One of the key concepts of Polish psychiatrist and psychologist Kazimierz Dabrowski, MD, PhD (1902 – 1980) is that individuals with strong “overexcitabilities” are good candidates for higher level development.

Stephanie Tolan, a writer and advocate for extremely bright children, notes the original Polish word for psychiatrist Dabrowski’s concept of overexcitabilities or excitabilities can be translated more literally as “superstimulatabilities.”

See more in my post Intensity of the imagination: Precious and Phoebe in Wonderland.

Video: “Does your brain ever get tired?” – Boston detective Jane Rizzoli (Angie Harmon, left) to medical examiner Maura Isles (Sasha Alexander), in Rizzoli & Isles (Season 2 Episode 15, “Burning Down the House,” Dec 26 2011) – the TV series based on the books by physician Tess Gerritsen.

Here are some quotes by writer Stephen King, and actors Amanda Bynes and Sandra Bullock about having “teeming brains” – comments that seem to me are about the experience.

Stephen King has said:

“I’ve taken off two months, three months at a time, and, by the end, I get really squirrelly.

“My night life, my dream life, gets extremely populated and crazed. It’s as though something in there is running all the time.”

Actor Amanda Bynes, talking about going to college, once said:

“I have such a busy mind and it’s really hard for me to do one thing at a time. … It’s hard for me to sit still.”

Sandra Bullock has commented:

“I am a big ball of high energy and organization and structure. I’m controlling, and I want everything orderly, and I need lists. My mind goes a mile a minute.”

These Excitabilities are considered to occur in five areas: psychomotor, intellectual, imaginational, emotional and sensual. Many writers and educators consider the concept to be particularly relevant for gifted and talented people.

The title for this post (and video) is partly a reference to the book My Teeming Brain: Creativity in Creative Writers, by Jane Piirto, Ph.D., who notes in her article Themes in the Lives of Successful U.S. Adult Creative Writers, that her book title comes from the poet Keats who knew the experience well, writing in a sonnet about his “fears that I may cease to be / before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain…”

See more in my post: Pumping our teeming brain.

Giftedness consultant Lesley Sword describes Overexcitabilities as “an abundance of physical, sensual, creative, intellectual and emotional energy that can result in creative endeavours as well as advanced emotional and ethical development in adulthood. Overexcitabilities feed, enrich, empower and amplify talent.”

From her article Overexcitabilities in Gifted Children.

A resource book on this topic is Living With Intensity: Understanding the Sensitivity, Excitability, and the Emotional Development of Gifted Children, Adolescents, and Adults, by Susan Daniels, PhD and Michael M. Piechowski, PhD.

[Also see my High Ability site post Excitabilities and Gifted People – an intro by Susan Daniels with a video excerpt from a webinar by SENG presented by Dr. Daniels: “Understanding Overexcitabilities – The Joys and the Challenges.”]

The authors explain, “Overexcitability is a translation of the Polish word which means ‘superstimulatability.’ (It should have been called superexcitability.) … Another way of looking at is of being spirited – ‘more intense, sensitive, perceptive, persistent, energetic’…It would be hard to find a person of talent who shows little evidence of any of the five overexcitabilities.”

But they also note that many people may not welcome such traits: “Unfortunately, the stronger these overexcitabilities are, the less peers and teachers welcome them.”

From my post The psychology of creativity: performers and excitabilities.

The above three paragraphs are also in the “Intensity” chapter of my book “Developing Multiple Talents – The personal side of creative expression”
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Rooney Mara

Lisbeth Salander is one of the most intriguing and powerful characters in literature, and both Rooney Mara in the new movie of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and Noomi Rapace in the 2009 Danish version, bring to life a richly complex and dynamic young woman.

The “extra intelligent and intense” of my title is a reference to the book: Enjoying the Gift of Being Uncommon: Extra Intelligent, Intense, and Effective, by Willem Kuipers.

In her article (a guest post on my High Ability site) 3 Things To Learn From The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – A Gifted Trauma Survivor, psychotherapist Lisa Erickson writes about the connections of this character with gifted teens and adults, noting that “Lisbeth Salander is the fictional heroine of Steig Larsson’s trilogy The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.

