Personal mastery

“What important truth do very few people agree with you on?”

One client said his top two processes reminded him of a hammock: with these routines in place, he could be at ease, knowing not only what was ahead, but how he was going to tackle the many tasks of the day.

measure creativity using three primary criteria: fluency (the number of ideas we generate), flexibility (how diverse the ideas are), and originality (how novel an idea is).

As Morgan McCall, in his book High Flyers, points out, “Unfortunately, people often like the things that work against their growth. . . . People like to use their strengths . . . to achieve quick, dramatic results, even if . . . they aren’t developing the new skills they will need later on. People like to believe they are as good as everyone says .

Know when to move on. And then, finally, there’s the one about knowing when something that’s meant a great deal to you – like writing this column – has reached its natural endpoint, and that the most creative choice would be to turn to what’s next.

research has shown that these rituals actually work because they reduce tension and give a player a sense of control and confidence in a high-stakes, anxiety-provoking situation.

As artists, we must learn to be self-nourishing. We must become alert enough to consciously replenish our creative resources as we draw on them—to restock the trout pond, so to speak. I call this process filling the well.