Elizabeth Gilbert muses on the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses — and shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person “being” a genius, all of us “have” a genius. It’s a funny, personal and surprisingly moving talk.
Creativity [originality, ingenuity]: Thinking of novel and productive ways to conceptualize and do things; includes artistic achievement but is not limited to it. Personified for example by Albert Einstein (Source: VIA Institue)
There are two essential components to Creativity- originality and adaptiveness. A creative individual generates ideas or behaviors that are novel or unusual and these make a positive contribution to the individual’s life or the lives of others. Learn more at Via Institute on Character
The Noel Strengths Academy defines it this way:
A creative person is someone who comes up with ideas that are (1) original and (2) useful
- Creativity includes artistic achievement, but is not limited to it
- People who are creative enjoy thinking of novel and productive ways to describe and do things
- There is “BIG C” Creativity / “little c” creativity
- “little c” creativity refers to day-to-day creativity
- “Big C” creativity is reserved for those who accomplish once-in-lifetime, creative acts
- “Big C” creators understand that truly original and useful creativity requires hard work
- “Big C” creators are usually (eventually) completers
- Sparks of ingenuity
Source: Noel Strengths Academy
- Underuse: Conformity
- Overuse: Eccentricity
Key Research:
- Rank order of Creativity in populations from:
- US : 14;
- European: 12
- Asia: 15
- Latin America: 11
- Sub-Saharan Africa: 11
- Middle east: 11
- The character strengths least related to life satisfaction (weak association) are modesty/humility, creativity, appreciation of beauty & excellence, judgment, and love of learning (Park, Peterson, & Seligman, 2004).
- The most prevalent character strengths in very young children are love, kindness, creativity, curiosity, and humor (Park & Peterson, 2006a).
- Character strengths and character strengths-related person-job fit played a central role in work-related outcomes. Signature strengths fit and the character strengths of creativity and teamwork were the strongest predictors (Harzer et al., 2017).
- A study of strengths under the virtue of wisdom (creativity, curiosity, judgment, love of learning, and perspective) found them to be related to higher performance on a creative task and negatively related to stress (Avey et al., 2012).
Put into action the recommendations from the Authentic Happiness Coaching Newsletter on Creativity
Tayyab Rashid and Afroze Anjum offer 340 Ways to Use VIA Character Strengths including these four for Creativity:
- Do at least one assignment weekly in a different and creative manner. If your assignments don’t leave much room for creativity, work on them in a new and different environment.
- Work on an article, essay, short story, poem, drawing, or painting in relation to your passion once a week. When you finish, look for a way to share your work with others who share your interest.
- Take a pottery, photography, stained glass, sculpture or painting class. If you have skills in one of these areas, consider teaching a class. 11. Learn about an exotic and creative art such as Feng-shui or Ikebana. Get advice on where to start from friends from different cultural backgrounds.
- Read about famous creative people and identify what made them unique. Think about the unique aspects of your own life and how you could channel them for creative purposes.
Learn more and here for Roger’s excellent website.
From the bestselling author of How We Decide comes a sparkling and revelatory look at the new science of creativity. Shattering the myth of muses, higher powers, even creative “types,” Jonah Lehrer demonstrates that creativity is not a single “gift” possessed by the lucky few. It’s a variety of distinct thought processes that we can all learn to use more effectively. Lehrer reveals the importance of embracing the rut, thinking like a child, and daydreaming productively, then he takes us out of our own heads to show how we can make our neighborhoods more vibrant, our companies more productive, and our schools more effective. We’ll learn about Bob Dylan’s writing habits and the drug addiction of poets. We’ll meet a bartender who thinks like a chemist, and an autistic surfer who invented an entirely new surfing move. We’ll see why Elizabethan England experienced a creative explosion, and how Pixar designed its office space to get the most out of its talent. Collapsing the layers separating the neuron from the finished symphony, Imagine reveals the deep inventiveness of the human mind, and its essential role in our increasingly complex world. from Johah Lehrer’s website.
From Kirkus Reviews, 04/15/96:
Elizabeth Gilbert muses on the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses — and shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person “being” a genius, all of us “have” a genius. It’s a funny, personal and surprisingly moving talk.
Novelist Amy Tan digs deep into the creative process, looking for hints of how hers evolved. How do creative people come up with great ideas? Organizational psychologist Adam Grant studies “originals”: thinkers who dream up new ideas and take action to put them into the world. In this talk, learn three unexpected habits of originals — including embracing failure. “The greatest originals are the ones who fail the most, because they’re the ones who try the most,” Grant says. “You need a lot of bad ideas in order to get a few good ones.”
Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.
More on meditation:
Quotations on creativity Passion is one great force that unleashes creativity, because if you’re passionate about something, then you’re more willing to take risks. Yo-Yo Ma
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