“As the heroine, Lisbeth Salander embodies certain characteristics of giftedness, and these characteristics help her survive terrible, long-term physical, sexual and emotional abuse.”

Rooney Mara studied at George Washington University for a year, then transferred to New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, where she studied psychology, international social policy, and nonprofits. [Wikipedia]

She uses her intelligence and other personal qualities in making her character so compelling, and comments about Lisbeth:

“The thing that I found most interesting was that she could be as off-putting as she is, but at the same time she’s also quite innocent and childlike. She’s this genius and she’s brilliant, but at the same time she’s kind of naive and emotionally stunted. So I think that sort of makes her very unpredictable; you don’t really know what you’re going to get, what’s going to pop out of her.”

Much has been written in reviews about her ‘goth’ appearance in the movie, but Mara thinks “She’s not a badass, she’s not a punk. I hate it when people call her a punk or goth, because to me that’s just the antithesis of what she is.

“I think in order to be punk or goth, you have to be part of a group or part of a subculture, and her whole thing is that she never wants to draw attention to herself. She dresses the way she does because society has constantly, throughout her entire life, told her that she’s worthless.”

She notes how personal for her this role is: “It would probably be smarter of me as an actor to pretend that I don’t relate to her and that I’m completely different than her, but that’s just not true. I would certainly come off as a much better actor if I did that, but the truth is that I do really relate to her.”

From Rooney Mara: Lisbeth Salander Of ‘The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo’ More Than Just A Role by Jordan Zakarin, TheHuffingtonPost.com

The interviewer above refers to Mara as “naturally shy” – perhaps one of the qualities she relates to in the character.

Rooney Mara

In another interview, Mara was asked if she liked Lisbeth.

“I do really like her. I think most people really like her. I also think part of the reason she’s so great is that you don’t always agree with what she does yet you still like her. I think that’s really why she’s so interesting.”

[Would Lisbeth like you?]

“I don’t know. I feel like if we were stuck in a room together not a lot would happen. We’re both shy and quiet and not very good communicators.”

[From Rooney Mara Interviews with Boston Globe.]

Both tough and vulnerable

Mara also has said of Lisbeth: “She is described as an anorexic waif. At the same time, she has this superhuman strength. She looks quite tough. But she’s quite vulnerable.

“She’s this brilliant hacker and wise beyond her years, and at the same time, she’s emotionally stunted at 12 years old and naive in a lot of ways. She is full of all these contradictions. And we never wanted to make her just this angry and violent person.”

[From 'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo': An Interview With Rooney Mara, Daniel Craig, and David Fincher, by Louise Roug, Newsweek Magazine.]

Obsessive and perfectionistic

Mara thinks she and Lisbeth are “very similar in a lot of different ways. We’re both obsessive and perfectionists. We’re both contrarians. Neither of us likes to be controlled. I’m someone who overthinks everything and really needs to investigate every part of something before I’m ready to do it in front of other people, and he [her director David Fincher] really allows for that. That’s the part of me I think is very similar to Salander.” [From The Contenders: Rooney Mara's 'Tattoo' studies, By Sam Adams, Special to the Los Angeles Times.]

Complexity, paradox

As portrayed by both of these outstanding actors – Rooney Mara and Noomi Rapace – Lisbeth Salander also reminds me of some of the writing of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced me-high chick-sent-me-high-ee) – one of the major creativity researchers on personality and creative expression.

In one of my Creative Mind articles, I include a quote of his:

“If there is one word that makes creative people different from others, it is the word complexity. Instead of being an individual, they are a multitude.

“Like the color white that includes all colors, they tend to bring together the entire range of human possibilities within themselves. Creativity allows for paradox, light, shadow, inconsistency, even chaos –and creative people experience both extremes with equal intensity.”

From my post The Complexity of the Creative Personality.

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“I liked him. He was kind of skinny and wiry and full of energy.” Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, about meeting Steve Jobs in 1969.

“Jobs doesn’t sit through much of anything; one of the ways he dominates is through sheer movement.” Joe Nocera

The bio ‘Steve Jobs’ has topped Amazon’s list of 10 best-selling books of 2011.

Listening to author Walter Isaacson in his interview with Charlie Rose, one of his comments that caught my attention was this [paraphrased]:

The deep emotionalism surprised me. He’d be talking and I looked up and there were tears… He was talking about the ad campaign ‘Here’s to the Crazy Ones’ and he got very emotional.

