In his PsyBlog post Why Group Norms Kill Creativity, Jeremy Dean (a researcher at University College London) notes that “Groups only rarely foment great ideas because people in them are powerfully shaped by group norms: the unwritten rules which describe how individuals in a group ‘are’ and how they ‘ought’ to behave.
“Norms influence what people [...]
Filmmaker Harrod Blank grew up in the isolated Santa Cruz mountains of California, without a TV and with only roosters and chickens for friends. At 16, driven by a desire to communicate who he is with others, he began decorating cars, beginning with his bland, white Volkswagen.
The resulting car,”Oh My God,” introduced him to [...]
“I hope I’m becoming more eccentric. More room in the brain.” Tom Waits
In his post Ignore Everybody (on his gapingvoid blog), Hugh MacLeod provides a stimulating list of tips to help us “be more creative, in art, in business, whatever.”
Here are some of those tips :
1. Ignore everybody.
2. The idea doesn’t have to be big. [...]
“Creative people, as I see them, are distinguished by the fact that they can live with anxiety, even though a high price may be paid in terms of insecurity, sensitivity, and defenselessness for the gift of ‘divine madness,’ to borrow the term used by the classical Greeks.
“They do not run away from non-being, but by [...]
gifted adults, gifted children, gifted adult personality, psychology of giftedness, high aptitude personality
One of the personal qualities that seems to be shared by most gifted children is being different and divergent – in terms of thinking, interests, values and behavior. Many gifted adults feel “wrong” or anxious about “not fitting in” even though being different [...]
Rejected for excellence
Children with outstanding talents sometimes get rewards and acclaim, but many are overlooked, discounted or unsupported. Adults with exceptional talents can also live on the fringes of recognition and contribution to society, some by choice, but often on account of mainstream discomfort with outsiders.
Even those who are called eccentric may want to live [...]
