Online podcast presentations by multiple “Thought-Leaders And Role Models on Extraordinary Achievement – Helping You Succeed Under Pressure”

Free live online presentations May 21st – May 25th.
Recordings available after the Summit.

From the site:

Why do some people perform at their best under pressure and others choke?

What’s the difference between those who not only survive but thrive when faced with incredible challenge – and those who cut their losses and throw in the towel?

It’s not skill, talent or knowledge. And it’s not superior training or genes.

The “X factor” — that unmistakable quality that escapes easy definition — is mental toughness. And you know it when you see it.

… It’s the 140-pound farm kid from Nebraska who’s never seen the ocean before making it through the rigorous Navy SEALs training – while the former Olympic athlete drops out.

… It’s basketball unknown Jeremy Lin coming out of the D-League to lead the Knicks on a winning streak.

… It’s the 13-year-old winner of the National Spelling Bee spending countless hours in solitary practice with numerous spelling study guides and the dictionary to steadily improve her final ranking during five consecutive years of competition.

… And it’s tech entrepreneur Eric Migicovsky persevering in the face of rejection by potential investors to raise a record $7.1 million to fund development of his innovation through crowd-sourcing

Across every arena, the ability to drive relentlessly toward a goal despite failure, adversity and plateaus — to display grit when the going gets rough — that’s mental toughness.

One of the free presentations:

“Choke: Why We Blunder Under Pressure and How The Secrets of the Brain Can Help Get It Right”

• The “curse of expertise” and how the way pressure affects our performance depends on the activity and the type of memory required
• The “Obama effect” and other common stereotypes on performance
• Techniques that cure choking

LIVE: Thursday, May 24th at 9:00 AM PDT | 12:00 pm EDT | 6:00 PM CEST (Free recording available for 24 hours after)

SIAN BEILOCK, Ph.D, is a psychology professor at The University of Chicago and one of the world’s leading experts on the brain science behind “choking under pressure” and the many factors influencing all types of performance: from test-taking to public speaking to your golf swing.

She is the author of Choke: What The Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To.

See the list of presenters and sign up for

The Mental Toughness Summit

This poster is for the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. An image of Marilyn Monroe with a birthday cake was selected to help mark the festival’s 65th birthday.

Cannes released a statement about the choice: ”Fifty years after her death, Marilyn is still a major figure in world cinema, an eternal icon, whose grace, mystery and power of seduction remain resolutely contemporary.

“The Festival poster captures Marilyn by surprise in an intimate moment where myth meets reality — a moving tribute to the anniversary of her passing, which coincides with the Festival anniversary.

“She enchants us with this promising gesture: a seductively blown kiss. The Festival is a temple of glamour and Marilyn is its perfect incarnation. Their coming together symbolizes the ideal of simplicity and elegance.”

But don’t believe all quotes attributed to Monroe herself.

“Imperfection is beauty. Madness is genius, and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.”

This is a widely circulated quote, supposedly by Monroe, but the webpage Janie’s take on Marilyn Monroe – part of the Immortal Marilyn site - says “There are five quotes assigned to Marilyn that are exceedingly popular… However,  not one of them has a discernible source. There are no records, (whether in interviews, writings, or press conferences) of Marilyn ever saying any of these, and when explored most of them seem highly unlikely.”

The very popular quote above, the writer continues, “once it’s parsed it does not sound like Marilyn at all. ‘Imperfection is beauty’? Marilyn was well known as being an absolute perfectionist, asking for take after take on the movie set until she felt she got her scene just right. She refused to give moviegoers anything less than what she felt was her absolute best.

“She would apply her makeup only to wash it all off and do it over again, taking hours to prepare so that she presented herself to the public as nothing short of absolutely perfect. After a photo shoot she would pore over contact sheets, destroying any images that she didn’t approve of.

“In a 1960 interview, she did say: ‘My one desire is to do my best, the best that I can from the moment the camera starts until it stops. That moment I want to be perfect, as perfect as I can make it.’ Hardly seems that someone so hard wired to perfectionism would say ‘Imperfection is beauty.’.

