To Have A Style Is To Be

So Let's Not Pretend That Travel Is Always Fun. We Don't Spend 10 Hours Lost In The Louvre Because We Like It, And The View From The Top Of Machu Picchu Probably Doesn't Make Up For The Hassle Of Lost Luggage. (more Often Than Not, I Need A Holiday After My Holiday.) We Travel Because We Need To, Because Distance And Difference Are The Secret Tonic Of Creativity. When We Get Home, Home Is Still The Same. But Something In Our Mind Has Been Changed, And That Changes Everything.

How Do We Regulate Our Emotions? The Answer Is Surprisingly Simple: By Thinking About Them. The Prefrontal Cortex Allows Each Of Us To Contemplate His Or Her Own Mind, A Talent Psychologists Call Metacognition. We Know When We Are Angry; Every Emotional State Comes With Self-awareness Attached, So That An Individual Can Try To Figure Out Why He's Feeling What He's Feeling. If The Particular Feeling Makes No Sense—if The Amygdala Is Simply Responding To A Loss Frame, For Example—then It Can Be Discounted. The Prefrontal Cortex Can Deliberately Choose To Ignore The Emotional Brain.

Every Creative Story Is Different. And Every Creative Story Is The Same. There Was Nothing. Now There Is Something. It's Almost Like Magic.

By The Age Of 3, Children From Wealthier Households Hear, On Average, About 500,000 Encouragements And 80,000 Discouragements. The Ratio Is Reversed In Households On Welfare.

Creativity Is Not A Trait That We Inherit In Our Genes Or A Blessing Bestowed By The Angels. It's A Skill.