10 Habits of Highly Creative People
Creativity doesn't have to be elusive
“Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not. ”―Pablo Picasso
Last week, on a stormy, sea gray morning, I finished Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind, an empowering manifesto by psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire.
As I was reading, I thought about the creative life of myself and countless others who, day after day, show up and create without a promise of payout but do it for the ever-flowing currency of passion.
So what is creativity, and how can we harness more of that powerful desire to further develop our creativity as a habit and its influence on how we view ourselves and our world?
This is what Wired to Create explores through unique research of many creative paradoxes that seem like a hindrance in daily life but are actually great instigators of profound thought patterns.
Wired to Create reveals the latest research in psychology and neuroscience to illuminate the minds, habits, and practices that foster creative thinking.
This book says to embrace your messy mind as it is your greatest strength and an attribute that should be fostered, not silenced.
Hallelujah!
Because without creativity, innovation cannot exist, let alone thrive. We creatives need that experimentation aspect to bring about and develop our best ideas. Each chapter explores one of the ten attributes and habits of highly creative people.
And according to the authors, we need to find balance to optimize creativity.
This makes perfect sense.
How many of us who have been working in an office or an uncreative environment could really harness our creative potential? If we do the same things every day at the same times, in the same way without much thought, our creative minds start to atrophy.
Answering emails, phone calls, taking the kids to school, pushing paper, crunching numbers — most of these essential tasks don’t lend themselves to creative pursuits or ideas (at least not without conscious thought).
That was part of the reason that I took a few weeks to step back over the past month. Besides healing, I needed to live in order to experience, learn, grow, and research, because you can only write about the same topics for so long before requiring fresh mind material to work it.
Even Henry David Thoreau, as discussed in Wired to Create, spent two years in a cabin in the woods away from other people. Yet, he had the inspiration and encouragement of the surrounding natural world to inspire his creativity.
So from the book’s research findings, here are ten habits typical of the creative mind, and practices that we can cultivate in ourselves to spark our creative genius.
Below are the ten habits of the highly creative mind from Wired to Create with my interpretation:
1. Imaginative Play
Inherent creativity runs rampant in children, who routinely ask themselves and others the questions, “What if…?” or “Why?”
Last night, my 5-year-old asked me how the plumbing worked in the bathroom and if it runs on electricity — and what if it did? And then in the same breath, he asked, “Do hamsters eat pizza? What about a chicken? What if I was a chicken? Would I eat pizza?”
This childlike wonder is the greatest fodder for creativity available.
Not yet burdened or boxed in by society, political ideologies, or religious dogma, children experience the world with a sense of imaginative revelry that we as adults can harness to dramatically transform our lives, both at work and at play.
Try it out by imagining multiple perspectives to an idea or problem, or play around with a concept in a way that you’ve never considered before.
To quote George Bernard Shaw, “We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”
2. Passion
Passion often lets loose a well-spring of inherent creativity. It often originates from an experience or situation that inspires us to create.
Passion is the internal motivation that fuels the spark that ignites when we are doing what we love.
This is one reason that I am passionate about psychology, neuroscience, the inner workings of the mind, and the “why people do what they do” aspect of our brains’ intersection with culture, genetics, and environment.
It also carries over to the work that I do with animals; using what I have learned in psychology training and research to investigate different ways of healing traumatized animals and expanding our worldview on how our perceptions of different species and even cultures of people present themselves in a vastly different manner.
We can’t change things if we don’t understand why they are the way that they are in the first place.
Think about Einstein, who used his passion to complete and work on hundreds of academic papers, one that won a Nobel Prize, and several others that probably should have.
Why do you write or engage in other creative endeavors?
Does it stem from passion, notoriety, or an ever-present excitement over what you can create?
Balance your passions with effort, diligence, and discipline, because that’s what will help you achieve your creative goals. A passionate interest ignites creativity, and the results reinforce more passion.
3. Daydreaming
Were you ever told as a child to stop daydreaming? Don’t listen and don’t ever stop.
Daydreaming is the lighter fluid of brilliance, innovation, and idea conceptualization. And recent studies suggest that daydreaming boosts creativity, compassion, self-awareness, and all types of forecasting.
A new study, published in Psychological Science by researchers from the University of Wisconsin and the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Science, suggests that a wandering mind correlates with higher degrees of working memory. Cognitive scientists define this type of memory as the brain’s ability to retain and recall information in the face of distractions.
It may not seem like daydreaming leads to much, but it is anything but latent. Try it out by taking a break to daydream periodically throughout the day, particularly if you feel stumped on an idea.
Activities like sketching, journaling, and walking can help expand that creative part of our minds.
The most creative solutions involve connecting those seemingly contradictory elements, such as pairing sweet flavors with spicy (hot sauce and maple syrup, anyone?), or long-sleeved shirts with the shoulders cut out of them. It seems like it wouldn’t make sense, and yet it does.
4. Solitude
We all need solitude, and it’s even more essential for creative artists. Without solitary reflection, it is much harder to activate our creativity, if not impossible.
Recent studies in neuroscience show that independent reflection uses a different part of the brain than when we are concentrating on the world around us. When our focus is outside of us, it activates our executive function system instead of the imagination network, where our best ideas and creations lay quiet.
Creative people often prefer to be alone, and they don’t feel lonely when being so. The world’s noise is quieted so that we can think more clearly and make more creative connections.
Take time for solitude, giving yourself the opportunity to explore different ideas and modalities of thinking without distraction.
5. Intuition
Reason only gets us so far, and then we tend to rely on our intuition, which Steve Jobs called more powerful than intellect.
That feeling of “just knowing” is a powerful part of our fast brain system, which uses complex clues to help us add new information into our knowledge storage centers, leading us to make novel connections that spur greater creativity and innovative ideas.