“As to the second part, “Madness is genius”, this seems even more unlikely. Marilyn’s mother suffered from severe mental illness that traumatized the actress when she was a child. As an adult, Marilyn’s biggest fear was inherited madness like her mother’s. Considering her first hand account with what madness truly was, and her deep rooted fear of it, how likely is it that she would declare it ‘genius’? Not very.”

Perfectionism

Monroe commented about her occasional infamous delays in coming to a set to start shooting: “I believe you shouldn’t do anything in life until you’re ready.”

Director George Cukor said “Marilyn’s delays are neither irresponsible not careless. She doesn’t want to do a scene until she is ready for it and can give it her best.”

[Daytona Beach Morning Journal - Jul 17, 1960.]

This reminds me of another of my favorite actors: Nicole Kidman. In working with her on their film “Portrait of a Lady,” director Jane Campion was quoted: “She can be quite murderously challenging in her perfectionism.

“Take Twenty: ‘Are you sure that’s good enough?’ [she says]. We’re going, wearily ‘Yeah.’”

From my article Perfectionism.

Also see posts on my High Ability site on Perfectionism.

[Photo: "Marilyn Workin' It" - available from Art.com and Amazon.com]

Another source book of quotes is “My Story” by Marilyn Monroe with Ben Hecht [see link at bottom, in the list of books].

The author of the webpage Janie’s take on Marilyn Monroe [mentioned above] notes, “While there has been heated discourse on just how much Marilyn contributed to it and how much was ghostwriter Ben Hecht, Marilyn did sit for interviews for the book, and did approve the final writing before abandoning the project over printing issues.

“Also giving it some credibility is that the anecdotes presented in My Story are echoed in Marilyn’s own voice in her 1960 interview with Georges Belmont.  These are some quotes found in My Story that we can safely attribute to Marilyn:

“Hollywood’s a place where they’ll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul. I know, because I turned down the first offer often enough and held out for the fifty cents.”

“I knew I belonged to the Public and to the world, not because I was talented or even beautiful, but because I had never belonged to anyone or anything else.”

Another quote:

“When you’re famous, you kind of run into human nature in a raw kind of way.”

Ayn Rand wrote a commentary in the Los Angeles Times, two weeks after Marilyn Monroe’s death on August 5, 1962.

Referring to the “sordid and horrifying childhood of Monroe, Rand wrote: “To survive it and to preserve the kind of spirit she projected on the screen – the radiantly benevolent sense of life, which cannot be faked – was an almost inconceivable psychological achievement that required a heroism of the highest order.”

From my Inner Actor site post Actor’s Privacy and The Dark Side of Fame.

A final quote from “My Story”:

“I knew how third rate I was. I could actually feel my lack of talent, as if it were cheap clothes I was wearing inside. But, my God, how I wanted to learn! To change, to improve! I didn’t want anything else. Not men, not money, not love, but the ability to act.”

Her statement of “a lack of talent” is more about her insecurity, rather than an objective evaluation of her abilities.

In Part 1 of this article, I quoted acting teacher Lee Strasberg :

“In her eyes and mine, her career was just beginning. The dream of her talent, which she had nurtured as a child, was not a mirage.”

Here are a couple of my posts on this topic, which impacts so many high ability people:
‘I’m a Fraud’: Gifted and talented with insecurity
Artistic confidence – Insecurity and acting

~~

Books

Marilyn & Me: A Photographer’s Memories, by Lawrence Schiller.

Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters – by Marilyn Monroe, edited by Stanley Buchthal and Bernard Comment.

The photo above is used for the cover of that book.

“The library of Marilyn Monroe contained over 400 books on a variety of subjects, reflecting both her intelligence and her wide-ranging interests.  No surprise to those familiar with Monroe, they were the books of a well-read and inquiring mind.  Works of Literature, Art, Drama, Biography, Poetry, Politics, History, Theology, Philosophy, and Psychology covered the walls in her library.” From website: “Man’s Supreme Inheritance” – A Book from Marilyn Monroe’s Personal Library.

