“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower” (Steve Jobs)
And Innovation comes from Creativity, and Creativity comes from Intentionality…
Mmmmmm…. Frames!
Interested?
If you find yourself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to you… (LET IT BE – The Beatles) Uh…! That should be something else, shouldn’t it?
Anyway, I suggest you to read the following post.
If you are intentional (read the post here) then it is inevitable that you will be creative and access your powers of creativity. Why? Because you will be creating what you are intending to create, what you want to create, what you set as your desired outcomes. The power of intentionality governs how you use your other powers as it sets your direction and focus and the result is the creation of outcome.
You have powers of creation and are creative because you do not have instincts. And without instincts, you have to create! You have to create your thoughts, your understandings, your meanings, your values, your intentions, in fact, you have to create just about everything! And when you look at infants and small children—what creativity! They are so playful, inventive, full of surprising ideas, and expressions. In fact, to look at a small child, you are looking at creativity in action.
And why? From the perspective of Maslow’s Self-Actualization Psychology it is because we are by nature and inherently creativity. Creativity is part and parcel of human nature. It is not something that we add on to our nature and skills, it is at the essence of what it is to be human. That is, to be human is to be creative.
I’m writing this from Washington DC where we (myself and the people of the Institute of Neuro-Semantics— USA) are doing the Creativity and Innovation Workshop. It is the third Self-Actualization workshop and has the title, Unleashing Creativity Solutions. And in this workshop, one of the quotes that come from Maslow is the quote that the problem is not, Why are we creativity or how can we be creative? But, Why are not everyone creative? What causes so many people to lose their innate creativity?
If to be human is to be creative that explains why the very process of thinking is the essence of creativity. After all, what do you do when you think? You create a thought, a representation, an understanding, a belief. In thinking, you are constructing a set of images, sounds, sensations, etc. You are creating your model or map of the world.
This innate creativity is so pervasive, so extensive, and so descriptive of what human nature is and how it expresses itself—that we can say that almost everything that we do is creative. And yet, surprisingly, most people — most of us— do not recognize the pervasiveness of our creativity. And so, it is so common to think that we are not creative, that others are creative, that we have to learn to be creative, that creativity is what we had to add to ourselves.
Yet it is the power of creativity that enables us to creative both positive and wondrous expressions of the highest and brightest of human nature and the most negative and pathological of human nature. After all, when you look at animals, given their instincts, they do what they are programmed to do. There’s little room for creating something new and different. In fact, with animals, it usually takes a clinical situation that a human being creates and imposes upon an animal in order to create “experimental neurosis” in a dog or sheep or some other animal! In their natural habitants, neurosis is very unusual.
But not so with us. We humans are so creative to creating all kinds of neurotic and sick and dysfunctional experiences! That’s the dark side of creativity. The bright side of creativity is human excellence and expertise. And in terms of this power of creativity, once you recognize it, own it, and take charge of it, then all kinds of wondrous things open up. Of course, this is the purpose and reason for the Unleashing Your Creativity Solutions workshop— to empower people to discover, activate, mobilize, and apply their creative powers.
To give you a peek inside that workshop, we focus on four things: outcome, problem, solution, and innovation. Why? Because these are the four stages of creativity. Outcome because it is a desired and longed-for goal that provokes the best context for creativity. When you say what you want or what you need, that creates a space where creativity can thrive. Yes, necessity is the mother of invention, so is desire. And the wonderful thing about goals or desired outcomes is that where you create a goal, you thereby create a problem.
Ah, a problem— the gap between where you are and where you want to be. A problem is something between you and your goal, an obstacle. And if you want to fully use your creative powers, then frame and define the problem so that it is clear, precise, and solvable. Yes, that is possible. And Yes, you can learn to do that. You have that kind of creative power. Well, if you discover it, develop it, and use that power.
Solution is then what you answer your problem question. That is, with a problem, you have a question and when you pose that question and use your creative power to solve it, you come up with a creative solution. This is what is typically recognized as creative solutions and is what we need to resolve the obstacle between us and our goal.
The final stage of creativity is innovation. We innovate the solution. We implement and execute the creative solution that answers the problem question and the resolves whatever is interfering, sabotaging, or blocking us from stepping forward to experience our outcome. So with these four stages: outcome, problem, solution, and innovation and the ability to create precise and clear statements of each, we experience our full power of creativity.
May you unleashing more and more of your innate creative powers!
Dr. Michael Hall
Neuro-Semantics homepage
Everyone as best as he can!
Have Joy
Giannicola