Listening to that unconscious intuition influences how we reason and make sense of the world around us.
How many times have you had an intuition about an idea or project, and it became your best work? It’s more common than you’d think.
“Exploration and seemingly blind experimentation were keys to Picasso’s creative process. Rather than creating a painting to reflect his own preexisting worldview, he seemed to actively build and reshape that worldview through the creative process. While he may have had a rough intuition, it’s likely that Picasso did not quite know where he was going, creatively, until he arrived there.”―Scott Barry Kaufman, Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind
6. Openness to Experience
Being open to new thoughts, situations, and ideas is important for creative work.
Research shows that it has a substantial effect on the amount of creativity that we have and are able to utilize. Openness to the exploration of a new concept or idea can foster even more creativity by strengthening the brain’s neural networks and creating additional opportunities for connection and imagination.
To increase your openness to experience, try a new route to work or home, read a book about a viewpoint that differs from your own, or join a group of people with different interests. Being open is what unlocks the door to creativity and increases integrative complexity, so expand your mind, explore all of the possibilities, shake up your routine, and try something new.
Take a few minutes to brainstorm, daydream, and think, “what if…”
7. Mindfulness
Mindfulness is awareness coupled with curiosity and attentiveness. And while we all need this essential skill to enjoy our days and feel content, it is imperative that creatives seek out and utilize this vital tool for big ideas and innovative concepts.
Mindfulness helps us bring our vision or creations to life. It’s what gets something out of our heads and into existence.
Research is beginning to associate mindfulness with a multitude of creative benefits. Attributes such as improved attention and concentration, greater levels of empathy, the ability to self-regulate, and enhanced learning capabilities run rampant among the mindfully creative.
Listen to your mind and body. Be mindful of what is going on around and inside you at this very moment. Are you feeling thirsty? Have some water. Tired? Take a break (when possible). Listen to the sounds around you.
Be present with yourself and your surroundings, and you may find it easier to make seemingly unrelated connections that can then spur your creative genius.
8. Sensitivity
Depending on how we use and view it, sensitivity is both helpful and difficult.
Many creatives experience this seesaw of hyper-awareness to the world around us, which can lead to sensory overwhelm if what we experience is too much.
Sounds, textures, lights, scents, or different energies can all easily drown a sensitive creative. What can be our greatest gift can also be a misfortune until we learn to manage and accept this about ourselves.
Have you ever gone somewhere, loved every minute of it, felt inspired, and then later crashed into a sensory overload?
This feels like my life. Here’s an example: several years ago, I lived near an art museum, and while I felt excited to go and experience all of the newness and information, I was also glad to leave and looked forward to the quiet walk home along hundred-year-old cobblestone sidewalks and hazy street lamps as I was consolidating in solitude and connecting new ideas and concepts from the trip out.
Does this story resonate with you? At the time, I didn’t even know sensitive creatives were a thing; it simply was how I experienced the world.
Creativity often comes with sensitivity and an increased capacity for connecting ideas, concepts, and experiences with others, leading to overwhelm because there are more opportunities for that critical connection between experience and thought.
The goal is to transform our perceptions into creations, so you can see why sensitivity is one of a creative’s greatest gifts! Rather than trying to change yourself, try to cultivate your sensitivity into artistic creation.
“Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.”―Edgar Allan Poe
9. Turning Adversity into Advantage
Times of challenge, struggle, suffering, and failure tend to lead to monumental growth, transformation, creation, and powerful change in our lives.
I’ve personally found that challenge and choice converge into compassion, and through our experiences we are offered a wellspring of light, a chance to metamorphize and discover our insurmountable strength.
Turning adversity into an advantage is one of the most powerful ways that we can shift the pendulum of life from failure to a fortuitous future. This process is always available to us from the moment that we decide to reconceive our perceptions about life and our ability to create.
To grasp a deeper meaning of life’s challenges, utilize emotive journaling to pour your heart and soul out on paper, try expressive painting, or create a new solution to an existing problem that you have personal ties with.
This is where the magic happens and the greatest creativity springs forth and blossoms. Similar to a lotus flower for which mud, instead of keeping the lotus stuck, acts as a powerful platform for change, transforming adversity into a beautiful advantage.
On the other end of the spectrum, research suggests that positive events in our lives also increase creativity. Accept both the good and bad as a propellant toward your ability to create.
“Creative people are hubs of diverse interests, influences, behaviors, qualities, and ideas — and through their work, they find a way to bring these many disparate elements together.”―Scott Barry Kaufman, Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind
10. Thinking Differently
It’s no secret that creative people see the world differently, and it is this receptiveness to new ways of thinking, along with the shedding of how things were done in the past, that great ideas and creations are born.
The more that we are able to think out of the box and continually create, the higher the chances of success and the greater the rewards. The ability to think differently and accept failure as a stepping stone to success is what clears the way for true innovation.
Give yourself the space to do things differently, to think outside the box, and to even fail, because this is almost always where the greatest success and creativity is achieved. Be willing to shun conformity, and your creative spirit will break free in the spirit of acceptance.
“The common strands that seemed to transcend all creative fields was an openness to one’s inner life, a preference for complexity and ambiguity, an unusually high tolerance for disorder and disarray, the ability to extract order from chaos, independence, unconventionality, and a willingness to take risks.” ―Scott Barry Kaufman, Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind
And so, go ahead. Create, start over, and create more. The overarching message of this valuable, encouraging, and well-written book? Harness your inner creative talents, whatever they are.
Because as creative artists, we can create the world that exists only within our fantasies, by harnessing our fire, devotion, and consistent work, no matter the perceived failure or success.
“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” ―Maya Angelou
With love and gratitude, Aurora