[See my post The Apple “Think Different” campaign - includes the TV commercial.]

Video: excerpt of Charlie Rose interview of Walter Isaacson (10/25/11). See the longer interview at CharlieRose.com.

Here is a quote from Isaacson’s new bio of Steve Jobs, by Joe Nocera, then a writer for Esquire, describing Jobs’ intensity at a NeXT computer staff meeting:

“It’s not quite right to say that he is sitting through this staff meeting because Jobs doesn’t sit through much of anything; one of the ways he dominates is through sheer movement.

“One moment he’s kneeling in his chair, the next minute he’s slouching in it; the next he has leaped out of his chair entirely and is scribbling on the blackboard directly behind him.

“He is full of mannerisms. He bites his nails. He stares with unnerving earnestness at whoever is speaking. His hands, which are slightly and inexplicably yellow, are in constant motion.”

These references sound like the unusually intense levels of emotional, physical and other capacities that Polish clinician and theorist Kazimierz Dabrowski detailed in his theory of personality development, and termed Overexcitability.

He particularly addressed high ability, gifted and talented people, and said, “Almost 97 percent of the highly creative suffer from different kinds of overexcitabilities, neuroses, and psychoneuroses. So, neurotics and psychoneurotics are a mine of social treasure.”

More stimulatable

Stephanie Tolan, a writer and advocate for extremely bright children, notes the original Polish terms overexcitabilities or excitabilities can be translated more literally as “superstimulatabilities.”

She summarizes, “It’s a stimulus-response difference from the norms. It means that in these five areas a person reacts more strongly than normal for a longer period than normal to a stimulus that may be very small. It involves not just psychological factors but central nervous system sensitivity.”

She describes the Psychomotor form of Overexcitability or Excitability: “This is often thought to mean that the person needs lots of movement and athletic activity, but it can also refer to the issue of having trouble smoothing out the mind’s activities for sleeping. Lots of physical energy and movement, fast talking, lots of gestures, sometimes nervous tics.”

From her page Dabrowski’s Over-excitabilities – A Layman’s Explanation.

Sharon Lind, a gifted education and parenting consultant, notes in her article Overexcitability and the gifted, “A small amount of definitive research and a great deal of naturalistic observation have led to the belief that intensity, sensitivity and overexcitability are primary characteristics of the highly gifted.”

“Often when overexcitability is discussed examples and concerns are mostly negative. Remember that being overexcitable also brings with it great joy, astonishment, beauty, compassion, and creativity. Perhaps the most important thing is to acknowledge and relish the uniqueness of an overexcitable child or adult.”

Also see a longer discussion of the topic by Casey on her Raising Smart Girls blog: Overexcitabilities and the gifted – Living With Intensity

See quotes by her about J.D. Salinger “searching relentlessly” for peace in my post What do you do with your intensity?

Being intense is not always positive.

Casey refers to one of the reference books on the subject: Living with Intensity: Understanding the Sensitivity, Excitability, and the Emotional Development of Gifted Children, Adolescents, and Adults.

The Amazon summary notes: “Gifted children and adults are often misunderstood. Their excitement is viewed as excessive, their high energy as hyperactivity, their persistence as nagging, their imagination as not paying attention, their passion as being disruptive, their strong emotions and sensitivity as immaturity, their creativity and self-directedness as oppositional.”

Also see much more on the Dabrowski page listed at the bottom.

The iconic 1984 Macintosh commercial conceived by Chiat/Day and directed by Ridley Scott was nationally aired on television only once – during the 3rd quarter of the 1984 Super Bowl football game.

Creative Obsession

The photo above (by Norman Seeff) is Jobs with the original 1984 Macintosh, which was not made to be opened by the owner, but Isaacson says Jobs thought the main circuit board looked ugly, that the chips were not arrayed nicely, so it had to be re-manufactured. One of his staff noted that no one would see it; Steve said “But we will know.”

Attention to even “invisible details” is often part of the obsessive perfectionism – or, from another vantage point, passion for excellence – that drives many major filmmakers, too.

One example is James Cameron (the Terminator series, Aliens, Titanic and many others), whose attention to detail for his movie Avatar included employing a university linguistics professor to create a functioning language for the tribe of blue aliens on Pandora.

