Twelve things you are not taught in schools about creative thinking
We learn about great ideas and we learn the names of the creative geniuses who created them, but we are seldom taught about how they got the ideas. Following are twelve things about creative thinking:
- YOU ARE CREATIVE.
The artist is not a special person, each one of us is a special kind of artist. Every one of us is born a creative, spontaneous thinker. The only difference between people who are creative and people who are not is a simple belief. Creative people believe they are creative. People who believe they are not creative, are not. The reality is that believing you are not creative excuses you from trying or attempting anything new. When someone tells you that they are not creative, you are talking to someone who has no interest and will make no effort to be a creative thinker.
- CREATIVE THINKING IS WORK.
You must have passion and the determination to immerse yourself in the process of creating new and different ideas. Then you must have patience to persevere against all adversity. All creative geniuses work passionately hard and produce incredible numbers of ideas, most of which are bad.
- YOU MUST GO THROUGH THE MOTIONS.
When you are producing ideas, you are replenishing neurotransmitters linked to genes that are being turned on and off in response to what your brain is doing, which in turn is responding to challenges. When you go through the motions of trying to come up with new ideas, you are energizing your brain by increasing the number of contacts between neurons. The more times you try to get ideas, the more active your brain becomes and the more creative you become.
- YOUR BRAIN IS NOT A COMPUTER.
Your brain is a dynamic system that evolves its patterns of activity rather than computes them like a computer. It thrives on the creative energy of feedback from experiences real or fictional. You can synthesize experience; literally create it in your own imagination. The human brain cannot tell the difference between an “actual” experience and an experience imagined vividly and in detail.
- THERE IS NO ONE RIGHT ANSWER.
Reality is ambiguous. The only certainty in life is uncertainty. When trying to get ideas, do not censor or evaluate them as they occur. Nothing kills creativity faster than self-censorship of ideas while generating them. The world is not black or white. It is grey.
- NEVER STOP WITH YOUR FIRST GOOD IDEA.
Always strive to find a better one and continue until you have one that is still better.
- EXPECT THE EXPERTS TO BE NEGATIVE.
The more expert and specialized a person becomes, the more their mindset becomes narrowed and the more fixated they become on confirming what they believe to be absolute. Consequently, when confronted with new and different ideas, their focus will be on conformity. Does it conform with what I know is right? If not, experts will spend all their time showing and explaining why it can’t be done and why it can’t work. They will not look for ways to make it work or get it done because this might demonstrate that what they regarded as absolute is not absolute at all.
- TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS.
Don’t allow yourself to get discouraged.
- THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS FAILURE.
Whenever you try to do something and do not succeed, you do not fail. You have produced a result. It’s what you do with the result that’s important. You have learned something that does not work.
- YOU DO NOT SEE THINGS AS THEY ARE; YOU SEE THEM AS YOU ARE.
Interpret your own experiences. All experiences are neutral. They have no meaning. You give them meaning by the way you choose to interpret them.
- ALWAYS APPROACH A PROBLEM ON ITS OWN TERMS.
Do not trust your first perspective of a problem as it will be too biased toward your usual way of thinking. Always look at your problem from multiple perspectives. Always remember that genius is finding a perspective no one else has taken. Look for different ways to look at the problem.
- LEARN TO THINK UNCONVENTIONALLY.
Creative geniuses do not think analytically and logically. Conventional, logical, analytical thinkers are exclusive thinkers which means they exclude all information that is not related to the problem. They look for ways to eliminate possibilities. Creative geniuses are inclusive thinkers which mean they look for ways to include everything, including things that are dissimilar and totally unrelated.
AND, FINALLY, CREATIVITY IS PARADOXICAL.
To create, a person must have knowledge but forget the knowledge, must see unexpected connections in things but not have a mental disorder, must work hard but spend time doing nothing as information incubates, must create many ideas yet most of them are useless, must look at the same thing as everyone else, yet see something different, must desire success but embrace failure, must be persistent but not stubborn, and must listen to experts but know how to disregard them.
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