The essence of being happily human is being creative. Few things in life are more satisfying than transforming something old or nonexistent into something new, better, faster, less expensive, more lucrative, joyful, efficient, effective, etc. And the secret of creative power is to lose yourself in what you are “creating”. Getting lost is necessary to find the new.

Why? Because you cannot create something new, different or original using your own thinking mind. The metaphor and cliché for this concept is “think outside the box.” But that’s a misnomer because creativity is only partially about thinking. The purpose of thinking and feeling is just to get things started, to stimulate the creative process, not to get the answer directly. This is where you may be getting sidetracked. The answer cannot be fully thought out no matter how smart you think you are.

Outside the box means outside the conscious, personal, thinking mind and inside the conscious and subconscious mind. That’s where all the creative power and action is. That is the faculty from which the answers come. That is the higher level of consciousness that you want to operate at all the time in order to be creative all the time. This is a form of meditation, perhaps the highest.

All your thinking mind has to do is step back and let the creative process unfold. It develops from the subconscious on its own to the extent that your personal thinking/feeling mind is out of the way: your ego is out of the way! Do not try, pressure or stress. That’s the problem: your effort must be effortless for it to work.

First, think or brainstorm what new you want to create. Once you have it clear in your mind and you are satisfied, then let it go. Drop it. Get rid of it. Let it incubate. Let it sink into the subconscious for advanced processing.

Finally, be calmly and patiently receptive to the answer, which is guaranteed as long as you are persistent and convinced that it will come.

You become a creator, inventor, explorer of what is new and different, what has never been produced or expressed in exactly this way before. Getting lost in uncharted and unknown territory is the great joy, excitement and adventure of creation. You were created to be a creator, and fulfilling that purpose is what the good life is all about.