Marilyn Monroe, by Eve Arnold. – “Following a 1952 photo shoot for Esquire magazine, Monroe and Arnold forged a wonderful friendship. Marilyn Monroe chronicles the six photography sessions that took place over the course of their 10-year bond, including a two-month-long session while Monroe was shooting The Misfits.” [Amazon.com summary]

Blonde: A Novel – “Joyce Carol Oates boldly reimagines the inner, poetic, and spiritual life of Norma Jeane Baker — the child, the woman, the fated celebrity and idolized blonde the world came to know as Marilyn Monroe.”

My Story – by Marilyn Monroe, with Ben Hecht.

Video – Marilyn Monroe – The Final Days, Narrated By James Coburn

~~

It doesn’t always work out that way.

In her Unwrapping the Gifted post “Multipotentiality,” K-12 gifted education specialist Tamara Fisher quotes Bryant (a pseudonym), a graduating senior who lists his possible future careers as “applied psychologist, scientific psychologist, college teacher, philosophy, mathematics, architect, engineer.”

He says, “I find it difficult to choose between careers because I fear how large the choice is. Having many options available is pleasant, but to determine what I will do for many years to come is scary.”

Fisher notes, “Multipotentiality is the state of having many exceptional talents, any one or more of which could make for a great career for that person.

“Gifted children often (though of course not always) have multipotentiality. Their advanced intellectual abilities and their intense curiosity make them prime candidates for excelling in multiple areas. This can be both a blessing and a curse.

“On the bright side, they have many realistic options for future careers. But on the downside, some of them will struggle mightily trying to decide which choice to make.”

Fisher adds that having “so many great possible outcomes can be a source of debilitating stress.”

Too many options

In her post Multipotentiality: When High Ability Leads to Too Many Options, Lisa Rivero describes Jason, a college junior, who “is trying to decide what to do after graduation. He is leaning strongly toward graduate school but is unsure of whether he wants to stay in the United States or study abroad. An honors student at a liberal arts university, he has taken a wide variety of courses–from chemistry and calculus to philosophy and political science–and he has gotten As in all of them.

“While he knows he is fortunate to have so many options available, he also sometimes panics that he will make the wrong choice and end up in a job he doesn’t like. If he gets a Ph.D. in political science, will he be tracked into being a college professor? If he pursues a master’s program in economics, will he regret not continuing with political science? And what about all of those classical languages he has studied? Were they just a waste of time?”

She adds, “This frustration can continue past adolescence as 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.”

Too little challenge?

In the case of Jason, Rivero writes, “Rather than indicating that he is equally good at everything, his college career thus far might instead be an indication that he is not being challenged at a level to show relative passions and aptitudes. Perhaps he would continue to thrive and be engaged in graduate-level math but find post-college classical languages more frustrating and less interesting.

“Alternatively, he might excel in a job that allows him to use his knowledge of Latin and Greek and Sanskrit but find that his interest in political science wanes once it becomes more specialized or practical. In addition, his temperament may determine whether the pursuit of research, teaching, or field work is the most comfortable fit.

RIvero explains, “The authors of the Journal of Counseling Psychology article describe this good fit as ‘optimal adjustment’ – a match between personal abilities, personal preferences, and requirements and rewards from the workplace environment.”

Parts of this article were adapted from Lisa Rivero’s book A Parent’s Guide to Gifted Teens: Living with Intense and Creative Adolescents. [The image is also from the article.]

And that can be true for adults too. Of course many people are able to realize multiple talents.

In my Psych Central post Amber Benson on Writing: Creating is Kind of Intoxicating, I wrote about actor Amber Benson (Tara on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”) who also has multiple credits as a novelist and screenwriter, director and producer.

Gordon Parks (1912-2006) was often referred to as a renaissance man.

