The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence

by Gavin de Becker

The reason for creating three options is that it frees you from the need to be correct; you know that at least two of your options will be wrong, and this freedom from judgment clears a path to intuition. In practice, this turns out to be less an exercise in creativity than an exercise in discovery; what you may think you are making up, you are calling up. Many believe the process of creativity is one of assembling thoughts and concepts, but highly creative people will tell you that the idea, the song, the image, was in them, and their task was to get it out, a process of discovery, not design. This was said most artfully by Michelangelo when asked how he created his famous statue of David. He said “it is easy—you just chip away the stone that doesn’t look like David.”