By Matt Cardin.  We all know the old saw, usually attributed to Thomas Edison, that "Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration." The problem with this ubiquitous speck of folk wisdom is not just that it provides a catchall cliché for scoffing at those who dare to suggest that inspiration plays a crucial role in creative work, but that it plainly and grossly misrepresents the relationship in creative work between inspiration and effort. So let it be said once and for all: inspiration and effort are not contradictory but complementary. Their relationship is mutually enhancing.

By Shelley Berc.  Leonardo da Vinci claimed he saw all his paintings in the humidity stains on his walls before ever lifting his brush. Herman Melville stared at Mount Greylock every day until one day it became that devilish cetacean Moby Dick. Children look up at the clouds and see houses, alligators, and dinosaurs rather than cumulus, nimbus, and cirrus. According to biologists, man can no longer be defined as different from other animals by virtue of speech or tool making. But we are absolutely unique in our dazzling ability to make metaphors. Creativity is the art of living metaphorically. We are all born creative, curious, and hungry to explore the world around and within us.

Highly creative individuals and geniuses have marked similar traits and although every human being is creative in one way or the other, some individuals actually develop their creativity too well and so they are recognized as creative geniuses. Psychologists believe that all highly creative individuals have certain common personality traits, including Complexity; Flexibility; Confidence; Non-conformity; Intuition; Sensitivity...

Creative thinking can be stimulated by two things; intensely desired goals and pressing problems. Your creative capacities need something to hone in on and your job is to provide it. Intensely desired goals, clearly defined with detailed plans for their accomplishment act as a continual stimulus for ideas to achieve them... The most creative people have a relaxed attitude of confident expectancy that causes their minds to function in original and imaginative ways.

We tend to be attracted to confident, bold, defiant people in the world of art. Many times audacity can go further than even talent. The talented artist, writer, or musician who does not show belief and confidence can flounder, when someone less talented but with assertive belief can flourish. Being convinced in the merit of our work is an attractive energy that sells and magnetizes attention as much for the product as for the belief itself.

Oh, the energy we use in this society to suppress what we perceive to be our undesirable traits — our negativity, judgmental nature, and our other secret peculiarities and struggles. Often we do not even allow our shadow side into our own consciousness but others can often see it. People who passionately irk us are usually mirroring our own shadows back to us, though ours may surface with a different rendition that we do not recognize. In this exercise we not only deny our humanity but we also disable a potent creativity feature — sublimation.

The personality attributes of the creative individual, as well as the characteristics of creative performance, can be seen as, in part, deriving from or serving the Sensation-seeking temperament... Dr. Cramond identifies several studies which describe creative people as having unusually high energy levels... as do individuals diagnosed with ADHD.

That actually encouraged me as well. The fact that there weren’t that many women composers didn’t make me think “Well, I’m not going to do it.” It made me think, “Well I’m going to be the first.”

The process of creativity and genius are inherent in human consciousness. Just as every human has within himself the same essence of consciousness, so is genius a potential that resides within everyone -- it simply waits for the right circumstance to express itself... Genius and creativity are subjectively experienced as a witnessing; it's the phenomenon that bypasses the individual self or ego.

Are people fascinated by so much in the world because of their intellectual development, or does consciously feeding our mind stimulate high level thought and creative ability? Steve Pavlina, for example, writes, "Leonardo da Vinci, considered a genius by any reasonable standard, achieved competence across a diverse set of fields, including art, music, science, anatomy, engineering, architecture, and many others. While some would argue that such wide-ranging interests were a result of his intelligence, I think it is more likely that they were the cause of it - or at least a major contributing factor."