Neeraj Dubey
To accomplish anything, you must believe you can do it. After all, there have most likely been those before you who have done it, right? And if they can do it, so can you. If you don’t believe you can do it, then perhaps you don’t want it badly enough. Many great things and accomplishments have started from a simple, creative inspiration. We are all creative beings and nurturing creativity can, for the most part, be a challenging mission for individuals who have lost their natural abilities. What sets many success stories apart from others is often the capacity to create and continue creating. Creativity can apply to just about every facet of your life and it can reveal hidden passions. New possibilities and experiences evolve from an innovative mind. Most creative work is a process of people passing ideas and inspirations from the past into the future and adding their own creativity along the way. While creativity itself may not be something that can be taught directly, we are capable of cultivating the circumstances which will foster the greatest chances for true creative expression. It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it. Technically speaking, the best way to boost your creativity is to boost the communication flow between your two brain hemispheres: your left and right brains. Apparently during the creative process, our left and right brains are focused on the problem, exchanging information to and fro in a form of a “partnership.” Highly creative people are known to have an easy and unobstructed flow of information between their left and right brains. They know how to increase the stimulation to their brain and expose it to lots of experiential stimulation, stretching and expanding its creative prowess by bringing it to new innovative ideas. Creativity is the power to connect the seemingly unconnected. Creativity is a phenomenon where by something new and valuable is created (such as an idea, a joke, a literary work, a painting or musical composition, a solution, an invention etc.). The range of scholarly interest in creativity includes a multitude of definitions and approaches involving several disciplines; psychology, cognitive, science, education, philosophy , technology, sociology, linguistics, business studies, and economics, taking in the relationship between creativity and general intelligence, mental and neurological processes associated with creativity, the relationships between personality type and creative ability and between creativity and mental health, the potential for fostering creativity through education and training, especially as augmented by technology, and the application of creative resources to improve the effectiveness of learning and teaching processes. Without creativity, it would be difficult to distinguish humans from other animals. Creativity leads to a fuller, more satisfying life. Without creativity, mankind would not progress. Creativity results from the interaction of a system consisting of three elements: a culture that contains symbolic rules, a person who brings novelty into the symbolic domain, and a field of experts who recognize and validate the innovation.
UNDERSTANDING CREATIVITY
When we use the term creativity, different images come to our mind. There are bright persons who express unusual thoughts, who are interesting and stimulating. Unless they also contribute something of permanent significance, these people must be called brilliant rather than creative.
Then there are people who experience the world in novel and original ways. These are individuals whose perceptions are fresh, whose judgments are insightful, and who may make important discoveries. The author calls such people personally creative. Finally, there are individuals who change our culture in some important respect. They are the creative ones without qualifications. Creative individuals are remarkable for their ability to adapt to different situations and to manage with whatever is needed to reach their goals. Creativity is facilitated by a genetic predisposition for a given domain. A person whose nervous system is more sensitive to color and light will have an advantage in painting, while someone born with a perfect pitch will do well in music. And being better at their respective domains, they will become more deeply interested in sounds and colors, will learn more about them, and thus are in a position to innovate in music or art with greater ease. Although most great scientists seem to have been attracted to numbers and experimentation early in life, how creative they eventually became, bears little relationship to how talented they were as children. However, a special sensory advantage may be responsible for developing an early interest in the domain, which is certainly an important ingredient of creativity.
THE FLOW OF CREATIVITY
Creative persons differ from one another in a variety of ways, but in one respect they are same. They love what they do. Creative individuals internalize the field’s criteria of judgment to the extent that they have the ability to separate bad ideas from good ones, so that they don’t waste much time exploring blind alleys. The flow experience has the following building blocks: – a) There are clear goals every step of the way. b) There is immediate feedback to one’s actions. c) There is a balance between challenges and skills. d) Action and awareness are merged. e) Distractions are excluded from consciousness. f) There is no worry of failure g) Self-consciousness disappears. In author’s opinion, “One of the great joys of life is creativity. Information goes in, gets shuffled about, and comes out in new and interesting ways”.
(The author is Asstt. Professor , GCET – Jammu)
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