Creativity in Positive

Psychology

Jorge A. Jimenez

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 Creativity

 Introduction to Creativity
 Why the creativity is important?
 The creativity is important because life itself requires being creative

in one way or the other, it is a process that runs on us and never

stops because it is stimulated by a goal.

 However, in my presentation, instead of focusing on the aspect of

creativity that brings to ultimate success, I’m going to talk about the
path that brings us to happiness and satisfaction through creativity.

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 The Creativity
 The creativity has been studied thru many years, more than 60 different
definitions of creativity can be found in the psychological literature
(Taylor, C. W. (1988).

 Creativity is a concept containing many facets that researchers can

draw from it seemingly endless array of arguments, inspiration, and
nuance (Kaufman & Sternberg, 2006).

 The study of creativity in psychology is taking a different path, when

psychologists study creativity, they tend to focus on creative activities
that result in the objective and ostensible products that remain after the
creative act is complete (Sawyer, 1995a).

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 The Product of Creativity

 The creativity style is very important. The style of being creative can be
equal or more important than the product. If we focus more on the style
and its characteristic we would be able to identify our differences and
the way we think. What we may learn by looking at creativity styles--
the ways in which individuals create, rather than at absolute amounts or
levels of creativity achievement—are principles and methods that may
be applied to help all improve their “everyday” creative problem-
solving abilities (Houtz, Selby, Esquivel, Okoye & Peters, 2003).

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 Creative Styles
 Any person can be creative in a way or the other, but if we compare an artist
with a common person there might be a difference. For example, we have a
poet who thinks a hundred times of adding a line or changing a word of his
poem and a common person with his daily job routine and instead of writing in
his free time he just watch television. In this case the poet might be stimulating
more the way he think and his creativity, forcing himself to finish his poem.
Accordingly to a study by Walker, Koestner and Hum in 1995 reported that
creative achievers scored higher on agreeableness than non-creative achievers.

 “The creative thinker, no different from the noncreative thinker, uses his or her
knowledge to deal with the situations he or she faces. The main difference
between creative versus noncreative thinkers is the knowledge they bring to the
situation within their area of expertise” (Weisberg, 1993)

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 Creative Styles
 Creative achievers show a preference for complexity over simplicity
(Eysenck HJ. 1995). For example, a stable person with a normal job
wants to flight somewhere, instead of taking a flight at nine am he
prefer the three am flight because is cheaper and is saving fifteen
dollars. However he does not realize that he has to pay a cab fee
because at that time there is not public transportation like at nine. A
different situation would be someone who is walking to the
supermarket, instead of going thru the main street, the individual
decides to take the side street because of the nature and does not care if
he has to spend ten minutes more.

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 Creativity & Self-Determination

 To achieve happiness with creativity we need self-determination, with self-

determination we can trust more ourselves and achieve higher goals. For
instance, musicians, actors and athletes say that they reached their goals
because they worked hard. It can sound cliché, but when someone achieves his
or her goals what the person say is “I worked hard for it until I got it”.

 If we want happiness we have to work for it with self-determination. Happiness

is like a sport, we can have success or we can fail in the process, but the most
important thing is that we can always recover. It has been proved that in order
to achieve our creative potential, we must first overcome our social
conditioning and develop a strong and autonomous will (Rank, O. 1932).

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 Creativity & Self-Determination

 A study proved that college students in the United States tend to be more
creative if their parents are more flexible with them in their decisions (Sheldon,
K.M, 1995). For example, many college students in Latin America and Europe
cannot afford to live alone in other cities so they live with their parents until
they graduate.

 They still living under the same roof for many years with the same rules
without change, while students who lives without their family in college are
likely to be more creative. Many investigations have supported that, when
parents encourage independence, their children’s creativity is enhanced
(Alberto & Runco, 1989; Getzels & Jackson 1961; Rejskind, 1982).

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 How can we feel happy in our
society?

 There is no doubt that we have to use the interactive and dynamic process of
creativity. The activity of being creative is completely human; it means that we
have to focus in our thoughts generated by the culture in a constant search of
new ideas. For example, in every ten to twenty years the society changes, we
see new advances in technology; people think different and have new ideas.

