Soulful Creativity

The second volume in the Soulful Creativity series continues the in depth, hands-on exploration of the fascinating world of creativity. It was developed over a seven year period, polished and refined with input and feedback from hundreds of students, research participants and creative people from all walks of life. 

Author Jim Henry (a psychologist and former professor of education) takes readers on a journey into the questions: What do we need in order to become our creative best? How can we be empowered as creative people, able to produce our finest, most imaginative work?



Many of the concepts and exercises are integrated into video segments and interactive activities that often include music, voice-overs and beautiful images. There are interview excerpts, glimpses into student journals, applications and activities, and dozens of insights, concepts and principles. The presentations, embedded widgets and pop-up windows add many additional “pages” to this volume’s 117 page length.



This is Volume 2 (of a 3 volume series) and includes:



Introduction: A multimedia overview of what’s coming up in this volume.



Chapter 1: The Power to Create is in Everyone. We’ll first address this theme in the section All Walks of Life and look at how creativity is essential in all domains. Not just the arts. Then in Unfolding Creativity we’ll apply an idea from modern physics to help illustrate how creative ability can exist in people even when they don’t believe it’s there, even when they can’t point to it and say, “Here it is.” We’ll borrow an intriguing gadget from physicist David Bohm and use it to help us grasp a tough-to-grasp notion: How something can exist even when we can’t see it. 

Next in The Elephant’s Perspective we’ll explore a wider view of what creativity is. We’ll touch on the many ways that creative energy finds expression in the world. And we’ll see that it shows up in some surprising places. In the fourth theme—Is This Creative?—we first take a look at how slippery a thing creativity is; how difficult to define, and then see if we can clarify and adopt a working definition.



Chapter 2: CREATIVITY IS MULTIDIMENSIONAL: The second main focus of this volume — and the second principle — is that creativity is multidimensional. We’ll begin this chapter by clearing up another misconception—the notion that creativity is a particular trait or aptitude that we either have or don’t. We’ll take a closer look at how it’s actually something that happens naturally for all of us when certain influences or factors are present. We’ll revisit the five dimensions of the M.U.S.I.C. Model and we’ll also look at how, in any creative life, over the long haul, all of the dimensions are necessary. Then we’ll explore the M.U.S.I.C. Model Self-Assessment Scale and give you a chance to complete it and reflect on your results.



CHAPTER 3: YOU ARE THE SECRET INGREDIENT IN YOUR OWN CREATIVE GENIUS: In this chapter we’ll explore how there are many pathways to high creativity. We’ll briefly review a study conducted with 50 creative people and look at a couple of surprising lessons that were learned along the way. We’ll look at the importance of individual differences, and how becoming our creative best has a lot to do with who we are as individuals. We’ll explore the notion of personal fit and see how we can put these ideas into practice.



CHAPTER 4: THOSE WHO OFFER SUPPORT: The role of support is the focus of Chapter Four but we’ve actually been integrating aspects of this theme since the beginning of Volume One. We’ll briefly touch on some of those areas again, to put them in perspective, and also take a deeper look at why support is so important. We’ll start with a few telling stories from research participants, look at how support is important even for those whose creative contributions have changed the world, and we’ll take a peek into the three sub-themes mentioned previously: Safety, Freedom and Possibility.  And once again, there reflections and activities, including this time, a look at setting up a Celebration night.



CHAPTER 5: APPENDIX: As well as the acknowledgements, blurb about the Author, photo credits there’s also a description of what’s coming up in Volume 3.