Liberating Everyday Genius-
Mary Elaine JacobsenP.158
CRITICISM#6:
"You Have to Do Everything the Hard Way."NEW RESPONSE:
"Ah. I See You Understand. That Excellence Is Difficult."The "hard way" is the habit of creation, and the creagive equation cannot be completed on one side without involving the other. Innovation implies new construction or restructuring existing ideas in novel ways. The latter is, of course, the very hardest way, and yet in many situations it is the
only way.
Innovation's restructuring process is often called creative problem solving, and happens to be Everyday Genius' forte. This form of problem solving is a strength that involves more than occasional searches for solutions because it is tied to our core directive-our First Nature-heightened receptivity and the urge to perfect. It comes as no surprise because on multiple levels we are here as delivery persons compelled to seek, know, and create. When we allow ourselves to be influenced by the creative field, we feel it, sense it, hear it, and respond to the urge to capture its illuminating effect.
Giftedness alone does not make the creative process easier, for "making new" is difficult at any level of ability. Simply being "creative" is also inadequate because many people have ideas they never develop, or give up when the going gets tough. The difference between a creative person and a creative producer is hard work. Those who actually produce the play, build the rocket, find the cure, and write the novel don't let their dieas collect dust on the "tomorrow" shelf. They dig in, often before they feel completely ready, and keep digging until they unearth what they are searching for. It is the unglamorous, relentless, dirty-hands effort that eventually turns a drawing into a masterpiece and a melody into a concerto. When excellence is the goal, nothing less will do.
Like so many gifted organizers, Claire and found both success and comfort in exactitude. Setting things straight-really straight-made her a top candidate for excellence in her career managing her city's botanical garden. She was proud of the obvious precision in the hedge maze, a place where she liked to linger over lunch whenever she could. Claire felt at home there amidst the flawless angles and bubble-perfect levels of green. Precision was a defining part of her world, and for the most part she was a shining star in it-that is, until she flip-flopped into a robotic procrastinator:
I'm hoping you can help me find a middle ground between my attachment to rules and order and my need to feel free and to enjoy my life. So far I've tried being one of the other-a compartmentalized, niche-maker fanatie, or a freewheeling blithe spirit. I can't seem to make a go of either one. When I start systematizing I don't know where to stop. If I let everything go, it makes me feel shaky and negligent. I want to regain my childlike sense of wonder and creative dash so I don't get myself stuck in rules and all-or-nothing motorized behaviors. But I also want to be on top of things because otherwise they come back at me with a vengeance and then I have to spend too much time getting things back in order. So there's the assignment: Become an organized easygoing person, or conversely, a go-with-the-flow finisher. No more getting perfectionistic to the point of stalling out. No more procrastinating because I always have to overresearch and get ready ad nauseum. No more boxing myself in so tightly that I become a stereotype instead of a person. And no more avoiding and letting myself be a lounger to the point where I have to race around like a chicken with its head cut off. I want to take the varying road in the middle that will never get me detoured to those extremes again.Everyday Geniuses' need to create the best that they are capable of is not something that goes away with time. It's not something we can excise, or a job from which we can expect to happily retire. To be sure, the intensity of creative pressure does ebb and flow, but like the tide, it always comes back. Unless we are extraordinarily hindered, sooner or later we must comply with the creative spirit's urgings, because it is more persevering than any attempt by our thinking mind to ignore our gifts. Living every day with the need to create is like sharing room with a hyperactive little brother who elbows you, tugs at your shirtsleeve, and tweaks your ear repeatedly until you give him your undivided attention. You can't stand him, but at the same time you love him dearly.
