Why creativity is KING 👑

 A brief history of creativity (in about 3 minutes 😂).

Well this is a MAMMOTH task I set myself, how to condense the essence of creativity down into it's component parts. Love me a challenge 🤣

Over the next 6 weeks I'm going to be breaking down the art and science of creativity for you and how we can leverage it to find and own our unique voice. Todays Newsletter is covering the history of creativity AND the ways you can treat it as a process to get creatively stronger. Like flexing a muscle.

We are all born creative, as children we are allowed (and encouraged) to interpret the world around us and understand our place in it. It’s a biological imperative. Our inherent curiosity allows us to construct our worldview.

Think about how we are encouraged to take our first steps through that constant learning process of failure and yet somehow as adults it's taboo to celebrate failure, it's almost frowned upon.

Children are inherently more creative than adults (I wrote about this in my newsletter last week). 

Whilst starting to do more research into the subject I came across this little snippet, the very act of creativity itself is based on the fact that as a species we are super cooperators. Cooperation, not competition, has always been the key to the evolution of our complexity as a species.

Humans have evolved into this as it benefits us as a species to be interdependent. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Our social contract itself is a creative endeavour. It is not a solitary endeavor limited to the work of a genius or some particularly original thinker. Creativity is built on interconnections of ideas, experience, and imagination. … But we don't accomplish this miraculous feat on our own.

Creativity is the space between the material reality and our imagination where intelligence, adaptability, agency, interpretation, and problem solving all come together, but it is also a thoroughly social process. 

Creativity is at the very root of how we evolved and why we are the way we are. It’s our ability to move back and forth between the realms of "what is" and "what could be" that has enabled us to reach beyond being a successful species to become an exceptional one. One that has escaped the gravity of earth itself to reach the stars!

Our distinctively human capacity for shared intentionality, coupled with our imagination is how we became who we are today. 

Think about the very act of social media itself the feedback loop of content. You post some content, someone else reads or consumes it and it’s pushed out into the feed almost in real time. Affecting and directly impacting the content someone else puts out. Which over the course of time affects yours. Like a giant stream of consciousness.

All these millions of ideas propagating and pollenating. It’s an almost pure form of creativity. All done in real time, between people in a digital social construct. Blows my tiny mind 🧠

It's interesting to note that the ancient greeks had no actual word for creativity. They assumed that artists were merely discoverers not inventors (wish someone had told Di Vinci).

Nature was governed by law and man had to submit to those laws. The exception to this rule (the only one according to the Greeks) was poetry, The poet made new things, brought to life new worlds. This is as close as they got to the word creativity.

Aristotle saw it as an imitation of reality rather, the realm of that "which is neither true nor false." The space in-between, this is where the true creative plays. In what IS and what might BE. Creatives are masters at conquering their fear, fear of the unknown and fear of what could become. They literally create it by moving through it.

The renaissance (the greatest historical for creativity we have ever seen) was a kind of universal awakening which bought with it huge cultural change.

Painters like Raphael, Michelangelo and Da Vinci came to the fore. In fact Da Vinci said that he employs "shapes that do not exist in nature". Which puts a spanner in the old Greek ideas.

Lets's give a nod to some of these historical creatives, each one had a voice that was unique.

Leonardo Di Vinci

An inventor, painter, sculptor, scientist, architect, mathematician, anatomist, writer and engineer and all around super creative baddass! Considered to be one of the best talented painters of all time his sketches, notes and scientific diagrams shows his forward thinking mentality with inventions for flight, musical instruments and mechanical engineering.

"Learning never exhausts the mind." – Leonardo Di Vinci

Marie Curie

The first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person and only woman to win a Nobel Prize twice in two different fields. She paved the way for women in science with her discoveries and breakthrough ideas. Her determination and dedication had a profound effect on her work and ultimately her life.

"Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas."- Marie Curie

Steve Jobs

An entrepreneur and visionary in technology changing the way people use computers in their everyday lives introducing the personal computer revolution introducing the ipod, iphone and ipad. He was an innovator funding the creation of pixar, initiating a development in the visual effects industry with the first computer-animated film.

"Creativity is just connecting things." – Steve Jobs

Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and futurist best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system. He never married, and solitude was his creed for inventiveness, which led to over 300 patents worldwide for his inventions, many of which are still used today.

"My brain is only a receiver, in the Universe there is a core from which we obtain knowledge, strength, and inspiration."

As diverse as all these historical figures are they all have one thing in common. The ability to frame the world in their unique way through their own unique voice, they were fearless and it's this fearlessness which enabled them to break free of current and outdated limiting beliefs, patterns and models of behaviour.

How to get and STAY creative.

Not often that we get to use the words creativity and process in the same sentence but what IF we could refine the process of creativity and tap into it to make it more process driven way. Creativity on tap if you will (Mmmmmm).

In 1940 James Webb wrote this 5 stage process for refining your creative ideas.

1. Gather new material. At first, you learn. During this stage you focus on 1) learning specific material directly related to your task and 2) learning general material by becoming fascinated with a wide range of concepts.
2. Thoroughly work over the materials in your mind. During this stage, you examine what you have learned by looking at the facts from different angles and experimenting with fitting various ideas together.
3. Step away from the problem. Next, you put the problem completely out of your mind and go do something else that excites you and energizes you.
4. Let your idea return to you. At some point, but only after you have stopped thinking about it, your idea will come back to you with a flash of insight and renewed energy.
5. Shape and develop your idea based on feedback. For any idea to succeed, you must release it out into the world, submit it to criticism, and adapt it as needed.

"Like many human abilities, our creative powers can be cultivated and refined. This involves an increasing mastery of skills, knowledge, and ideas. Creativity is about fresh thinking. It doesn’t have to be new to all of humanity – through that’s always a bonus – but certainly to the person whose work it is." 

