What is Creativity? (Week2)

CREATIVE THINKING

Creative thinking is very crucial in everyday life as it change one’s point of view and opinion and helps them to see things in different perspective than one’s currently do.

Definition

Creative- relating to or involving the use of the imagination or original ideas to create something, having good imagination or original ideas

Think- have a particular belief or idea, direct one’s mind towards someone or something; use one’s mind actively to form connected ideas, have a specified opinion of

Source: http://oxforddictionaries.com

Creativity- refers to the phenomenon where a person creates something new whether it is a product, solutions, work of arts, novel or jokes, etc. that brought along some kind of sentimental value whether to the creator itself or the society or the domain within which the novelty occurs.

                                                                        Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creativity

Creativity in Everyday Life

That flash of inspiration is the final moment of a process marked by distinctive stages—the basic steps in creative problem-solving. The first stage is preparation. Search out any information that might be relevant and let your imagination run wild! Being receptive, being able to listen openly and well, is a crucial skill.

Once you have mulled over all the relevant pieces and pushed your rational mind to the limits, you can let the problem simmer. This is the incubation stage, when you digest all you have gathered. It's a stage when much of what goes on occurs outside your focused awareness, in the unconscious. As the saying goes, "You sleep on it."

The unconscious mind is far more suited to creative insight than the conscious mind. Ideas are free to recombine with other ideas in novel patterns and unpredictable associations. It is also the storehouse of everything you know, including things you can't readily call into awareness. Further, the unconscious speaks to us in ways that go beyond words, including the rich feelings and deep imagery of the senses.

We are more open to insights from the unconscious mind when we are not thinking of anything in particular. That is why daydreams are so useful in the quest for creativity. Anytime you can just daydream and relax is useful in the creative process: a shower, long drives, a quiet walk. For example, Nolan Bushnell, the founder of the Atari company, got the inspiration for what became a best-selling video game while idly flicking sand on a beach.

With luck, immersion and daydreaming lead to illumination, when all of a sudden the answer comes to you as if from nowhere. This is the popular stage—the one that usually gets all the glory and attention, the moment that people sweat and long for, the feeling "This is it!" But the thought alone is still not a creative act. The final stage is translation, when you take your insight and transform it into action; it becomes useful to you and others.

“That's easier said than done.” We are used to our mundane way of thinking about solutions. Psychologists call this "functional fixedness." We see only the obvious way of looking at a problem—the same comfortable way we always think about it. Another barrier is self-censorship, that inner voice of judgment that confines our creative spirit within the boundaries of what we deem acceptable. It's the voice that whispers to you, "They'll think I'm foolish," or "That will never work." But we can learn to recognize this voice or judgment and have the courage to discount its destructive advice.

Inside Creativity

Our lives can be filled with creative moments, whatever we do, as long as we're flexible and open to new possibilities—willing to push beyond routine. The everyday expression of creativity often takes the form of trying out a new approach to a familiar dilemma. Yet half the world still thinks of creativity as a mysterious quality that the other half has. A good deal of research suggests, however, that everyone is capable of tapping into his or her creative spirit. We don't just mean getting better ideas; we're talking about a kind of general awareness that leads to greater enjoyment of your work and the people in your life: a spirit that can improve collaboration and communication with others.

“I’m not creative.” We tend to think that creativity belongs to the artists, musicians, poets, etc. etc.   because we don't have much of an audience for what we do. In fact, we focus too much on "Big C" creativity—the glamorous achievements of geniuses—and overlook the ways each of us displays flair and imagination in our own lives.

The more you can experience your own originality, the more confidence you get, the greater the probability that you'll be creative in the future. The idea is to develop the habit of paying attention to your own creativity. Eventually, you will come to place greater trust in it and instinctively turn to it when you are confronted with problems.

The ability to see things in a fresh way is vital to the creative process, and that ability rests on the willingness to question any and all assumptions. This is personified by Paul MacCready, one of America's most prolific inventors. His best-known accomplishment is the invention of the Gossamer Condor, the first human-powered airplane to fly a mile.

Being wrong is not bad! People always afraid of making mistakes, which can be embarrassing or even humiliating, but if you take no chances and make no mistakes, you fail to learn, let alone do anything unusual or innovative. In creative problem-solving, mistake is a great teacher of wisdom. Research suggests that creative people make more mistakes than their less imaginative peers. They spin out more ideas, come up with more possibilities and generate more schemes.

Play while work can stimulate your creativity. Don’t dissociate them! The same goes with jokes and humors. When you're joking around, you're freer to consider any possibility—after all, you're only kidding. Having fun helps you disarm the inner censor that all too quickly condemns your ideas as ludicrous.

This is why in brainstorming sessions the operative rule is that anything goes and no one is allowed to dismiss an idea as too absurd. People are free to generate as many ideas as they can manage to think of, no matter how wild they seem. In one of those ideas, there is often the seed that can eventually grow into an innovative solution.

For a child, life is a creative adventure. The most basic explorations of a child's world are creative exercises in problem-solving. They begin a lifelong process of inventing themselves. In this sense, every child reinvents language, walking, love etc.etc

"The kernel of creativity," says psychologist Teresa Amabile, "is there in the infant: the desire and drive to explore, to find out about things, to try things out, to experiment with different ways of handling things and looking at things. As they grow older, children begin to create entire universes of reality in their play."

The psychological pressures that inhibit a child's creativity occur early in life. Parents can encourage or suppress the creativity of their children in the home environment and by what they demand of schools. Most children in preschool, kindergarten—even in the first grade—love being in school. They are excited about exploring and learning. But by the time they are in the third or fourth grade, many don't like school, let alone have any sense of pleasure in their own creativity.

Amabile's research has identified the main creativity killers:

• Surveillance: Hovering over kids, making them feel that they're constantly being watched while they're working.
• Evaluation: Making kids worry about how others judge what they are doing. Kids should
• Competition: Putting kids in a win/lose situation, where only one person can come out on top.
• Over control: Telling kids exactly how to do things. This leaves children feeling that any exploration is a waste of time.
• Pressure: Establishing grandiose expectations for a child's performance. Training regimes can easily backfire and end up instilling an aversion for the subject being taught.

One of the greatest creativity killers, however, is more subtle and so deeply rooted in our culture that it is hardly noticed. It has to do with time.

 Creativity flourishes when things are done for enjoyment. When children learn a creative form, preserving the joy matters as much—if not more—than "getting it right." What matters is the pleasure, not perfection.

Source: http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/199203/the-art-creativity