Annemarie Roeper, founder of the Roeper School for the gifted and
The Roeper Review, a highly respected professional journal dedicated to enhancing the understanding and education of the gifted, identifies the intense inner pressure to create as a hallmark of the gifted adult:
Gifted adults may be overwhelmed by the pressure of their own creativity. The gifted derive enormous satisfaction from the creative process. Much has been written about this process: how it works, the pressure of the inner agenda, the different phases it involves, the excitement and anxiety that comes with it, and the role played by the unconscious. One aspect, however, is not often mentioned. I believe the whole process is accompanied by a feeling of aliveness, of power, of capability, of enormous relief and of transcendence of the limits of our own body and soul. The "unique self" flows into the world outside. It is like giving birth. Creative expression derives directly from the unique Self of the creator, and its activation brings inherent feeligs of happiness and aliveness, even though they may be accompanied by less positive emotions, such as sadness, fear, and pain. Underneath all is the enormous joy of discovery and personal expression. The creative experience is not unique to the gifted, but I believe that for them there are more opportunities for creativity, and that the experience is more alive and powerful. Just as the creative process creates a feeling of happiness, the greatest unhappiness can occur if it is interfered with or not allowed to happen. In that case the inner pressure cannot be released.Many Everyday Geniuses have talents that are designed to produce a creative end result, and they also have one thing more: a special capacity to explore in independent and imaginative ways and to generalize their findings on many subjects. In their atypical minds they turn reality on its head to view the world in fundamentally different ways. Beyond producing objects of value, the gifted create for the sole purpose of creative expression. They need to create and are rejuvenated by it. They often do so whether someone asks them to or not, regardless of payment or recognition, chiefly because they enjoy solving their own puzzles independent of external influence.
With this in mind, I can honestly say I have never seen a movie I didn't appreciate. Naturally, I have been disappointed when certain films didn't meet my expectations. When I overhear patrons leaving with nasty criticisms, I take offense on behalf of those who have put in the tremendous creative effort required to complete such a project.
First there's the effort of originating the idea in the first place, then recasting it so it makes sense. Then there's the writing and rewriting of the screenplay and the daring to offer it up to investors before surviving the sharp marketing claws of the industry gurus. The process continues from the title expert and the makeup artist who can incrementally age and actor fifty years to the special-effects technician who makes us believe it's really raining. All this effort is commanded for a public who pays ten dollars to sit in a soft chair and absorb the creative results for ninety minutes. If it grosses millions, I say, "Well done!" If it's a one-weekend fiasco, I say, "Well done!" It's the creative effort that matters.
Creative people can feel badgered by a sense that they must constantly deliver winning results, which is why many gifted individuals quit their artistic quests prematurely. In American society the creative process is rarely seen as its own reward, so the evolutionary must remember that the final product only hints at the aliveness and transcendent power of the process of innovation.
Scott: Until you asked me I never gave it a second thought. But you're right. I do take stock of myself all the time. I'm constantly reviewing my actions and motivations. No wonder I'm anxious. I'm a person under nonstop scrutiny-my own. I'm no easy-to-please evaluator, either. That's for sure!The gifted tackle complex problems, problems that at first glance appear unsolvable. This often looks as though we're doing things the hard way, and yet arduous effort is not evidence that the problem could have been solved more easily. This tolerance and preference for intricacy are the characteristics that often make the difference when someone must find creative answers in the face of growing complexity. Tolerance and perseverance work together because the Everyday Genius mind is built to tolerate a lack of structure until the pieces of the puzzles begin to line up in some understadable order.
We are not digging around for answers in a haphazard way, even though it may look that way. Everyday Geniuses come equipped with something like an internal mining crew that manages a well-organized home base so we can go off searching in different directions. It empowers us to imagine and wander about in creative thought without getting lost or straying too far from the intended goal. This is why creative producers seem so enigmatic. The system that keeps the work moving forward and organized on the inside is invisible in the midst of a desk that looks as though a tornando struck it.
It's a good thing that we are suited to work in a foggy maze, because that is where innovation so often resides. Though others may find it odd, apparent unfeasibility is inviting to us when it presents itself as a fog covered labyrinth, a place where we can peek around unfamiliar corners and play with our intuition to see if we can make our way to the other side. Carl Jung grasped this when he observed, "The creative mind plays with the objects it loves."
However, there is a paradox in this, one of severa that appear in the gifted person's life. Negotiating the problem maze is a fascination/repulsion contradiction that can be summed up in the remark:"Oh how painful this is; I just love it!" Perhaps more than anything else, it is this love-hate relationship with challenge that stymies others who mistakenly conclude we choose to suffer unnecessary angst. It's true thaht until the creative product appears on the scence, we may be the only ones who have a solid idea of where we're going. Explaining one's vision to others is generally an exercise in frustration that is better avoided.
