Can You Cultivate Creativity to Learn How Your Mind Works?

When it comes to personal growth, what are effective ways of thinking? How do we use creativity to enhance possibility without becoming too emotionally uncomfortable?

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.

— Scott Adams

The inner world.

First of all, do you want to learn the contours of your inner landscape? The mind is highly detailed, more so than people may realize. There are those who hold the belief that they are simple. They may be, but they also may not be paying attention. Not paying attention may serve to keep things simple. When we pay attention to our internal experiences, to what we easily notice and what is more elusive, the landscape shifts, becoming more complex through the iterative process of self-reflection and change.

Psychoanalysis, as Freud described it in his famous “Recommendations” paper, involves two simple rules. First, the analysand (patient) is instructed to say whatever comes to mind, and notice if it is being edited. This is called “free association”, and it isn’t easy. Learning to do it is considered by some to be a developmental achievement, and in a way just…