The Talent Development Resources site newsletter Developing Talent Weekly email with articles, quotes, books, products and more on topics covered in the site :  enhancing creative potential gifted adult personality developing creativity the psychology of creativity and personal growth emotional issues facing gifted teens and adults being a creative and successful entrepreneur realizing multiple talents and abilities

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Developing Talent        Week of  March 1, 2010 Brief quotes "If you can dream it, you can do it."   Walt Disney   from 3 minute movie: Great Quotes from Great Leaders.   It takes more than talent to find your true potential "Talent will out."  If that old aphorism were really true, those with the highest potential to make the world better would inevitably have the opportunities and power to provide a constant supply of art masterpieces, to lead medical, political and business organizations, or otherwise realize their advanced potentials. What keeps so many high potential people from realizing their abilities?   Elizabeth Wagele: Are Introverts More Creative than Extraverts? In her Psychology Today blog post Are Introverts More Creative than Extraverts?, writer, cartoonist and musician Elizabeth Wagele writes about how this key personality dimension relates to creative expression. Here is an excerpt : Are liking solitude and focusing inward creative gifts? My café friends and I, mostly introverts, were discussing where our various kinds of creativity came from recently. Our DNA is probably mostly responsible, but we each pointed to going inside at a young age to get away from a family situation. One man had an abusive father who would ground him for weeks at a time-he would draw when under house arrest and eventually became a successful artist.   Relationships can be difficult for highly sensitive people "I am shy and I don't start relationships with people normally. I guess I have a way that can seem aloof and sort of cold. They didn't like me that much, but I never resented it. I was different than they were." Actor Kristin Kreuk - about being in high school. Being highly sensitive may include or even encourage social isolation, and involve more than usual challenges with friendships and romance. True peer relationships can be rare and demanding. Of course, highly sensitive is not the same as shy, but a majority of HSPs are introverted.     Developing creativity: still seeking out beauty By guest author Shelley Berc.  "We are all born creative, curious, and hungry to explore the world around and within us. "For a child, creativity is expressed in play and play is the way he learns. Life is just one big erector set that is to be snapped together and pulled apart in a thousand different ways."     The DSM and pathologizing human experiences and giftedness Many people have been helped by professionals who make use of the labels and categories of mental health issues detailed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM. But many critics question the institutionalized categorizing of so much human behavior as "disorder" instead of ordinary experience, healthy divergence or even aspects of giftedness.   Gifted and talented but with insecurity and low self esteem Even people with exceptional talents can feel insecure and struggle with developing healthy self-esteem. Meryl Streep, for example, has said, "I have varying degrees of confidence and self-loathing....   "You can have a perfectly horrible day where you doubt your talent... Or that you're boring and they're going to find out that you don't know what you're doing."   Rehabilitating the muse By guest author Matt Cardin. After having fallen into semi-official disrepute among the mainstream Western literati and intelligentsia for a century or three, the muse/genius/daimon was resurrected and rehabilitated for a new era beginning roughly in the 1990s. James Hillman managed to get on the best-seller lists with a thoroughly daimon-based exploration of creativity and life calling in The Soul's Code (1997)... A decade later Elizabeth Gilbert fairly shook the world with her talk about muses and geniuses at the 2008 installment of the zeitgeist-gauging TED Conference.       ~ ~ ~

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Realizing Your Talents

What does it mean to realize your talents, and how do you do it?

What are some of the psychological issues that can get in the way?

What are some of the personal characteristics that self-actualizing people share?

A definition of the word "realize" includes "to grasp or understand clearly; to make real; give reality to."

Realizing our talents is an active, continuing process of knowing not only what we can do, but who we are. ...

“Each of us has a tendency to underestimate his or her own abilities. "We should realize that we have deep within ourselves deep reservoirs of great ability, even genius that can be tapped if we'll just dig deep enough." Earl Nightingale - from his article The Great Problem-Solving Tool

"Women, as well as men, were given minds to use and the ability to develop skills in various ways.

"I believe this is so primarily because, in the scheme of the universe, for real satisfaction every human being must earn his living. "If you have gifts, natural gifts, and you never develop them, you are as guilty as the man in the Bible who wrapped his talent in a napkin and buried it so he could return to his Master what his Master had given him." Eleanor Roosevelt [1884-1962]

...
"Self actualization is not only an end state but also the process of actualizing one's potentialities at any time, in any amount...

"Self-actualization means using one's intelligence. It does not mean doing some far-out thing necessarily, but it may mean going through an arduous and demanding period of preparation in order to realize one's possibilities...

"Self actualization means working to do well the thing that one wants to do."

One of the influential psychologists who defined the human potential movement was Abraham Maslow (1908–1970). That quote is from his article Self-Actualizing and Beyond. ....

[continued]...

Are creative people unusually sensitive?

Many reports by artists, as well as research findings, confirm that is often true.

Of course, being creative is not limited to people identified as artists, or even pursuing creative ventures.

Both creativity and being sensitive are on a spectrum - a range of different levels.

And being sensitive does not mean you are necessarily creative or an artist.

Oh please be careful with me, I'm sensitive And I'd like to stay that way ... From the song I'm Sensitive by Jewel Kilcher   - from her debut album Pieces of You

Writer Pearl Buck made a very strong declaration about sensitivity:

"The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanely sensitive. "To them... a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death.

"Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create -- so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, their very breath is cut off... "They must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency they are not really alive unless they are creating." Pearl Buck (1892-1973). Her novel The Good Earth won a Pulitzer Prize, and in 1938 she won the Nobel Prize in literature.

Pearl Buck's statement, even if today it sounds overblown, is something you may relate to if you experience high sensitivity, and a compelling need to create.

And that connection continues to be confirmed by many people's personal experience, as well as research - such as this study:

Creative people more open to stimuli from environment

A Life on Fire - Living Your Life
with Passion Balance & Abundance

Every month Healthy Wealthy nWise Magazine interviews people who are legends in their fields
about how they achieved success.

This ebook collection of cover story interviews with these successful, brilliant authors and speakers provides knowledge and inspiration for living a life of balanced abundance.

Interviews in this ebook collection include:

Janet Attwood - Author of The Passion Test
Brian Tracy
Jack Canfield
T. Harv Eker
Marianne Williamson
Robert G. Allen
Jay Abraham
Stephen R. Covey

 

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