Core Creativity: The Mindful Way to Unlock Your Creative Self

Offers ways to upgrade creativity while practicing mindfulness so that anyone can achieve breakthroughs in any area of their life. Looking to upgrade your creative abilities? Core Creativity offers ways to go beyond the limitations of ordinary creativity to access the core creativity that comes from the very center of your being: the depths of your unconscious. Dr. Ronald Alexander has decades of experience working with core creatives—artists who regularly draw on deep creativity and have learned what to do when the well seems to have run dry. Using mindfulness practice, meditation and visualizations, and habits and mindsets of highly creative people, anyone can experience the flow of ideas as if from an infinitely abundant source. Core Creativity employs stories of ordinary but highly creative people alongside the latest research that helps people get unstuck. Too often, the mind’s Wi-Fi signal is too weak for the really big ideas to load, but Core Creativity offers readers help with establishing a mindfulness practice; exercises for enhancing creativity and fostering better decision-making; key insights from personal interview with highly creative artists including music producer Val Garay, director Amy Ziering, and actor Denis Quaid; and guidance for reclaiming your creative self so you can achieve profound transformation. Core creativity allows you to come up with ideas that are both fresh and original and experience such a deep state of creative flow that it might feel as if you only played a minor role in the process of creativity. For anyone seeking to enhance their creative abilities and achieve their goals, Core Creativity presents the possibility of genuine breakthroughs.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Chapter 1: The Deepest Creativity Comes from Your Core Chapter 2: Before You Say Hello, Say Good-Bye Chapter 3: Reclaim Your Creative Self Chapter 4: Support and Collaboration Chapter 5: Absorbing Creative Stimulation and Getting into Open Mind Consciousness Chapter 6: Generating Ideas and Other Ways into Open Mind Chapter 7: Mind-sets and Habits of Highly Creative People Chapter 8: Meditation, Medication, and Psychedelics Chapter 9: Mindful Decision Making Chapter 10: The Core Creativity Action Plan Resources Bibliography Notes Index About the Author

About the Author :
Ronald Alexander, PhD, is psychotherapist, mindfulness trainer, creativity and executive leadership coach with a private psychotherapy practice in Santa Monica, California. He is the executive director of the OpenMind® Training Program, a leading-edge organization that offers personal and professional training programs in mindfulness-based mind-body therapies, transformational leadership, and meditation. As a longtime mindfulness and Zen Buddhist trainer he specializes in utilizing mindfulness meditation in his professional and corporate work helping people to achieve mind states that access their core creativity for over forty-four years. Visit him online at www.CoreCreativity.com and www.RonaldAlexander.com.

