Resist the pressure to conform, or at least don’t let it become your norm. The research is in – we are stifling creativity in our children, our co-workers and ourselves. Why? Because being creative means we’ll attract attention, be criticized more, be seen as someone who isn’t a “team player” when conformity and ‘go along to get along’ is the prevailing expectation.
My own expression of seedbops does get weird comments. I was inspired to take bubble wrap, drizzle hot pink acrylic paste over the top, and make tiny watercolor monsters that I stuck in the paste. It had a bright yellow background with the words “Pop goes the Weasel.” I loved it. I took it to the framers to have it put in a shadow box. The shop owner, a friend, said, “It looks like this was made by someone in kindergarten. Wow, I don’t think this was a positive critique. And it was – it had the free, exuberant quality children infuse into their work. I gave that piece to someone and often wish I hadn’t. My visual memory of its joy and whimsey stays with me. I may recreate it someday. Maybe a series. What fun!
“Creative people, … not only see more material but tend to be willing to consider a greater pool of information as relevant than do less creative people. … creators aren’t so quick to dismiss notification as irrelevant or unworthy just because it doesn’t conform to existing beliefs. By considering more information, creators have more raw material to process, more dots to connect.”
And those connected dots may be threatening to people who dismiss what they have been enculturated to believe is irrelevant and unworthy. Your creative path is not easy if you want people to accept you unconditionally. But you’ll travel in the company of people who brought light into the world and paved the way to the future.
“Creativity is not ideological, nor the same as success.” Matt Richtel’s book, Inspired: Understanding Creativity, A Journey Through Art Science and the Soul argues that the democratic nature of creativity is a “form of freedom and personal expression.” We all have experienced heavy criticism from people who are threatened by our free expression of our creative sparks. “I’ll argue that elitism, superficial ideology, and the blinding light of material success can grossly undercut the ability to create by discouraging authenticity, Richtel says.”
“Creativity finds a way, like life itself, even in places where it seems starved of the conditions and culture needed to thrive.” And that is where creativity is channeled through hope.
Why is it that so many people are threatened by creativity? Spoiler alert: it starts in childhood. The expectations, values, and beliefs imprinted on us as children can become automatic in adulthood if we don’t develop openness to new perspectives and ideas. Children are molded by cultural conditioning from parents and teachers. As they get older and absorb more of this conditioning, they become less creatively agile.
“The pressure to conform to thinking didn’t appear just from their teachers but also from their peers. Ideas that in second grade seemed playful, funny, harmless, or loosely connected could now prompt teachers to say “really,” C’mon!” or classmates to laugh. Bit by bit, the theory went that children internalized the voices of outsiders condemning or mocking them and so developed a preemptive filter. An idea might emerge but quickly dissolves inside the brain before it hits the mouth or pen goes to paper. What if the teacher thinks I’m an idiot? What if my friend thinks I sound stupid?”
Kyung Hee “Kay” Kim, an educational psychologist at William & Mary Graduate School of Education, criticizes the increasingly hostile education system for stifling creative thinking. She blames the problem on the rise in testing which amplifies and makes rules-based thinking the norm. “…despite the implicit rule-making of prior generations, much of instruction in the United States, in particular, revolved around curiosity and independent thinking as tools used to come up with exciting solutions. The climate nurtured emotional, compassionate, self-reflective, daydreaming, autonomous, nonconforming, gender-bias-free, and defiant attitudes. … testing appeared to serve various constituencies: politicians who wanted an objective measure of success: colleges that wanted to easily differentiate among students’ parents who wanted a clear, unambiguous way to see how their own children ranked; and those with a broader societal desire to see the country’s youth keep up with test scores of other countries.”
Expecting performance based on concrete answers causes people to lose curiosity and imagination, discourages passion for risk-taking, and makes us ripe for “conforming to others’ control.” Kim says, “the system increasingly fostered conformity, stifling individuality, uniqueness, and originality in both educators and students, …if early on, you start thinking about the right answer instead of thinking about possibilities, your brain loses flexibility.”
“When people answer questions using the same methodology over and over, there is atrophy in parts of the brain associated with more flexible thinking.”
The Terman Study found that subjects with higher IQs tended to be less creative over the course of their careers. “No significant writers, artists, or scientists emerged from this genius’ level IG group. … This is not to say intellect doesn’t play a role in success. It just doesn’t equate with creativity … and yet testing became increasingly an arbiter measuring student performance.”
But that’s not all. Parents can unwittingly put the lid on creativity, all with the best intentions of wanting their child to be successful at navigating life. “The differences in rules and cultures came across sometimes in how the homes looked – more conformity with the less creative families, less for the ones that raised creative children.”
The parents with creative children gave those children far fewer rules on a daily basis than did the families with children who did not exhibit creativity. In families with creative children, there might be one rule, like be a mench” be kind. .. By contrast, researchers found that in families with children who exhibited less creativity, there were, on average, ten rules When to go to bed, when to be home, how to behave in various situations. “They never wanted their kids to get into trouble or to make mistakes,” says John Dacey, an educational researcher at Boston College.
“Many parents, in an effort to protect children, “stifle them” by having them internalize the ideas of limits, rules, and boundaries. ..As parents shape the neural networks of their children, it is possible to have rules while also mixing in exploration and questions, indulging curiosity, and allowing children to question and seek their own reasons for why there are rules, when they apply and what circumstances allow flexibility. … ‘that’s not how things are done, is it?’ or ‘We don’t say things like that, do we?’ These sentences have an impact not only on discouraging certain behaviors but also on discouraging independent thought. The emphasis is on what “we” do and don’t do and, therefore, what is “right.”
The terrible, unspoken risk of failing to live up to expectations can limit a person’s desire to take risks. Creativity’s worst enemy is perfectionism. I am a recovering perfectionist. I have to catch myself wanting to do it exactly right and give myself permission to be open, curious, and explore. “If you can’t make a mistake, you can’t take a creative risk. And is the opposite of permission.”
“If you want to be creative, you have to generate lots of ideas- and pick out the good ones,” says Dean Simonton, a genius researcher. “The main point is that you’re able to generate ideas without knowing whether they’re going to pan out. … Your odds of creating something other find meaningful crease if you feel the impulse to create and take the risk to go with it. …If you want to be creative, you can’t guarantee a solution in advance, it’s true if you look at any creative genius. Do you know how many dead ends Albert Einstein went through? It was astronomical. – sometimes you make really, really horrible mistakes.”
Claiming your creative genius means you have to persevere without knowing whether you will succeed. It means having people who should know better criticize you and tell you you acting like a kindergartener (which you should take as a complement). “For many deeply creative people, creativity itself is the end game because the nature of the process is to venture into the unknown.” You will be able to navigate life with flexibility and in the end, succeed more because you know how to kayak the river of uncertainty.
Permission is important, and so are rules. But there are ways to navigate through society and work that honor the purpose behind rules but don’t stamp out your inner light.
Take risks, even if they are uncomfortable. Do it anyway.
All references are from Inspired: Understanding Creativity, A Journey Through Art, Science and the Soul. by Matt Richtel, 2022
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