit” contains over 30 exercises, all of them accessible to any personality, which will increase your creative potential.
2.3. Breakthrough!: Proven Strategies to Overcome Creative Block and Spark Your Imagination by Alex Cornell
2.3.1. “If the remedy was exact, I’d patent it, design the packaging and make some money.”
2.3.2. It's easy to read, and the information and strategies provided are scientifically sound and appealing.
2.3.3. One major message in “Breakthrough!” is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to your creative block.
2.4. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
2.4.1. “People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy.”
2.4.2. “Flow” is perhaps the most important treatise on the neuroscience of creativity and how to capitalize on it.
2.4.3. “Flow” refers to the mindset you’re in when you can feel creativity flowing through your veins, out of your body, and into a tangible piece of art
2.4.4. Csikszentmihalyi draws on over 30 years of psychological research to explain how you can access this mindset at will.
2.5. Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brené Brown
2.5.1. “There are people who have amazing gifts, who could make the world a better place, who won’t put their work out there because they don’t want to walk into uncertainty and vulnerability.”
2.5.2. “Daring Greatly” exposes the most potent enemy of creativity: Fear of vulnerability.
2.5.3. “Daring Greatly” helps you develop the skills of courage, resilience, and emotional intelligence so you can take more risks, even when fear and shame rear their ugly heads.
2.5.4. Your ideas can and will fail at some point, exposing your vulnerabilities to the outside world. “Daring Greatly” forces you to acknowledge this and helps you confront that certainty. Thus, when you do face failure, you’ll be confident in your ability to pick yourself back up.