But one of the dark sides of obsession for Cameron and others can be engaging in negatively perfectionistic behavior, or being a destructive workaholic.

Both were also reportedly aspects of Jobs’ life and achievement.

Of course, as with most behavior, there is no absolute border between productive and pathological.

Therapist and creativity coach Eric Maisel, PhD notes in his article In Praise of Positive Obsessions that clinicians may define “obsession” as an intrusive thought, recurrent, unwanted, and inappropriate.

Maisel writes, “Defined this way, it is obviously always unwelcome. But suppose a person is caught up thinking day and night about her current painting or about the direction she wants to take her art?”

From my post Creative Obsession

Passion

In her post Do You “Believe Beyond Reason?” (on her blog – see her site), creativity coach Jenna Avery notes that “passion” is an over-used and often bland idea, and it should be something much more.”

She writes, ‘Let’s start asking, “What do you BELIEVE BEYOND REASON?” What do you believe in so deeply, so permanently, so passionately that you can hardly keep yourself in your skin because you are exploding with joy when you consider it?’

Isn’t that what we want to feel as creators?

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Book: Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson.

Audiobook:  Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography, Narrated by Dylan Baker, Walter Isaacson.

My sites on ‘central nervous system sensitivity’: Highly Sensitive // Highly Sensitive / Facebook

Related pages, posts

Dabrowski / advanced development

Dabrowski Excitabilities – Michael Jackson

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The ‘gifted’ label & the pressure to deliver

In his book “Your Own Worst Enemy..” psychologist Kenneth W. Christian, PhD delineates some of the most prominent patterns of thinking and behavior he has found that may lead to undermining and underachievement as adults.

He notes, “Without explicit demands and support, being labeled ‘bright’ or ‘gifted’ is akin to being conferred an aristocratic lineage — a heritage that exists independently of what you do with it.

“The difference is that the labels ‘bright’ and ‘gifted’ come with implicit demands, and when appropriate explicit demands are lacking, the labels sit there like ticking bombs.

“On the one hand, these labels tell you that merely being bright or talented is enough, but on the other hand, the longer you go being praised for talent alone, the more anxious you become about the time when you will be required to deliver.”

Hanging on to a limiting self-concept

Another aspect is how our identity and self concept informs personal development:

“We can be particularly resistant to change when it threatens to alter what we believe about ourselves…”

Continued: Adult Underachievement: Kenneth Christian, Ph.D. on living up to the “gifted” label – or not

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“The Creative Adult is the Child Who Survived” – From the facebook page of Artizen Magazine

A couple of related posts:

Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

Healing and art: SARK and others on abuse and creativity

3 Things To Learn From The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – A Gifted Trauma Survivor, By Lisa Erickson, MS, LMHC

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From a tribute to Steve Jobs:

‘Those who knew Jobs often spoke of his passion for his creations.

“It sounds ridiculous to talk about love when you are making a gadget,” said Larry Brilliant, the former director of Google’s philanthropic arm, Google.org, and a longtime friend of Jobs.

“But Steve loved his work, he loved the products he produced, and it was palpable,” Brilliant said.

“He communicated that love through bits of steel and plastic.”‘

From article: “To his millions of fans, he was simply Steve” By David Sarno and Jessica Guynn, Los Angeles Times October 6, 2011.

Biography: Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson. – The publisher describes the book as revealing that Jobs was “Driven by demons and could drive those around him to fury and despair. But his personality and products were interrelated, just as Apple’s hardware and software tended to be, as if part of an integrated system. [The book] is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values.”

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“Think Different” is an advertising slogan created for Apple Computer in 1997 by advertising agency TBWA\Chiat\Day. It was used in television commercials, print ads and a number of TV promos for Apple products. The slogan was discontinued in 2002.

Original Version: The original “Long version” appeared on posters made by Apple.

The Crazy Ones

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.

About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward.

Maybe they have to be crazy.

How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?

While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

[Source: Wikipedia/Think Different page.]

> See hundreds of posts about developing multiple talents on the main site (where you are now) and the related sites: click on TalentDevelop Sites in the menu bar above.

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In his famed Commencement Address, Steve Jobs also emphasized the value of thinking differently:

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“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice.