In truth that vision is often nearly impossivle to articulate, sometimes even to ourselves. We have an itch that needs to be scratched, a door that beckons us to open it, a want that turns into a must. The love hate relationship with creative production is somewhat like a good horror flick-all the juices start to flow, the sensory system is on full alert, and the unexpected is expected. Courage and thrill in the murky engagement, relief and gratification in the conquest. The painstaking stops of the creative process always involve formulating and reformulating, retracing old steps, and taking new ones, then repeating it all until the final goal is reached. Then and only then can we permit ourselves to sit back and say "There."
Sometimes we are inappropriately accused of being intolerant despite the fact that we tolerate one thing most people distrust and avoid:ambiguity. Defining ambiguity is not difficult; whereas obscurity stems from chaos and impossibility implies the unattainable, ambiguity is about quandary, about apparently irreconcilable contradictions about a multiplicity of options. The skill to confront complex meanings, however, complements our ability to approach all sides of an issue, and we are always fascinated with complicated riddles.
Like others, we find complicated situations troublesome, but the reason we are recognized as idea people is because we're willing to float on a sea of doubt longer than others. The moment when others are frustrated enough to throw up their hands in resignation is often when we are just getting going. The so-called hard way is really the long and slow and irritating way of excellence. Reserving the need to be certain along the way is a hallmark of Everday Genius thinking. Even though we get frustrated, too, we understand that progress is almost never a rocket shot straight to the target.
The creative burst that has the power to change everything is the product of what writer Arthur Koestler calls the "sudden fusion" of two or more concepts. The Everyday Genius' ability to overshadow the average problem solver is in large part attributed to an exceptional ability to combine existing data with new ideas, to tame and harness paradox. This management of paradox-not being undone by it or running away from it- involves simultaneous problem-finding and problem-solving efforts.
We possess so many ideas primarily because we can allow seemingly disconnected elements to linger in our heads in a subconscious filing system that determines what is valuable and what is mental "junk mail." There they wait, stored and filed, until the right moment, when, as James Vargiu, founding director of the Psychosynthesis Institute in San Francisco, notes, the ideas are ready to "come under the influence of the creative field." This filing method integrates the powers of learned experience, knowledge, and intuition by holding captivating notions in a state of readiness.
The creative thinker holds a different attitude than others, one that does not give way to the forces of turmoil and creative tension, but rather sees stress as opportunity for discovery. Certainly Einstein's discovery of the theory of relativity illustrates this point. In Productive Thinking Max Wertheimer describes Einstein's preillumination frustration:
[A] Certain region in the structure of the whole situation was in reality not as clear to him as it should be, although it had hitherto been accepted without question by everyone, including himself.... During this time he was often depressed, sometimes in despair, but driven by the strongest vectors.
Einstein's struggle with his relativity theory continued for seven years, during which it might have been said little happened, that he was trying to do something "the hard way." Yet perhaps many of the greatest discoveries are by necessity the result of the greatest difficulties. Besides perseverance and tension tolerance, knowing when to stop fishing for a while to do somethign else is a critical factor in innovation. Einstein's sidetrack to reexamine his theories about time led to his new theory of relativity just five weeks later.
Like Einstein we too rely on the knitting that is done by our unconscious minds when we are "off task." A problem or idea in incubation is free of the limitations of our conscious logic, at liberty to examine theories and relationships the thinking mind cannot. This is the territory of our inner creative artist, who is able to stretch out the problem in many directions, to pull together strands of silk, steel, ocean water, and cloud from remote areas of the cosmos, far beyond the reaches of educated knowledge. When the strands have been artfully and painstakingly woven together, illumination occurs.
Once the 'aha" has occurred, we can switch back to our linear-thinking mode and make use of the newly designed fabric. Then the more mundance work must begin, the work of production, which many creative producers consider a frustrating necessity. Nevertheless, innovation is not all spark and sparkle, and it never comes easy; its challengers and demands almost always exceed the effort implied by the end result.
The so-called hard way is truly the way of evolution itself, which is creativity on the cosmic scale. Innovation is the direct application of our gifts as they are allowed to come under the unfluence of the Higher Creative Field. Throughout the process of creation we ascend and descend again and again, each time crossing the threshold between ground dwelling human and transcending spirit. This is what Wertheimer meant when he referred to the "strongest vectors," because its unusual properties combine direction and force, both of which are inspired, not forced. This is the way creativity has always been.
