ingenious creativity that must be only something for the special among us
all those undeniably creative figures in human history seem to simply get born creative and
did not evolve into a creative genius during their life scientists actually revealed a
common pattern of creative people they seem to effortlessly combine opposing personality traits
such as being incredibly open-minded curious and playful while also being hard-driven embodying an
obsessive perseverance and taking responsibility additionally they simply seem to have an above
average iq and this seems to be all rather based on one's genetical predisposition right
so therefore creativity should be something that you simply
have or not have well i argue that this is not the entire truth to the equation while i agree that
genes play a crucial role in everybody's lives i simultaneously argue that all those ingenious
people in history displayed common behaviors that allowed them to leverage their innate creativity
knowing about this common pattern and copying their behavior will connect you to your own
source of creativity in a way an intensity that you have probably not experienced yet
to understand the first pillar of creativity we first of all need to understand
what creativity exactly is and creativity is just connecting things it's about connecting
the dots in a new and novel way an example is steve jobs wanting to build a laptop
without a keyboard nowadays they call it the ipad that's a creative idea by itself but when they
started to work on that he connected this thought with the thought of building an iphone and he came
up with the idea of creating a smartphone with a touchscreen i actually start on the tablet first
and uh i had this idea of being able to get rid of the keyboard type on a multi-touch glass display
and i asked our folks could we come up with a multi-touch display that i would type on
i could rest my hands on and actually type on and about six months later they called me in and
showed me this prototype display now we were thinking about building a phone at that time
and when i saw the rubber band inertial scrolling and a few of the other things i thought my god
we can build a phone out of this now to be able to draw such new connections you need dots that you
can connect with each other and dots are knowledge simply sitting around connecting to the universe
and coming up with creative breakthroughs is a romanticized idea about creativity
before this can happen you need to learn and acquire knowledge the most creative humans in
history wear one of the most hard-working people being in the field of technology for years helped
steve and his co-workers to come up with the idea of a touch display they had awake idea that this
might be possible and while working on that they realized that they could even build a phone out
of it without experience they probably would have never come up with such a brilliant idea
but watch out while learning you always need to stay open-minded and question the very foundation
play around with what you learn otherwise you will become blind for new opportunities knowledge can
be stifling if you accept everything as it is i know a famous violinist who told me that he can't
compose because he knows too many pieces so when he starts thinking of a note an existing piece
immediately comes to mind just starting out one of your biggest strengths is not knowing how things
are supposed to be you can compose freely because your mind isn't cluttered with too many pieces
and you don't take for granted the way things are now information is not evenly distributed in
space and therefore it's very important that you put yourself out into the right places beethoven
went to vienna to learn from mozart a striving actor goes to hollywood a university seems to be
a great place to be around if you want to get into academia in the right place you'll get inspired
inspiration means to get new impressions meet new people and learn something new if you do that you
gain new dots to your big picture which makes it easier to draw new connections now that doesn't
mean that you need to constantly move einstein spent most of his time working at his kitchen
table bach never traveled far and beethoven indeed stayed most of the time in his dismal quarters
but if it's needed don't hesitate to find the right place and the right people to gain
knowledge though knowledge and hard work is only one part of the equation of creativity
on the way of creating something at some point it is very likely that you will feel stuck you
won't know how to continue and working harder and learning more will probably not help you anymore
so at this point you simply stop you stop trying and you let yourself regress
to the stage of relaxation devoting full attention to your problem all the time is not
the best recipe for having creative thoughts in the first stage you gave yourself a lot of input
and that's essential but now it's time to give yourself time to integrate the input you gained
relaxing and not actively thinking about your questions open up space for your subconsciousness
which is brilliant at connecting the dots einstein was playing mozart on his violin
you might go for a walk with your dog do sports or chill in your hot tub the greek
philosophers prefer to discuss ideas while walking in the country yards
you don't want to do something that is draining your brain such as watching television or playing
video games but something that is genuinely relaxing you in an inspiring way even taking a
shower or going on the toilet are moments in life when you get your best ideas and if you're saying
ain't nobody got time for that then at least let go of your current task and focus on another one
also inspiring environments can tremendously help nietzsche preferred living in a high
alpine valley in switzerland and wagner enjoyed staying in the villa in italy at the seaside
the physical environment that you put yourself out deeply affects your thoughts
and your emotions studies have shown that wide and large spaces increase your creative thinking
and so do the colors green and blue now by fully diving into this phase of relaxation eventually
you will get an insight you are able to look at your question from a different and new perspective
but to be able to gain such an insight there is a last ingredient missing
that is skyrocking your creativity it is your personal development let me elaborate
abraham maslow came up with the pyramid of needs which explains how the human needs evolve first
you start to satisfy your physical needs food water sleep afterwards you worry about your safety
then you want a feeling of belonging and afterwards you are looking for recognition and
a healthy self-esteem and only after satisfying those four needs you start self-actualizing
which means to truly ponder about who you are and what you actually deeply love developing towards
this stage and satisfying the lower needs has a positive effect on your creativity because of two
reasons first you are less fearful and anxious those emotions make you tight and stiff creativity
is about the opposite loosening up and being playful since you satisfied your lower needs
you worry less about life you feel confident to take some risks and creativity is always risky
the new idea might not work self-actualized people also seem to be less judgmental which allows them
to integrate more ideas without directly pushing them away they also seem to be more empathetic
which helps them to sharpen their perspective wisdom and play around with their knowledge
much more effortlessly and all those things can only truly arise when you let go of your fears
the second reason is that if you are stuck in one of those lower four stages you are
extrinsically motivated that means you are very focused on an outcome you want the money the car
the girl you want something that makes you feel safe or provides you with a feeling of love
or pride but at the self-actualization stage you are intrinsically motivated you strive
to do the work that you genuinely love doing common statements of creative people are
i love my work more than what it produces in other words they work out of inspiration
not desperation and this is called intrinsic motivation which is the foundation of creativity
you are so in love with the process and the work that you merge
with the task you play around with the knowledge and come up with more novel and creative ideas
so the underlying message is to develop yourself and satisfy your lower needs
build a strong sense of safety being worthy of love and having a healthy self-esteem
creativity is composed of different but connected stages so at first it is important to focus and
work hard and then at some point it's time to loosening up and relax both sides are important
to connect to your ingenious creativity and it's always a communication between head and
heart between working hard and letting go and on top of that it's also essential that you work on
your personal development satisfying your safety needs your self-esteem needs and your love needs
actually is a great leverage to feel more intrinsically motivated but also to let go of
your fears so a side product of self-actualization is actually creativity and that brings us to the
end of this documentary so give a thumb up and also comment below what you think about this video
the more you interact with this video the more the youtube algorithm will share the video to
other people and also if you're interested to learn more about creativity or to figure out
what you actually want to create in life and find your life purpose i want to work on any any other
psychological topic you can also hit me up i'm a psychologist and coach this is really my core
business to do one-on-one coaching so there's a link in the description below we can just have a
first call and just talk about how i can help you and how working together would actually look like
and yeah i would also like to thank you to actually stick around until the end
it's it's meaningful to me especially with those videos where i put more effort into it than usual
and yeah with that being said i wish you a beautiful week and i'll see you around
you