“And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

— Steve Jobs, Stanford University Commencement, 2005 transcript:  ‘You’ve got to find what you love,’ Jobs says.
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In his post “That’s DR. Winnie to you: A New Child Star Stereotype” (on his Psychology Today blog), creativity researcher James C. Kaufman, Ph.D. writes about a number of people well-known as child stars, now grown, who have explored talents outside of acting.

He writes: “One of the research topics in creativity that has always fascinated me has been creative polymathy – the ability to be creative in more than one domain…”

“There are, of course, the child stars who are still actors (such as Christian Bale, Jason Bateman, Neil Patrick Harris, and Anna Paquin) or end up behind the cameras (such as Fred Savage, Peter Billingsley, and Ke Huy Quan) but what I find interesting are the other ones…

“Danica McKellar (‘Winnie’ on The Wonder Years) earned her Ph.D. from UCLA in mathematics, currently writes books promoting math, and has an Erdos number of 4 (it’s like the Kevin Bacon game for mathematicians.”

The photo of her is from my posts
Danica McKellar on being girly and tech savvy
Danica McKellar on the power and beauty of math

Kaufman notes other examples: “Missy Gold (‘Katie’ on Benson) received her Ph.D. and is now a clinical psychologist in Portland, Maine (under a different name). [See his post for more.]

In her article Picking their next role: Joe College or hot young star?, Amy Kaufman (Los Angeles Times, June 12, 2011) mentions Emma Watson, Blake Lively, Brad Pitt, Jodie Foster, Natalie Portman, James Franco, Shia LaBeouf and others who make decisions about developing their talents outside of acting.

Another example being actor Mayim Bialik, who earned her Ph.D. from UCLA in Neuroscience.

On “The Big Bang Theory” tv series, she plays Amy Farrah Fowler, a neurobiologist and “not-girlfriend” of physicist Sheldon Cooper.

Bialik commented that “having an understanding of both mental illness and neurosis has been tremendously helpful to me in my acting career.”

From my post: Actors and creative polymathy: Mayim Bialik, James Franco and others.

How does polymathy work?

In his post How Renaissance People Think – The thinking style of polymaths – Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman asks, “Do you think like a polymath? Here’s a quick test: Are you more of a rational or experiential/intuitive thinker?

“If you cringed as you read the question and thought to yourself ‘I love constantly shifting between both modes of thought’, then you’re on the polymath path.”

He says psychologist Seymour Epstein told him that “people who are high in both thinking style are Renaissance people. They have the brains of scientists and the sensibilities of poets. In other words they have the positive features of both thinking styles and do not have their negative features because they are kept under control by the other thinking style.”

Related:

My podcast interview: James C. Kaufman, PhD on creativity research

The Too Many Aptitudes Problem, by Hank Pfeffer

Scanner Personality / Renaissance Soul articles

Creative Polymathy is one of the themes of my book
Developing Multiple Talents – The personal side of creative expression
Facebook
Website

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developing multiple talents, self-exploration, developing creativity, creative potential, creative personality type

One example is Dean Kamen – an inventor, entrepreneur, and advocate for science and technology. He holds more than 440 patents, many for innovative medical devices, which can require mechanical engineering, biomedical research and ergonomics, among other fields.

His more public inventions are the Segway Human Transporter, and the Ibot, a stair-climbing wheelchair.

He also founded FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), an organization for motivating children to understand, use, and enjoy science and technology.

But there may be significant challenges for both children and adults.

In her Psychology Today post Multipotentiality: When High Ability Leads to Too Many Options,  Lisa Rivero notes multipotentiality can be both a blessing and a curse and “adults with multipotentiality may find themselves drifting from job to job, unable to settle in any spot long enough to know if it would satisfy over the long term, feeling that their lives and careers are a hodge-podge of failed attempts.”

But we can also view that “hodge-podge” more positively.

In her article Are You a Scanner?, Barbara Sher talks about people who are “genetically wired to be interested in many things… the owner of a remarkable, multitalented brain.”

But there may often be pressures on us from early in life through adulthood to choose only one direction or arena to realize our talents – for example, social attitudes about art being “soft” or acceptable only as an avocation but not a “real” career choice.

Social and cultural pressures

Actor and musician Gwendoline Yeo talks about that kind of pressure in Asia.