An obituary noted, “In addition to his photography, film work and poetry, he composed a symphony, sonatas, concertos, film scores, and wrote novels, instructional photography manuals, essays and three memoirs.” (From my post Being “scattered” and proud of it.)

But having advanced potential and exceptional capabilities in many talent areas also means, almost by definition, you are underachieving: you can’t do everything.

One of the pleasures of my life has been pursuing serial interests in often radically different fields: being a research assistant in genetics and later in left/right brain wave research; a visual effects camera operator, and multiple other jobs and pursuits.

But one of the ‘costs’ has been a life unmoored to any career, and many periods of anxiety and self-doubt.

Thankfully this series of sites I have created is not only creatively rewarding, but also of some value to other people.

Related:

Underutilized talents, too many aptitudes

The Too Many Aptitudes Problem, by Hank Pfeffer
“Most people have about four or five strong talents… Most jobs require about four or five. As many as 10% of the population has double that number of aptitudes… There is evidence that people with too many aptitudes (TMAs) are less likely to obtain advanced education and/or succeed in a career than those with an average number of talents.”

Adult underachievement – not living up to our high potential
In a very real sense, everyone may be called “underachieving” regardless of whether they are gifted or not. One short definition is “Performance below potential.”

Are you a scanner personality? Maybe all you need is a good enough job.
Barbara Sher writes about and leads retreats for Scanners – “also known as renaissance men and women, eclectic experts, happy amateurs and delighted dilettantes.”

Book: Your Own Worst Enemy: Breaking the Habit of Adult Underachievement
- by Kenneth W. Christian, PhD.

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

~~~~

Book: Developing Multiple Talents – The personal side of creative expression
- by me, Douglas Eby
“Part book about creativity, part compendium of useful tidbits, quotations and research, and part annotated bibliography, this is a wildly useful and highly entertaining resource.” – Stephanie S. Tolan, fiction writer and consultant on the needs of the gifted.

~~~~

Program / ebook: Renaissance Business – “Specifically for the Multi-Passionate Entrepreneur”
Author Emilie Wapnick notes, “My resume reads like it belongs to ten different people. Music, film, web design, law, business, personal development, writing, dance, sexuality, education– all of these are or have been interests of mine. They come and go (and sometimes come again).

Video: A Disturbing Trend in the Blogosphere…
“Why are all these successful multipotentialite entrepreneurs telling us to “pick one thing” when they themselves USED their diverse background to build their business?!”

Related: The Productivity for Multipotentialites Course – “Ah, isn’t it lovely having so many different interests? Being a multipotentialite is wonderful, except when it comes to actually getting all of those great projects done.”

Productivity for Multipotentialites is “a complete productivity system for multipotentialites. Throughout the classes, you will be introduced to a number of practices and rituals to help you integrate all of your passions into your life, without the stress.”

~~

This is a theme of his upcoming book “The Charge: Activating the 10 Human Drives that Make You Feel Alive.”

There are already enthusiastic testimonials including these:

“The Charge is an inspiring guide to the one thing we all want: more life in our lives. Brendon Burchard proves that we can harness our emotional drives to feel more alive, and that it’s our internal charge that helps us meet life’s challenges with joy and courage. I love this book.”

—Paulo Coelho, New York Times best-selling author of The Alchemist

“There hasn’t been a game-changing book on personal development in a long time. The wait is over. The Charge confronts our very notions of what drives us as humans, and it brilliantly illuminates the path for how you can feel more alive, productive, and fulfilled. After reading this book you’ll find a new internal charge that’s stronger and more energized than you ever imagined possible.”

—Jack Canfield, New York Times best-selling author of The Success Principles and originator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul® series

“The Charge will change your life. Our brains are hard wired to meet specific human drives, and learning to harness and activate those drives is the secret to success and happiness. This is a smart and beautifully written book, and it will electrify your life. Get this book!”

