Your Creative Brain: Seven Steps to Maximize Imagination, Productivity, and Innovation in Your Life
by Shelley Carson, PhD
Harvard psychologist Shelley Carson?s provocative book, published in partnership with Harvard Health Publications, reveals why creativity isn't something only scientists, investors, artists, writers, and musicians enjoy; in fact, all of us use our creative brains every day at home, work and play. Each of us has the ability to increase our mental functioning and creativity by learning to move flexibly among several brain states.

Explains seven brain states or "brainsets" and their functions as related to creativity, productivity, and innovation.
Provides quizzes, exercises, and self-tests to activate each of these seven brainsets to unlock our maximum creativity
Your Creative Brain, called by critics a "new classic" in the field of creativity, offers inspiring suggestions that can be applied in both one's personal and professional life.
 
The Creative Process
By Brewster Ghiselin
This is an insightful study on the creative process. Ghiselin shows a real knowledge of specific instances of creation. He talks too about a staged process in which often after great effort and exhaustion an answer ( Kekule's picture of the benzene ring, Einstein's E=mc2 )miraculously appears when the person is relaxing with their mind off the main question. This book has many interesting stories , and is a highly recommended introduction to the whole process of creative activity.
 
Unlock Your Creative Genius
By Bernard Golden
A noted psychologist shows you how to...embrace your passion; maximise your courage to create; identify and overcome personal barriers; awaken your natural curiosity; increase your emotional intelligence to create; prepare to be inspired. Creativity is one of life's great sources of fulfilment, whether it is expressed in the arts, science, business, or sheer entertainment. When we are at our creative best, we experience emotions of joy, excitement, anticipation, hope, and deep satisfaction. Unfortunately, for many people such moments of uninhibited creative drive are all too rare. Often, when we try to be creative, we also experience the inhibiting emotions of anxiety, self-doubt, judgemental attitudes, or even shame, guilt, and physical discomfort. Psychologist Bernard Golden helps us to be our authentic selves by pursuing our individual creative paths in this motivational guide. Filled with the insights and practical techniques culled from his almost thirty years as a psychotherapist, "Unlock Your Creative Genius" gives you the tools to unleash your creative imagination and manage the tension and negative mind-body reactions that often impede the creative flow. Golden first offers a variety of strategies that help the reader become aware of the often-unconscious obstacles to creative fulfilment. Among these are fear of failure; survivor's guilt, when friends or loved ones are ill or have died; the shame of failing to meet our own or others' unrealistic expectations; grandiose fantasies; problems with self-discipline; a pattern of dependency that impedes self-motivation; and an aversion to being alone even though creative expression usually demands time by ourselves. To counter these negative reactions, Golden provides guidelines to enhance positive emotions such as openness to change, trust, and the commitment essential for creativity. He also stresses the need to promote physical calm to offset tension and the importance of developing self-compassion, a vital resource in dealing with fear, shame, and guilt. This inspiring, helpful, and very practical book offers readers the freedom to live authentically as they access, accept, and act on their creative genius.
 
On Becoming an Artist: Reinventing Yourself Through Mindful Creativity
By Ellen J. Langer
On Becoming an Artist is loaded with good news. Backed by her landmark scientific work on mindfulness and artistic nature, bestselling author and Harvard psychologist Ellen J. Langer shows us that creativity is not a rare gift that only some special few are born with, but rather an integral part of everyone’s makeup. All of us can express our creative impulses– authentically and uniquely–and, in the process, enrich our lives.
Why then do so many of us merely dream of someday painting, someday writing, someday making music? Why do we think the same old thoughts, harbor the same old prejudices, stay stuck in the same old mud? Who taught us to think “inside the box”?
No one is more qualified to answer these questions than Dr. Langer, who has explored their every facet for years. She describes dozens of fascinating experiments–her own and those of her colleagues–that are designed to study mindfulness and its relation to human creativity, and she shares the profound implications of the results–for our well-being, health, and happiness.
Langer reveals myriad insights, among them: We think we should already know what only firsthand experience can teach us. . . . In learning the ways that all roses are alike, we risk becoming blind to their differences. . . . If we are mindfully creative, the circumstances of the moment will tell us what to do. . . . Those of us who are less evaluatively inclined experience less guilt, less regret, less blame, and tend to like ourselves more. . . . Uncertainty gives us the freedom to discover meaning. . . . Finally, what we think we’re sure of may not even exist.
With the skill of a gifted logician, Langer demonstrates exactly how we undervalue ourselves and undermine our creativity. By example, she persuades us to have faith in our creative works, not because someone else approves of them but because they’re a true expression of ourselves. Her high-spirited, challenging book sparkles with wit and intelligence and inspires in us an infectious enthusiasm for our creations, our world, and ourselves. It can be of lifelong value to everyone who reads it.
 
The Art of Thought
By Graham Wallas