She was born and raised in Singapore and graduated summa cum laude, phi beta kappa from UCLA before the age of 20, as well as receiving a diploma in Classical Piano from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

She specializes in playing the Chinese Long Zither (“gu-zheng”), and is also an actor (‘Xiao-Mei’ on Desperate Housewives, for example).

[Some of this info is from her bio on gwendolineyeo.com]

In an interview [UCLA International Institute, by Chi Tung, October 5, 2003] she noted that children “in Singapore and in Asia, in general, are brought up believing that being perfect is the best thing to do.. You know, when I was growing up, I had to get it right, and I think most of my journey, as an actress, an artist, and a musician, has been to be comfortable in my own skin.

“Not being perfect and trusting myself, that being who I am is perfect enough and I think that is the most important thing for any person.”

She said that “Singapore, as a society, encourages children to maximize their brain capacity.. but I think that where they get to make the choice between arts versus math and science is where they have problems.

“I think that the government does give an opportunity to kids, to explore those areas, but there’s also a devaluation of art, in Chinese society, in general.

“If you’re an actress or musician, you think, ‘Well, if you’re not rich at it, then that means you’re not really working at it.’ I think it’s always a tough struggle, so when coming to the states, for me, I was constantly walking that line, like a love/hate relationship.”

Writer, performer and radio program host Sandra Tsing Loh talked in our interview about her choices after graduating from CalTech with a BS in physics: “In our family, with our values, it was kind of a failure not to go on to your PhD in physics.

“To go on to a PhD in English was like a failure, because it was a soft topic… it was all very shocking to everyone, and it looked like I was at the beginning of a tragic tumble into living as a street person.”

It may be difficult to choose how to live your own life in the face of strong family and social pressures – but it may help to explore something without boxing it up as “career” or “vocation.”

In her article AND I’m an artist: Art as a hobby, Linda Dessau says thinking of art as a hobby “means freedom from the creative constraints that might be involved once you claim it as a business, way of life or part of your identity. Additionally, a hobby involves more personal choice and expression of the artist’s personal creative preferences.”

Applying multiple talents

In his Bates College Commencement 2007, Dean Kamen called on graduates to realize, “If you want to solve all the problems that we’re facing in this world, it’s unlikely that the people and ideas that got us to where we are will be the ones that are going to get us to a different place.

“It’s going to require new people with new ideas. And that would be you.”

Also see many more creativity enhancement articles

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scanner personality, gifted adults, multiple talents, psychology of scanners, Gwendoline Yeo, Sandra Tsing Loh, Barbara Sher, psychology of creativity

In a section of the book – Is it a Gift to be Uncommon? – he writes about how people who are Xi [eXtra Intelligent or Intense] may view their exceptional abilities.

Here is an excerpt:

Giftedness refers literally to special talents, somehow provided at birth.

Extra intelligence refers literally to an uncommon overdose, compared to standard availability.

It is well known that the label gifted is generally not welcomed by the person in question, whether child or adult.

This can be due to worries about possible stigmatization as a strange exception to normal, or about the implied expectation or felt obligation to be an outstanding performer…

Others may consider it an act of God, a weird trick of fate, a cosmic joke or a genetic inevitability. But in all cases there is most often a drive to do something special with it, a sense of mission, even when the mission itself is far from understood as yet.

Continued in High Ability post Is uncommon intelligence a gift?

Sarah Bernhardt

I’ve been accused of being ‘too much’ all my life.

Too loud, too fast, too smart, too multi-talented, too audacious.

I’ve never been able to live according to that external standard of ‘just right’.

Artists are often ‘too much’.

It’s the job of the artist and writer to reflect what they see and feel. This expression of their art and talents must be larger than life.

The trouble is, our expression doesn’t always jibe with what’s going on in the ‘normal’ world.

Once creative people stop trying to calibrate their expression to a ‘norm’ they can thrive more easily.

I was once coaching a client about her talents and how she could best express them. It became clear to us that she was a larger-than-life personality, and that her talents required a bigger stage than she was currently occupying.

> Continued in her article Too Much, Not Enough – Why Creative People Shouldn’t ‘Tone It Down’

Visit her site: Original Impulse

Also see more articles by Cynthia Morris

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