—Daniel G. Amen, MD, New York Times best-selling author of Change Your Brain, Change Your Life and Magnificent Mind at Any Age

“Every once in a while you read a book that completely changes how you think about your life, igniting within you a new internal drive to be more, do more, and give more. This is that kind of book.”

—David Bach, New York Times best-selling author of The Automatic Millionaire

“I look for authenticity and proof when I learn from someone, and I can share that Brendon Burchard is one of the most engaged, energetic, and enthusiastic people I’ve ever met. I’ve always wanted to know how he developed such a remarkably strong internal charge. This book reveals his secrets. If you too want to perform at higher levels of joy, engagement, and productivity — buy this book. It’s a must-read for any serious student of success and high performance.”

—Darren Hardy, Publisher SUCCESS magazine, best-selling author of The Compound Effect and Living Your Best Year Ever

Get more free videos by Brendon Burchard, and a free copy [you pay shipping] of his new hardcover book

The Charge: Activating the 10 Human Drives that Make You Feel Alive

~~~~~

More personal change books and resources:

Tapping Into Ultimate Success: How to Overcome Any Obstacle and Skyrocket Your Results
by Jack Canfield and Pamela Bruner – about Meridian Tapping, sometimes known as Emotional Freedom Techniques.

- Also see article What is EFT? – or visit the site of The Tapping Solution.

~~~~~

This is a book I have just started to read and am finding it to be a helpful tool for self-understanding, especially with its questions to explore life experiences that impact our positive self regard and confidence.  [Douglas Eby, author/editor of this site.]

Code to Joy: The Four-Step Solution to Unlocking Your Natural State of Happiness, by George Pratt, PhD and Peter Lambrou, PhD. http://vsb.li/BwD4k4

“We are meant to be happy. Instinctively, we all know this, somewhere deep inside. We all know what it’s like to feel a burst of delight. Every one of us has at some point in our lives experienced a sense of ecstatic joy, of euphoria at the sheer sensation of being alive. Have you ever wondered why that experience has to be so rare and fleeting? The answer is, It doesn’t.” —From the book.

“All the positive thinking, affirmations, talk therapy, and pharmaceuticals in the world will never be enough to make us as happy as we were designed to be, according to acclaimed clinical psychologists George Pratt, Ph.D., and Peter Lambrou, Ph.D. That’s because those approaches fail to address a third aspect of the human organism, one that bridges the gap between mind and body: the biofield.” [Amazon summary]

One of the issues (which we all face) in this book “Code To Joy” is self-limiting beliefs – which Morty Lefkoe addresses in his multiple articles on my sites, such as Why Self-Help Often Doesn’t Work.

Visit his site ReCreate Your Life to eliminate a self-limiting belief free.

~~

As profiled in a Today Show bio, “She made the jump to college at age 10. And by age 14, Sabur was earning a bachelor’s of science degree in applied mathematics summa cum laude from Stony Brook University — the youngest female in U.S. history to do so.

“Her education continued at Drexel University, where she earned an M.S. and a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering.

“Sabur has taken up teaching math and physics courses at Southern University in New Orleans. She has been playing clarinet with orchestras since her solo debut at age 11.”

[From article posted on www.aliasabur.com]

In an interview in 2005, Sabur said talked about her achievement attitude: “Things have been not exactly smooth along the way, but that’s how it is when you do something that no one else has really done before… not honestly so much with the actual work and the class work and practicing and performing, but with everything else along the way.

“I mean, there are a lot of people who told me that I couldn’t do what I’ve done. And if I had listened to them, then I wouldn’t have done any of it.

“I would say that if you have a goal, you should fix it in your mind and not let anything stop you on the way. Because no matter what you try to do, people will tell you that you can’t or you shouldn’t. And especially for other girls, who are really discouraged in the sciences, that you can be just as good at it or better than boys.

“You can’t let people bring you down. That’s basically all there is to it.”

