Why Your Kid is Not Creative
Why Your Kid is Not Creative
Plus a Workshop Exercise on Creativity
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Access prior issues on creativity such as 6 crippling fears in groups, pain and creativity, the benefits of rigid rules, and the first rule.
After publishing my first book Curious? in 2009 (here’s an insightful book review by
- link), I received a lot of requests to talk on this scientific topic. Often, another speaker spoke on creativity.
On one particular day in Minnesota, I had lot of qualms with his statements on creativity and simply could not keep them to myself (for this reason, I won’t name him). To be fair, he started off with a useful exercise. He asked the audience about what happens mentally when they try to do something creative - writing, building, freestyle rapping, you name it.
He wanted to know what happens mentally when anticipating the task ahead. Writing the answers down, the trend was easy to spot. Joy. Enthusiasm. Hopefulness. Interest, Pride. Mostly pleasurable experiences with an anxious edge. Then he moved to the second column, asking how people felt and thought during the work. Here, you noticed audience members describe the state of flow. Deep concentration. Ease. A sense of control. Clarity. Finally, he moved to the third column and asked what it’s like when that creative work is seen by others, when feedback is given. This was the payoff moment as people unloaded their negativity. Deflated. Disappointed. Demoralized.
When you visualize the mental chatter of a room full of high performers, it becomes clear why people procrastinate, and prefer talking about what they are going to do instead of doing it. Our anticipation of negative reactions is strong, our emotional prejudice against the feelings that might arise are strong. As a result, we often choose inertia.
Inertia and Creativity
Inertia is a powerful force that keeps us tethered to our current path, even when change could lead to better outcomes. It's like an invisible rubber band that pulls us back into our comfort zone every time we try to step out of it. High inertia means that our current state, whether it's our habits, routines, or mindset, is likely to persist, stubbornly resisting both external influences, such as new opportunities, and internal influences, like our own desire to be creative.
Imagine you're driving a car. High inertia is like driving with the handbrake on. You can still move, but there's a constant resistance, a drag that slows you down and makes progress difficult. It's a state of stickiness, where feelings and thoughts, where the status quo, once established, tends to stay in place.
On the other hand, low inertia is like sailing with the anchor up. Your course is more fluid, more responsive to the winds of change. It's more susceptible to shifts in direction, more likely to adapt to the currents of opportunity or the winds of ambition. It's like being in a well-tuned sailboat, where you can change course smoothly in response to the changing conditions.
Dreading feedback activates inertia.
Anticipating the end of flow and positivity activates inertia.
Fearing a shift from positivity to negativity activates inertia.
In fact, one of the most promising models to explain excessive, uncontrollable worry is the fear of emotional contrast. The worry that one might move from a desirable to undesirable state. A fear that can prevent a person from fulfilling daily living tasks from going to a physical check-up, budgeting finances, talking to someone about relationship problems, or getting momentum on that beloved, creative passion project of yours.
The fear of emotional contrast offers a partial psychological explanation to unhealthy behavioral patterns as wide-ranging as distraction, perfectionism, decision paralysis, imposter syndrome and overwhelm
Creative Mortification
There is an even better term for the anticipated pain during the creative process. By definition, creativity attempts to shake things up. When creative ideas are contemplated, emotional prejudices (the fear of particular negative emotions, the fear of emotional contrasts or shifts) influence your performance, and the teams and groups you are a part of.
A single moment of having an idea crushed prematurely can crush your creative spirit. We do not know how pervasive these acts of creative mortification are in households, schools, workplaces, and social gatherings. What we do know is that creative mortification does not alter creative products. Something far more nefarious occurs.
The will to create dies.
Embryonic moments of inspiration are prematurely discarded, never to be used, never to be witnessed by another. The loss of intellectual capital is incalculable but likely to be staggering.
My Disagreement with the Creativity Speaker
To return to the creativity “expert” who spoke after me in Minnesota. At one point he said, we must realize the emotions that arise when feedback is on the horizon because everyone is creative. Every student is creative. Every adult is creative. Every work produced is creative. Because nobody can really judge another person’s work.
