Anyone who's ever endured the requisite 12 years of school knows you don't graduate because of creative thinking. You learn to memorize and spit things out; creativity only counts in art or debate. It's no wonder that as adults we get stuck and have a hard time getting out of the box of ideas that we've put ourselves in. The advice, "Do something different" seems almost too simple to be helpful. That would mean letting go of what we're certain of and at least entertaining the opposite view. The Sun god Ra was a central god of the Egyptian pantheon. He sailed across the heavens each day, disappeared at night, and was reborn the next morning. Yet even the Sun can't force an apple seed to become a pear tree, nor can it make a seed grow faster than normal. Sometimes the power of persistence can keep us in our box. But it the Sun warms the seed and allows it to take its natural course, it will likely grow. Force never seems to be a permanent solution to anything, especially when it comes to our thinking.
For me, slowing down has been a tremendous source of creativity. It has allowed me to open up – to know that there’s life under the earth and that I have to let it come through me in a new way.
– Natalie Goldberg
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