[CNN SUNDAY MORNING April 17, 2005]

Related book: Child Prodigies From Around the World Vol. 2 Including Prodigies Of Medicine, Humanities, and Psychology, Biographies, Education, Other Little Known Facts From the Early 1700s Until Present Time.

~~

“I must have been crazy to have donned so many hats.”

Many multitalented people feel inspired and energized to pursue multiple creative projects, often at the same time. One potential downside is physical and emotional burnout.

Jennifer Westfeldt wrote, produced and acted in “Kissing Jessica Stein” and “Ira & Abby.” For her new movie “Friends With Kids,” she not only wrote the screenplay, acted and produced, she also directed the “two-year, round-the-clock endeavor” as a Los Angeles Times article describes it – not an uncommonly demanding schedule for movies.

“I must have been crazy to have donned so many hats,” Westfeldt said. “It made good sense for me to direct it, since I was involved in every aspect anyway. But I’m not sure I’d ever do it again.”

The burned-out house is a pithy metaphor for our condition when we are suffering burnout.

It’s a ‘system breakdown’ I have experienced a number of times over the past couple of years…

In her stimulating post “How to Deal with Multipotentialite Burnout,” Wapnick articulates how we may go “too far” in pushing the boundaries of our capacities to keep achieving.

“It’s a collapse. Complete mental exhaustion. While most people experience burnout from time to time, multipotentialites are prone to hitting this point more frequently and more intensely. It makes sense, considering how passionately curious we are, and how easy it is for us to lose ourselves in our projects.”

Continued: Multiple Talents, Multiple Passions, Burnout

~~

A good friend of mine could be the next Martha Stewart. In fact, let’s call her Martha.

Martha loves to cook and does it beautifully.

Guests that she entertains for dinner wow at the presentation, rejoice throughout the meal, and are somewhat embarrassed when it’s their turn to invite her over.

Martha is equally talented at home design. Her own home is both harmonious and stylish, and she’s the go-to person for anyone in her group of friends who needs advice on décor.

Having studied fashion, she can also help just about any lady plan a make-over, including hair, make-up or clothing style.

As if her skill set wasn’t complete enough already, she’s also the funniest person I know (and I know a lot of people!).

It’s great to have a friend like Martha around. But it’s a real shame to see her go to the same federal office day after day so she can send emails, make photocopies, stamp paperwork, and align numbers in the right columns.

Continued: Multi-Talented but Under-Challenged?

~~

“And still it is not enough to have memories. One must be able to forget them when they are many, and one must have the great patience to wait until they come again. For it is not yet the memories themselves. Not until they have turned to blood within us, to glance, to gesture, nameless and no longer to be distinguished from ourselves-not until then can it happen that in a most rare hour the first word of a verse arises in their midst and goes forth from them.”
- Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

“Patience is a somewhat devalued commodity. Particularly among those who ought to know better – writers themselves.” – Dennis Palumbo

Formerly a Hollywood screenwriter, Dennis Palumbo is now a licensed psychotherapist in private practice, specializing in creative issues.

He comments: “Rather than thinking of it as the quality that enables a writer to explore his or her material, growing more competent by small, even measures, patience has taken on the attributes of a necessary evil.” …

Photo: J. K. Rowling in 1997 at a table in Nicholson’s Cafe in Edinburgh. She conceived the idea for the ‘Harry Potter’ series while on a train trip in 1990, and finished typing the first manuscript in 1995. She often worked at pubs and cafes during her lunch breaks.

Continued: Developing Creativity: Writing With Patience

~ ~

“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?

~ ~

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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Listen folks. Talking about goals won’t get you there any more than going to church will get you to heaven.

If you do not passionately believe in where you are going, don’t give goal-setting a bad name by using the word goal to describe listless me-too-ism.

A goal has to be a real destination at which you not only aspire to arrive but for which you make every preparation and expend every effort.

Stop settling for approximations to goals and stop accepting weenie progress.

To really make progress toward your goals you have to stop setting goals because everybody else is.

Continued: What’s wrong with goal-setting?

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