Tag: "eccentricity"

You are weird

You are weird

By Morty Lefkoe All of you who read my blog posts and who signed up on my website to eliminate a limiting belief are “weird,” according to best-selling author and popular blogger Seth Godin. Why would he apply that term to you? Seth uses the term “weird” to describe anyone who is not “normal,” in [...]

Lady Gaga on identity and creative expression

Lady Gaga on identity and creative expression

Lady Gaga identifies herself as a feminist, and says, “I find that men get away with saying a lot in this business, and that women get away with saying very little. “In my opinion, women need and want someone to look up to that they feel have the full sense of who they are, and [...]

Creative Artist Issues: Podcast Interview with Dr. Cheryl Arutt

Creative Artist Issues: Podcast Interview with Dr. Cheryl Arutt

Dr. Cheryl Arutt is a clinical psychologist, specializing in creative artist issues and other topics. She is also a forensic and media consultant. Topics in our audio interview include high sensitivity, regulating disruptive feelings, destructiveness vs creativity, pain and creativity, being unconventional vs rebellion against the self, the fight-or-flight response, and other issues which can [...]

Highly sensitive: Embracing our uniquely weird sensitivities

Highly sensitive: Embracing our uniquely weird sensitivities

“I think being different, being against the grain of society, is the greatest thing in the world.” That’s actor Elijah Wood (“Lord of the Rings”), quoted in my post Exceptional and out of bounds – eccentrics and society. Being unusual and eccentric may be easier for some people. It may not be so easy for [...]

Gifted adults in the workplace: Nerds or heroes or misfits

Gifted adults in the workplace: Nerds or heroes or misfits

I’ve always been embarrassed by my history on the job. So many failed idealistic attempts to change things. So many years working at jobs where I didn’t fit and wasn’t using my talents. If I’d understood a bit more about giftedness, I might have sought out more appropriate situations. The research of Roland S. Persson, [...]

Conformity and creativity

Conformity and creativity

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 [...]

Oh My God! car by Harrod Blank

Eccentrics and wild cars take to the road in “Automorphosis”

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 [...]

Developing creativity – Hugh MacLeod says Ignore Everybody

“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 [...]

Creativity and madness – Rollo May and Emily Dickinson on mental health and creative people

“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 [...]

Gifted adults are different from an early age

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 [...]

Exceptional and out of bounds – eccentrics and society

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 [...]

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