Review :
Practicing mindfulness can enhance one’s creativity, contends psychotherapist and creativity consultant [Alexander] posits that mindfulness meditation can help one “develop greater insight and wisdom” and “access core creativity,” citing anecdotes about famous artists to provide guidance on collaborating, generating ideas, and developing productive habits.... Those looking for alternative methods to enhance creativity might find some useful tidbits. In this time of a pandemic, vanishing workplaces, violence, and difficult changes, creativity seems to be the key to survival. But how do you unlock your core creativity? Alexander, a psychotherapist and mindfulness trainer, is convinced that creativity lies within all of us and can be boosted with mindfulness practice, meditation, visualization, and simple habits. He describes some of his cases and walks readers through a series of detailed meditations meant to break through obstacles and lead to an open mind. Alexander acknowledges that even good change can be difficult, especially when change affects self-image, and readers may need to let go of the bad memories before creating the good. Alexander urges readers to seek collaborators, keep an open mind, dabble in unrelated creative fields, and follow the habits of creative people. Alexander shares the successes of some of his clients, including several recognizable names in entertainment, and speaks freely of his own journey. A concluding chapter lays out a detailed “Core Creativity Action Plan” that incorporates his meditations. Perfect for serious readers looking for a creative lift to improve their lives. We each are born with gifts to deliver to this world. Creativity helps these gifts be born. Creativity is your birthright, and Alexander’s writing encourages you, your gifts, and your spirit to come alive. Core Creativity is a jewel box filled with ideas, resources, strategies, tools, and meditations that can help anyone who is creatively blocked to get back into the flow. Culling decades of research and transformative practices with artists of every genre, Dr. Ronald Alexander has created this guide full of engaging stories and quotations from highly creative people that will inspire you to let go of any fears or insecurities preventing you from reaching your creative heights. In Core Creativity, Alexander shows us how to live a more creative life and to regain our creativity if we’ve lost it. He clearly explains meditative practices and a variety of other practices that have led to creative breakthroughs in his own life and that of his clients. I recommend this book to all who would like to gain the psychological, physical, and career benefits of living a more creative life. In this superb book, Dr. Ronald Alexander is your trusted guide who will help awaken the magic of your creativity that has always been within you. I wholeheartedly recommend Core Creativity. Give yourself the gift of reading this book! Dr. Alexander teaches you to release old beliefs and become a mindful explorer of your mind, imagination, heart, and soul. Drawing on years of in-depth experience working with creative artists, Dr. Alexander skillfully shows us how to get out of our own way and connect with our inner muse. His step-by-step, engaging, practical guide effectively blends insights from ancient wisdom traditions with contemporary scientific research. The result is a toolkit of clearly presented exercises anyone can use not only to find inner inspiration, but to become richly productive in the outer world. Core Creativity is a terrific read! If you are looking to break through to new depths of creativity in your life, relationships, or work, then this book is the guide you’ve been looking for. In this wonderful book Dr. Alexander integrates the fields of neuroscience, positive psychology, and mindfulness with illuminating interviews with highly creative people from the fine arts and music to film and acting. Core Creativity provides both a toolbox and blueprint to show you how to uncover your inner core creativity and then manifest new creative dreams and outcomes. Improve your mind strength! A renowned expert in mindfulness, Dr. Ronald Alexander provides an essential guide for awakening creativity, a subject previously ignored in academic psychology. Practical and easy to read. Readily applicable. The keys to unlocking your creative potentials can be found within. This book inspires us to meet our moments with openhearted presence and tap the full aliveness and creativity of our being. Ronald Alexander has spent 5 decades working with some of the most creative people in existence, and he’s finally drawn together all that’s he’s learned (and all that he’s taught) into a terrific book in Core Creativity: The Mindful Way to Unlock Your Creative Self. In it, he shows how anyone can achieve breakthroughs in creativity by implementing practices used by highly creative people. It’s well worth the read! We all know that pursuing our creativity can drive us out of our minds and that there are tests and ordeals at every stage of the game. Core Creativity is full of useful tips, practical skills you can learn, and practice that will assist you in living your creativity, getting things done, and maintaining your physical and emotional health as you give your gift to the world. Core Creativity is a marvelous help to channel your innate creative energy and realize your fullest potential. It gives you the right tools to create a blend of positive calm, insight, and courage to overcome creative blocks and exercise a more unbridled mind and life. In the pages of Core Creativity, Ronald Alexander proves that it is never too late to tap into your creative instincts. It is a deeply researched guide to developing habits to uncover our natural resources. He provides exercises and a plan to help steer the way to a new view of life and opportunities. Ron Alexander is a brilliant student of psychology and spirituality, which gives him an auspicious capacity to kick-start or restart others in tickling their creative imagination out of hiding. For anyone wishing professional or personal transformation, Core Creativity is here for you—so hey, open it up and get started. Let’s dream up what to do with ourselves—and set aside any roadblocks! Many of us are facing changes that challenge us to go beyond the limitations of ordinary consciousness and draw from a deeper well of creativity than we have in the past. Core Creativity’s exercises and strategies can help anyone release the fear that holds them back from transformation. Ronald Alexander’s book is an invaluable guide for dreaming a new dream and bringing into being a new vision. Core Creativity has infused my heart with fresh inspiration and courage. Ronald’s wise and caring voice can guide you to begin, sustain, or complete the creative project you’ve been dreaming about—plus, as he helps you nurture your creativity, you’ll develop healthier habits for your whole life in the process. Ronald’s loving counsel is enlivened by real-life stories from his vast experience as a clinician and mindfulness teacher. If you want to unleash or enhance your unique creativity, read this book! Core Creativity reveals the secret sauce of creativity and how it is accessible to everyone. Dr. Alexander shares in simple and clear language how creativity can be powerfully birthed. His mindfulness meditations are accessible and designed to generate creative breakthroughs. This book is a gem and I will be recommending it often! Through stories, research, and unique meditations, Core Creativity beautifully shows us that it is not only the talented artists we admire but within each of us is the same gift of natural creativity. In this important and timely book, Ronald Alexander gives us the psychological tools and meditative practices to help us overcome our blocks and access our own creative flow. If you want help to rediscover your creative joy this is the place to start. Highly recommended!