Creativity – The First Cousin To Genius

Sunday, June 5, 2011 12:52
Posted in category Creativity Innovation
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”Genius knows where the questions are hidden.” Mason Cooley

 

What exactly is the distinction between the mind of a genius and the mind of an ordinary person? Michael Michalko, in his book Cracking Creativity, says he thinks the distinction is that geniuses know “how” to feel, instead of “what” to believe. This enables them to generate entirely new concepts and say to themselves that anything is possible.

That merely means that they look at issues differently. They combine ideas, images, and thoughts in a various way and are able to recognize patterns in the world around them. They know how to make connections between objects, no matter how unusual or disparate. An example of this is when Leonardo DaVinci made the connection between the tone of a bell and a flat stone hitting the water, causing waves. His connection was that sound also traveled in waves.

Yet another sign of genius is the ability to believe in opposites. An example of this type of thought would be the Danish physicist Niel Bohr. In 1928, he announced that it was feasible to imagine light as both waves and particles, not however simultaneously.

The capacity to feel in metaphors is regarded as a sign of genius. Aristotle felt that if a individual has the capacity to compare two separate areas of existence and somehow locate a relationship there, then that person has a unique gift.

A individual of exceptional abilities also focuses on how to analyze the process of accidental creativity. It’s not a matter of why it failed, but what precisely did it do?

A individual possessing genius is highly productive. An example of this was Thomas Edison, who held over 1,000 patents. In his book Cracking Creativity, Michael Michalko states that geniuses produce significant quantities of ideas because they think fluently. Apparently, their minds are incredibly busy they think all the time. And it’s feasible for the rest of us to develop these attributes as well. It’s just a matter of training our brains to feel a lot more fluently.

According to Buckminster Fuller, “Everyone is born a genius. Society degeniuses them.” Some believe that genius just appears, out of the blue, and that the conditioned thinking of higher education can really detract from a person’s genius.  Massive amounts of knowledge doesn’t necessarily guarantee genius it only means you have an exceptional memory. And the excellent news is that you require not be a genius in order to be creative. And even greater news is that we are capable of more than just creative thought we are capable of a lot more genius than we ever dreamed. Charles Baudelaire described genius as “no much more than childhood recaptured at will.”

So, how do you accomplish this feat? You must retrain your brain to think like a genius. You can do that by following the above criteria. You must begin to feel about the world around you differently. Think in opposites, feel in metaphors, and grow to be a lot more productive with your thoughts. And when ideas do not exactly pan out the way you hoped they would, you should ask your self not why it failed, but what did it accomplish, what did it prove?

Want to develop the mind of an inventor? Commence looking at designs around you and ask yourself how you could make them various. Max Planck, recognized as the father of quantum theory, believed that it was needed for scientists to have “a vivid intuitive imagination, for new ideas are not generated by deduction, but by artistically creative imagination.” Even Einstein said his theories had been “free invention of the imagination.” Ezra Pound said, “Genius…is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees 1 and where the man of talent sees two or three, plus the capacity to register that multiple perception in the material of his art.” 

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