Creativity could help a person get past the obstacles or hurdles....

Song - Ain't No Mountain High Enough

Ain't no mountain high enough,
Ain't no valley low enough,
Ain't no river wide enough,
To keep me from you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZTmnyUWWpA

Creativity test #4: Remote Associates
Come up with a fourth word that connects three unrelated words, such as "Falling – Actor – Dust."
Source: http://99u.com/articles/7160/test-your-creativity-5-classic-creative-challenges

"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep."
- Scott Adams

"If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original."
- Ken Robinson, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything 

"One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star."
- Friedrich Nietzsche

"Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void but out of chaos."
- Mary Shelley

"Where all think alike there is little danger of innovation."
― Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire 

"Creativity comes from a conflict of ideas."
- Donatella Versace

#MainMessageForToday
When there is conflict, when there is chaos, when things are going wrong, creativity may blossom.

Happy Thanksgiving!
Thanksgiving history by plimoth.org: http://www.plimoth.org/learn/multimedia-reference-library/read-articles-and-writings/thanksgiving-history

What are you thankful for?

Creativity test #3: Riddles
Example: A man has married 20 women in a small town. All of the women are still alive and none of them are divorced. The man has broken no laws. Who is the man?
Source: http://99u.com/articles/7160/test-your-creativity-5-classic-creative-challenges

Are you fully alive?
Song 'Alive' by Celine Dion:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJsa6-y4sDs

"But unless we are creators we are not fully alive. What do I mean by creators? Not only artists, whose acts of creation are the obvious ones of working with paint of clay or words. Creativity is a way of living life, no matter our vocation or how we earn our living. Creativity is not limited to the arts, or having some kind of important career."
― Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water 

"To be creative means to be in love with life. You can be creative only if you love life enough that you want to enhance its beauty, you want to bring a little more music to it, a little more poetry to it, a little more dance to it."
― Osho

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
- Albert Einstein

"We are all feeding from each other, all the time, every day."
― Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

"Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to."
― Jim Jarmusch, MovieMaker Magazine #53 - Winter, January 22, 2004

"Others inspire us, information feeds us, practice improves our performance, but we need quiet time to figure things out, to emerge with new discoveries, to unearth original answers."
- Ester Buchholz

#MainMessageForToday
Although creative ideas tend to be different from the ideas of others, we get a lot of ideas from others.

Creativity could make the impossible possible....

From the song 'Impossible' by Whitney Houston & Brandy:

Impossible!
For a plain yellow pumpkin to become a golden carriage,
Impossible!
For a plain country bumpkin and a prince to join in marriage,
And four white mice will never be four white horses,
Such falder-all-and-fiddle-dee-dee of course is
Impossible,
But the world is full of zanies and fools,
Who don't believe in sensible rules,
And won't believe what sensible people say,
And because these daft and dewey-eyed dopes,
Keep building up impossible hopes,
Impossible things are happening everyday.

And four white mice are easily turned to horses,
Such falder-all-and-fiddle-dee-dee of course is
Quite possible,
It's possible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dd0fuaD-OwE

Video - A crash course in creativity: Tina Seelig at TEDxStanford
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyM6rx69iqg

Creativity test #2: Incomplete Figure
You’re given a shape and then asked to complete the image.
Source: http://99u.com/articles/7160/test-your-creativity-5-classic-creative-challenges

"Everybody born comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory. We come from the Creator with creativity. I think that each one of us is born with creativity."
- Maya Angelou

"Given the freedom to create, everybody is creative. All of us have an innate, instinctive desire to change our environment, to put our original stamp on this world, to tell a story never told before. I’m absolutely thrilled at the moment of creativity – when suddenly I’ve synthesized my experiences, reality, and my imagination into something entirely new. But most people are too busy working on survival to find the opportunity to create. Fortunately, I’ve been freed by reputation, by the economics of success, and by emotional contentment to turn my ideas into reality. I’ve discovered that the more freedom I have to be creative, the more creative I become."
- William Shatner, Up Till Now

"Creativity is not the finding of a thing, but the making something out of it after it is found."
- James Russell Lowell

"Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought."
- Albert Szent-Györgyi

"Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not."
- Pablo Picasso

#MainMessageForToday
Creative people have ideas that are different from everybody else's and attempt things others do not want to touch.

Creativity usually means seeing things in a different light (with fresh eyes).....

Song 'In A Different Light' by Doug Stone
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02SonUDKJE0

Creativity test #1: Alternative Uses
Two minutes to think of as many uses as possible for an everyday object like a chair, coffee mug, or brick.
Source: http://99u.com/articles/7160/test-your-creativity-5-classic-creative-challenges

"Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way."
- Edward de Bono

"Creativity comes from looking for the unexpected and stepping outside your own experience."
- Masaru Ibuka

"Creativity is more than just being different. Anybody can plan weird; that's easy. What's hard is to be as simple as Bach. Making the simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity."
- Charles Mingus

"Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things."
- Steve Jobs

"The highest ideals are human intelligence, creativity and love. Respect these above all."
- Penn Jillette

#MainMessageForToday
Are you creative? Do you have a creative Facebook Timeline cover or Twitter page?
See these creative examples: http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/creative-facebook-timeline-covers/

Theme for the week 11/22 - 11/28: Creativity, inspired by the benefits of creativity in negotiations (theme for week ending 11/14).

"In negotiation, creativity – the ability to generate new ideas – enables parties to generate solutions that expand the pie of value."
- Program on Negotiation Daily Blog, Harvard Law School
http://www.pon.harvard.edu/daily/business-negotiations/the-creative-negotiator/