To which I raised my hand and said, “If everyone is creative then nobody is creative, because the word doesn’t mean anything. Can you not distinguish certain pieces of work that are and are not creative? Even my own children - some of their work ends up on the fridge, while others, not so much.” The audience responded with a collective, “Oooooooooh!” And then the presenter shrugged his shoulders, baffled on what to say - as his presentation depended on sticking to the script.
What is creativity? Let’s go with the standard definition from Morris Stein in 1953:
Creativity is a process that results in novelty which is accepted as useful, tenable, or satisfying by a significant group of others at some point in time
Determining what classifies as being creative matters. Because novel and useful contributions matters. In art. In science. In an ever evolving society. Now who of the group is worthy of deciding what is creative? What criteria do they use? These remain interesting questions that are fun to debate. What to me, lies outside of debate, is the belief that everything is creative because well, it makes people feel good. This is an idea that does everyone a disservice.
Provocations
Knowing the emotional arc of creativity, it becomes easier to work though the hardest part. To keep the eagerness, how can you be selective about who will give you feedback? How can you give them instructions on how to deliver feedback in whatever way will help you best? This includes how they should best offer hard criticisms. And how can you, the feedback giving machine, do your best to ask what their objective is? Discover what they want to do and discuss the optimal personalized/individualized approach to offer the feedback that will make them smile and feel alive along with the darker content that could kill their willpower.
By collaborating on feedback delivery, we highlight the multiple pathways that exist. We give people agency to choose which path works best. By doing so, we honor the creative person, the creative process, and the creative product. Why would we ever want to do anything less?
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Todd B. Kashdan is an author of several books including The Upside of Your Dark Side (Penguin) and The Art of Insubordination: How to Dissent and Defy Effectively (Avery/Penguin) and Professor of Psychology and Leader of The Well-Being Laboratory at George Mason University.
Thanks for writing this.
I actually beg to differ with you and agree with the creativity expert in Minnesota. Consider that if "Creativity is a process that results in novelty which is accepted as useful, tenable, or satisfying by a significant group of others at some point in time" then most people are, in actuality, creative and creating in making the choices that we do, creating the lives we choose to create, and impact those around us in our own unique way just as each and every fingerprint is unique as well.
Now, I grant you that as social human beings, we have patterns of behavior that follow social mores and conform with what is considered normal by our peers/families/communities of all kinds. So while on the one hand our need to belong does have us conform to said normal behaviors, we also day by day make choices and interact with each other in ways that affect them usefully, tenably and/or satisfyingly. The almost certain fact that most of us interact with each other in ways that are labelled kind or at least courteous is overlooked by the amount of press given to those who don't.
What does that have to do with anything? I just have a sense that every choice we make, every step we take, and every move we make is creating the life that we live, affecting those we interact with, and is mostly considered useful, tenable and satisfying. It is also novel, each and every time, because each action is a new action. It may be a repeat of a previous action, but every moment is an opportunity to approach ;life with the wonder and awe of presence, of the childlike sense of wonder that some of us hang onto even when habit and norms continue to deepen the mental and emotional grooves we build in our neuronal pathways.
I consider acknowledgment and appreciation to be creative acts, doing what it can/does to build confidence and resilience within the person or group being acknowledged. Similarly, I consider judgment and assessment to be creative acts that can cut more sharply than the edge of a perfectly cut and polished De Beers diamond. You are so on point about its impact on a young being's life and impulse to create when wielded thoughtlessly by those who consider themselves in the know.
Anyhow. I have recently transformed my view about creativity, and tied it to the distinction choice. How our choices create directions, actions, and lives that have an impact, unless one is a hermit.
Anyhow, thank you. Thank you for doing what you do. For writing what you write. For making the difference that you make, to your clients and your reader, your students and your fellow faculty. You make a difference that makes the difference.
Warmest regards,
Carmen L. Reynal