Does anyone think they're more creative than you are?

I love reading the wildly-popular Copyblogger, especially today when Brian Clark wrote about creativity.  His post Do You Recognize These Top 10 Mental Blocks to Creative Thinking? is right on and worth a read. 

But today, his blog is making me hopping mad.  Not because of what Brian said--his post was great--but because "someone who has over forty years of success at being very creative indeed" thought he needed to knock some sense into all the aspiring creative thinkers out there.

This [list] is more of a back-slapping, ego-boosting exercise than anything realistic to base your life on. Real creative people don’t need it, and nothing in it could possibly turn a dullard into anything like a real creative person.

I'm not going to beat around the bush here.  People who say things like this tick me off.

They make me so mad I want to go find a water noodle and beat some sense into them.  (Yes, the soft, squishy toys don't hurt, but it's the thought that counts.)

Why do statements like that get me up in arms?  Because they're completely false.  I've been practicing creative thinking since I was 10, and I KNOW that creativity can be developed.

Take me for example.

I tried out for a creative problem-solving team in elementary school.  As part of the audition, we had to write down as many creative answers for the category "things that are green" as possible. 

I listed every tree and plant in the forest. (Oak, Maple, Poison Ivy...)  Not one of my answers was creative, but my list was so long that I earned enough points for non-creative answers that I still made the team!

Since then, I learned a lot more about creativity, am a certified Lateral Thinking instructor and can almost call myself a "Master of Creativity and Innovation". 

But I would never tell people that I'm much more creative than them and that they're doomed to always be a dullard.

I've seen way too many people go from "I'm not creative" to having tons of ideas.

Edward de Bono uses a great analogy to teach why creativity is a skill.  He says that the mind is like a car: 

"People can be born with either a Porsche for a brain, or a Smart car--but it's how they use it that matters."

A Porsche driver has tons of potential, but unless they actually learn how to drive their car, they're not going to get anything exceptional out of it. 

A Smart driver doesn't have a lot of natural ability, but a really fantastic driver will be able to get an amazing performance out of the teeny auto.

If you doubt me, come see a Smart darting in and out of traffic on a German autobahn.

Just like the Smart, not everyone is born with a high-performance creative-thinking brain.  But, no one is born with the ability to parallel-park a car!

Creativity...

• Is learned by making the effort to become creative.

• It comes through being willing to come up with bad ideas until a good idea emerges.

• It comes from being willing to try new things and to look at the world through different eyes. 

• It's about seeing opportunities in the things that piss you off, and suspending judgment until an idea has had a chance to germinate.

But mostly, creativity comes from wanting to be creative and deciding that you're going to do it.

And if anyone like Brian's "highly-creative" commentator tries to tell you otherwise, ignore them.  If they believe that their creativity is a divine ability and that they've never improved with practice, they're lying to you.

If you liked this post, try...

How to take an idea to the next level

Do You Have Trouble Being Creative?

Comments

[Brian Clark]

This is awesome. As you saw, he made me mad too. People like him can't be helped, but like you, I know that anyone who wants to be creative can be.

Hell, I used to be a lawyer. There's hope for anyone. :)

[Geoff]

Bravo! My whole blog is dedicated to helping willing people learn to be creative. So is my book. And they work because they help put people in a frame of mind where they can look at things differently or dig deeper than the surface level things that everybody sees.

And how did I come to this? Through my Masters in Writing and Literature, and using that knowledge to help directionless college freshman find a cause worth getting creative about. And they did.

As a teacher, the best feedback I ever got was from students who didn't know they could get into writing so much. I think it was because they found a new way to tap a creativity they hadn't before. And they grew.

Anyway, sorry to sound like bragging or anything. I'm just letting you know that I agree with you totally and support your position, because I, too, have seen it first hand.

[Shaji.k]

Katie, You are right. Creativity along with many other human capabilities are skills in which any man or woman can be trained. But our society has a strange way of bestowing mythical qualities on it and considering them divine! Such myths have to be blasted. And you have made a powerful and inspiring statement. On a personal note, I too underwent plenty of torment from subscribing to the 'mythical' version and am yet to fully recover from it. Your blog has been an oasis to me.

Shaji.k, thanks for writing in. I'm glad that you're recovering from believing creativity is a mythical gift! It's much better, I think, to consider creativity to be a skill than a gift from above. There's more hope involved!

[Clay Parker Jones]

Hear hear.

Anything can be learned. Anything.

Even if you don't have a Master's Degree or haven't written a book.

I'd even argue that a Masters degree isn't much of a help to learning an application skill like creativity. Understanding why people are creative is one thing, but actually being creative is another.

I spent a lot of time learning how to be creative before my Masters degree, and I constantly refer to that experience more than my academic knowledge.