 We have to keep in track with the present and what is coming in the future
because if we live thinking about the past we might get stuck. For example, a
lot of adults around their sixties does not know how to operate a computer
because most of them never though that they were able to do bank transaction,
pay and do shopping online. We cannot live in the past so we have to keep in
track with the present and showing interest for the future.

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 Ideas that can make us
happier?

 We have to start with our present; the present is the only point of reference to
know where we are and where we want to go. However, we have to ask
ourselves about our dreams. If we start dreaming about something that we
really want we should stay strong and go for it. For instance, different ideas
come and go thru our mind but what we really want is in our subconscious and
we never do anything about it because we do not know or we are afraid of it.

“Creativity, on the other hand has often been linked to the subconscious,
whether its mystery arises form something dark and primitive or
something of the highest good (den Ouden, 1982).”

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 Ideas that can make us
happier?

 We are always asking questions like; What I am going to do with my

life? What should I do to be happy?

 Asking these questions implies different answers from each person.

Any individual can take his own decisions to do something with his life
for good or bad but the majority works towards a happy ending.
Nevertheless, others do not want to commit with the ideas they have
because they are afraid to make a mistake or being unhappy with a
miserable life. For this reason the individual is closed in his own
secured circle and never explores new things. That is an individual that
is stuck in our society with the same routine. (Continue)

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 Ideas that can make us
happier?
 There are a lot of stressed and unhappy people, why?

 It can be because they are ‘safe’ in their circle experiencing the same
routine over and over, so they do not experiment big changes. In other
words, leaving that circle implies being creative, we have to take
decisions and eliminate all our thoughts that we are afraid of. If we are
out of the circle we start to know more about ourselves. That is
completely necessary because it helps us to get emotional and
passionate for what we want. That way we can transform our ideas into
something real.

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 Transforming our ideas to
make us happier!

 To transform our ideas we have to face the truth of who we are, where
we are in life, and what we would like to be. Especially we have to
focus on our rituals introducing one or two different rituals at a time.
Then we have to build an action plan for change by showing how to
replace negative habits with positive rituals.

 According to Dr. JP Guilford (1958), before we start building an action

plan for a change, we have to think first what is creativity.

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 Transforming our ideas to
make us happier!
 “Understanding the nature of creative performance in terms of the abilities and
other traits that contribute to it should be of considerable help in selecting the
materials of instruction, the manner of presentation of that material, and the
instillation of the appropriate attitudes on the part of the student (Guilford, J.
P. 1958).”

 In his research he gives an example that the target of most students is to

memorize the book so they can have the knowledge. He explains that in some
cases if the book is on error there will be a problem. However with creativity is
the same, if we find help and the source is wrong we will have to start again
with a new source.

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 Strategies to develop
creativity
 According to (Michalko, 2001) the best strategies for “cracking” the barriers to
human creativity are:

 1. Knowing how to see

 2. Making a thought visible
 3. Thinking fluently
 4. Making novel combinations
 5. Connecting the unconnected
 6. Looking at the other side
 7. Looking in other worlds
 8. Finding what you are not looking for
 9. Awakening the collaborative spirit

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 Strategies to develop
creativity
 Being creative can take time according to Arthur Koestler. The more
adept a person is at rising from lower, applied areas, to higher,
intellectual and imaginative planes, the more creative such a fortunate
individual is likely to become. But it must be done naturally, not
artificially, because if the latter, the artificiality will show in the persons
products (Dimock, 1986). On the other hand we need patience,
applying our creativity to gain happiness can take time. Usually we go
thru facets in life, step by step; all these facets have to be developed
naturally.

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 Strategies to develop
creativity

 If we are reading a self-help book we have to be careful with the

exercises. If the person does not like the exercise and keep trying, is not
going to work because we cannot force ourselves to do it. We have to
find an exercise that we like and then continue with the next one. It
takes a long time to change our habits and the way we think. That is
why we need perseverance because improving creativity can help our
self-esteem, motivation and happiness.

 “There isn’t anything that isn’t made easier through constant

familiarity and training. Through training we can change; we can
transform ourselves”
Dalai Lama

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 Conclusion

 In conclusion
 People applied creativity very well in the 20th century. For example in less
than hundred years we have learned from how to build a car to fly to the
moon. We came with ideas like videogames, computers and the worldwide
communication system. This capacity of invention can give us happiness
thru a life style or a product and many other things that researchers are
curious about it, because all our creation is related to creativity.

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