Go to Top
CONTACT
Facebook Youtube
CONTACT
Page not found – Cre8ng
Go to Top
CONTACT
Facebook Youtube
CONTACT
Page not found – Cre8ng
Go to Top
CONTACT
Facebook Youtube
CONTACT
Page not found – Cre8ng
Go to Top
CONTACT
Facebook Youtube
CONTACT
Page not found – Cre8ng
Go to Top
CONTACT
Facebook Youtube
CONTACT

Severely Critical, A Way of Life

Creativity Challenge 2000 #41

Over the years I have been studying creative people and the writings of creativity researchers such as Torrance, Parnes, Stein, etc. one trait has stood out in the personalities of "highly creative" people, very clearly.....they are or were all SEVERELY CRITICAL. In presentations I talk about how they are extremely, extensively, severely, throughly critical. The adjective used depends on the person or the person's talking about the creative person. They are critical of 3 things and accused of being critical of a 4th

The two primary things they are most critical of tend to be...

  1. their work
  2. themselves

When I work with individual highly creative people we work on trying to turn the second form of criticism into a positive growth producing experience.

A third is that they are very critical of "what might or can be". The fourth unfortunately is that they are "critical of others". By examination and discussion I have generally discovered that is usually a generalization by other people who lack the "highly creatives" commitment, intensity, passion to obsession to what they focus their lives on.

If I reworded the trait as extensive examiners or evaluators many people might not be as critical of highly creative people's tendencies to be "severely critical".

All that said here is this week's Creativity Challenge meant to help you strengthen your individual creative thinking skills and abilities. Each day for 15 to 30 minutes practice evaluating, examining different things. If you find yourself JUDGING things not evaluating for the purpose of finding ways to improve make a note of it and try to stop. Judging has it's value but let's hold that tendency off until later.

Monday
Evaluate yourself...what might you improve about yourself?

Tuesday
Evaluate your tools...how might they be improved?

Wednesday
Evaluate your people relationships...how might they be improved?

Thursday
Evaluate how you do your profession...how might it you improve your professional efforts?

Friday
Evaluate your life...what might you improve if there were no limitations (time, resources, money)?

In the Creative Education Foundation's famous Creative Problem Solving Process this is the FACT FINDING stage. Good luck practicing this step all week.

My suggestion is to recognize when you are becoming subjective and when that leads to being negative. Make a note of it and stop. Then go back and attempt to focus on being objective and neutral to positive.

Best wishes for a highly creative week in your life this week.

Prev Page      Next Page      Index Page Page not found – Cre8ng
Go to Top
CONTACT
Facebook Youtube
CONTACT