Creativity: renewing the world, create yourself

Creativity is our ability to be creative. It is implemented in the form of new ideas and approaches in science, culture, politics, business – in a word, in all dynamic areas of life where competition is developed. This determines its value to society. And what is the value of this quality for the one who possesses it? “The most important thing in creativity is self-improvement,” says existential psychologist Marina Khazanova. – Moreover, spiritualized perfection. Any creative activity helps to comprehend one’s own values, to acquire personal meaning. And this is the most important spiritual need that distinguishes us from all living beings. Today, there are more and more of us who find time and energy to engage in creativity at their leisure – be it singing, dancing or painting on clay. “Many people are now focused on making money, but work does not always provide opportunities for self-expression,” psychologist Rada Granovskaya comments on this trend. – And the opportunity to realize ourselves, to respect ourselves is one of the main vital needs for us. When we cannot satisfy her, we feel very bad.” Having awakened the creative principle in ourselves, we change ourselves and change our lives: “The one who has taken this step becomes a more confident and stable person in life. Begins to see new opportunities to express himself creatively, including in his main job. Or looking for another job where he can realize himself.

Creative or Creative?

Creativity also means the ability to generate unexpected ideas. In this sense, “creative” is not the same as “creative”. “The essence of creativity is the discovery and creation of something qualitatively new, of significant value,” explains philologist Alexei Shmelev. – It can be aesthetic values, facts and laws, technical devices. And the words “creativity”, “creative” are used in the field of advertising, marketing and personnel management and imply a non-standard approach to the task or even “in-line production” of ideas. In the nomenclature of specialties, “creative” and “creator” appeared; it would be funny to see the announcement of the vacancy of the creator.

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• Show your creativity

Dialogue of the hemispheres

Creativity is determined by knowledge and outlook, personality traits and motivation, the environment in which we grew up and live. Equally important are intellectual flexibility and the ability to think “in different directions”. The more we can offer different solutions to the problem, the more likely we are to come across something original. But multiplying ideas is not enough – you also need to change the angle of consideration of the problem, the “angle of attack”. From the point of view of neurophysiology, the frontal lobes of the brain play an important role in creativity: they are responsible for the critical perception of existing strategies and allow them to be changed, adapting to the situation. The most creative people differ from the rest also in a higher level of coordination and interaction between the two hemispheres of the brain. When solving mathematical problems, super gifted children use both hemispheres, while other children use mainly the left *. And vice versa, when children were asked to mentally rotate a three-dimensional figure, the gifted children also activated their left hemisphere, while the rest used only the right one.

* M. O’Boyle et al. «Interhemispheric interaction during global-local processing…» Neuropsychology, 2004, vol. 18(2).

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• Creative means eccentric?

Stayers and sprinters

Creativity can peak at different ages. Researcher David Galenson, based on the biographies of celebrities of the twentieth century, identified two types of personalities. Some, like Picasso, show themselves in all their splendor very early. Others, like Cezanne, mature slowly, their highest achievements in the second half of life. But many of us are generally not ready to recognize our creative gift, considering ourselves hopelessly ordinary. “Sometimes this resource is really blocked,” explains Marina Khazanova. “For example, if a child is convinced in a family or at school that he is not capable of anything, he, most likely, and becoming an adult, will be convinced of this.” “To be creative means to be able to imagine something new, different from what is already there,” says Peter Weil, head of the Institute for Applied Creativity (Germany). – A bricklayer who can build a strong wall using fewer bricks is creative. Like the housewife who arranged things so cleverly in a tiny kitchen that everything fit.

*D. Galenson «Old Masters and Young Geniuses» (Princeton University Press, 2006).

How to develop it?

It is a mistake to think that all our creative abilities are only innate. “Creativity develops through learning and doing creative work,” explains Marina Khazanova. But perhaps the most important thing is motivation. A creative person feels an inner urge to create – whether it’s building a dollhouse or building a field theory. It is our curiosity, and not just knowledge and vision of the world, that makes us who we want to be.”

How to develop creativity? Here are some ways that can be applied in a variety of areas.

Pass the tests

• What talent is it time for you to show?

A group of people discuss an idea in succession playing three different roles: “dreamer” (spouting ideas), “realist” (figuring out how to implement the idea), and “criticism” (evaluating the feasibility of the idea and pointing out its vulnerabilities). This method was used by Walt Disney when creating his films.

In the center of a large sheet, graphically indicate the main problem. From it, as from a tree trunk, branches are drawn – ideas associated with it. And then this “association tree” grows as much as necessary to solve the problem.

The problem is turned upside down. The question is put like this: what should I do to definitely not achieve the goal? At the second stage, all collected ideas are converted into opposite ones.