Sir Ken Robinson

The creative process is the act of making new connections between old ideas. Thus, we can say creative thinking is the task of recognizing relationships between concepts.

Taking everything you have learnt in your life so far and adapting it to new purposes creates entirely new pathways of association creating something new and unique.

"An idea is a feat of association, and the height of it is a good metaphor." Robert Frost

I find there are a few hacks we can also use to get us thinking more creatively and with more abstraction. For me personally these are walking, getting out in nature, mindfulness and listening to music (which are all essentially the same thing, letting the mind switch over to a different gear, to subconsciously process information).

Here are a few more cheeky ways of staying creative - from Wired to Create: Unraveling the mysteries of the creative mind (I totally stole these and as a creator you should too).

“Good artists borrow, great artists steal.” Pablo Picasso

1. Imaginative play 

Observing children in imaginative play reveals a wellspring of natural-born creativity. When engaged in pretend play, children take on multiple perspectives and playfully manipulate emotions and ideas. As adults, cultivating a childlike sense of play can revolutionize the way we work.

2. Passion

Passion often stems from an experience or a relationship that moved us somehow and can lead to inspiration. It is often the emotional fuel that starts one down a creative path, but it’s only a start. People who fulfil their creative dreams over the long haul balance the excitement about the future with realistic strategies for getting closer to their goals, there comes a handoff moment between the dream and reality.

3. Daydreaming

Idle though it may seem, the act of mind wandering is often anything but mindless; it can lead to improvements in creative thinking. So, the next time you’re working hard on a creative project or work assignment that requires intense focus and creative chops, try taking a five-minute daydreaming break every hour. Things like walking, doodling, or cleaning, will it affect your ideas and thinking.

4. Solitude 

Neuroscientists have discovered that solitary, inwardly focused reflection employs a different brain network than outwardly focused attention. When our mental focus is directed towards the outside world, the executive attention network is activated, while the imagination network is typically suppressed. This is why our best ideas don’t tend to arise when our attention is fully engaged on the outside world.

5. Intuition

Over the past thirty years, cognitive scientists have made huge strides in demystifying the power of the unconscious mind, leading to the recognition of a dual-process theory of human cognition—or the "fast and slow brain" theory. Intuition is part of the fast brain system.

The fast brain is structurally more sophisticated than the slow brain. It helps us assimilate new information into our existing knowledge structures, and aids us in complex pattern recognition and in making unconventional connections that lead to more original ideas and solutions. The fast brain plays the largest role when generating creative ideas, while the more deliberate slow brain play a larger role when exploring those ideas and playing around with them, to determine their uses and applications.

6. Openness to experience

Research has found that the desire to learn and discover seems to have significantly more bearing on the quality of creative work than intellect alone. So, if you want to boost your creativity, try out a new creative outlet or a totally different medium of expression, or take a new route home from work, or seek out a new group of people with different interests or values that you might learn from. Openness to new experiences can help increase your integrative complexity—the capacity to recognise new patterns and find links among seemingly unrelated pieces of information. So get uncomfortable and try new things!

7. Mindfulness

A large body of research has associated mindfulness—both as a practice and as a personality trait—with many cognitive and psychological benefits like improved task concentration and sustained attention, empathy and compassion, introspection, self-regulation, enhanced memory and improved learning, and positive affect and emotional wellbeing. Many of these are central to creativity.

However, for optimum cognitive flexibility and creativity, it’s best to achieve a balance of mindfulness and mind wandering. Some forms of mindfulness may actually work against creativity—specifically, those that encourage one to let go of thinking rather than accepting thoughts in a more open manner. Interestingly, open-monitoring meditation, which emphasizes tuning into one’s subjective experience, has been found to increase both the activation and the functional connectivity of the imagination network.

8. Sensitivity

Sensitivity can be both a blessing and a curse—leading to a greater intensity of experience as well as emotional overwhelm. Journalist Andrea Bartz wrote in Psychology Today that "those who learn to dial down the relentless swooping and cresting of emotion that is the almost invariable accompaniment to extreme sensitivity are able to transform raw perception into keen perceptiveness.”

9. Turning adversity to advantage

Experiences of loss, struggle, suffering, and defeat can be powerful catalysts for personal growth, creativity, and deep transformation. It is often through suffering that we learn compassion, from loss that we learn understanding, and from overcoming struggles that we come to discover our own strength and beauty.

Interestingly, research has also found that extreme positive events—in particular, those that evoke feelings of awe, wonder, inspiration, and connection to something greater than the self—can also encourage creativity. Positive emotions build a person’s psychological resources, broadening attention, inspiring new thoughts and behaviors, and stimulating creative thinking. So, if you’re looking for a creative boost, treat all of life’s meaningful moments—the good and the bad—as potential sources of inspiration and motivation.

10. Thinking differently

Creative people are united by their unwillingness to abide by conventional ways of thinking and doing things. In choosing to do things differently, they accept the possibility of uncertainty and failure—but it is precisely this risk that opens up the possibility of true innovation.

Dean Keith Simonton, who studies creativity, found that the quality of creative ideas is a positive function of quantity: The more ideas creators generate, the greater chances they will produce an eventual masterpiece. Doing things differently means you will probably do things badly or wrong; so expect that and don’t let caution get in the way of creativity.

PHEW,,,If you made it this far congratulations you're a BEAST 🤘

Hopefully that's helped and given you a brief overview of the concept of creativity and how to tap into it and make it a part of your day to day process!

Bit of a long one I know, but I had to cram about 2000 years into 6 minutes 😂 give a fella a break.

It's been fun and challenging writing this, the next step on the journey is how anyone can be creative (yes even YOU). See you next week for more!